Biotech's Beginnings

Eric J. Vettel. Biotech:The Counterculture Origins of an Industry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. xv + 273 pp. $39.95.

Reviewed by Ted Everson

The period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s was critical in the history of the life sciences. It was a time when research cultures, politics, social activism, and the personal actions of influential individuals came together to profoundly alter the fate of the biological sciences, giving rise to the now–multibillion dollar biotechnology industry. In a sweeping and deftly produced narrative, Eric Vettel details the early origins of this industry and the scientific, social, political, and economic context in which it appeared.

In the aftermath of World War II pure science—research explicitly dedicated to fundamental discovery and resolutely opposed to practical application—came to be seen as the epitome of good science, free from the tainted practical concerns of applied science. This dichotomy is of course problematic; as Vettel puts it, “both terms are unavoidably ambiguous and merely occupy opposite and extreme points on a continuous spectrum” (p. x). The terms nevertheless have influenced politicians, investors, and the public, as well as scientists themselves. Vettel argues that the rise of the biotechnology industry was an outcome of the relative decline of pure science in the mid and late 1960s coupled with a growing demand for greater relevance and accountability from biologists.

Vettel pulls off what few historians manage to do: he tells a grand narrative of the rise of biotechnology while providing a meticulous and detailed local account of the evolution of life sciences research in one geographical location, the San Francisco Bay Area. The choice of location is inspired; the Bay Area was a major locus for the factors that contributed to the ascendancy of biotechnology, namely money, powerful research institutions, an activist political culture, and incredibly talented scientists. Vettel focuses his research on the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University; three institutions that produced influential research centers focused on the molecular sciences. That these three universities were in an area so central to biotech permits a valuable case study of a significant location; it also allows for interesting comparative history, as the unique circumstances particular to each institution influenced the direction that its research programs took.

Vettel draws on a wealth of archival material to describe some central developments that contributed to the growth and ascendancy of basic research at these three institutions: the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of Wendell Stanley’s wildly ambitious Biochemistry and Virus Laboratory at Berkeley in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Stanford Provost Frederick Terman’s aggressive moves in the late 1950s to remove the patient-care focus of the medical school; Terman’s decision to hire Arthur Kornberg and Joshua Lederberg to head biochemistry and genetics departments, respectively; Stanford’s successful retention of the Nobel laureate Donald Glaser as he switched focus from physics to biophysics; and University of California President Clark Kerr’s hiring of Julius Comroe to head the newly established Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) at UCSF. In describing the removal of a dean of medicine at UCSF who insisted on balancing bioscience research with commitments to patient care, Vettel quotes Comroe as stating that faculty recruitment “became a joy again” and the “faculty became both productive and happy” because staff could focus on pure research (p. 75). Touches like these add vivid detail to the narrative.

The ambitious ventures at Bay Area universities took place as the federal government was making efforts to build a strong national infrastructure for the sciences. Several factors, including the creation of the National Science Foundation, the launch of Sputnik, and the stunning rise of the National Institutes of Health, precipitated an extraordinary rise in federal funding for biosciences research. Equipped with seemingly limitless funds and the independence to pursue any research program that piqued their interests, bioscientists created strong basic research programs and came to dominate the culture of their universities. Their triumph was not without intra-university antagonism, as those in such applied research programs as medicine, agriculture, and engineering felt increasingly isolated and bereft of funding.

By the late 1960s a changing political and social climate began to work against basic biosciences research. The public, sensitized to science’s negative potential in the wake of thalidomide, concerns about radiation, and environmental issues brought to light by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, criticized the ivory-tower mentality of bioscience research and its perceived disregard for human needs. Facing an increasingly vocal public and an economy suffering from inflation and recession, the Johnson and Nixon administrations reduced research funding and began to demand that publicly funded scientists demonstrate the social benefits of their work. Politicians on both sides of the political divide criticized excess funding for pure science; those on the right saw fiscal irresponsibility and those on the left saw a neglect of pressing social issues. Drawing on media reports and federal government documents, Vettel details Congress’s attacks on basic bioscience and its passage of numerous bills designed to make bioscience more relevant to public wants and needs.

University administrators and bioscientists responded to the new political reality in varied ways. University officials cut back on programs and launched creative new fundraising campaigns. Many researchers, especially younger ones, sought to demonstrate the social utility of their work; others fought strenuously against what they saw as the corruption of fundamental research by practical concerns. This destabilization and realignment of the research environment in the context of a broader political and cultural demand for relevance precipitated the biotechnology revolution. Universities sought to capitalize on their intellectual property and bioscientists made tentative moves into the commercial realm. Vettel’s study of the founding of Cetus, the world’s first biotechnology company, is a wonderfully messy tale of misadventure, capturing the fish-out-of-water context in which bioscientists and business first came into contact.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the political, economic, and cultural origins of biotechnology. Vettel’s command of the relevant literature, his deep archival research, and his ability to tell a good story result in an engaging and provocative description of the changing nature of the biological community. He details a critical period in recent history when the culture of biological research underwent a major and broad change, from a state of almost complete autonomy to one of intimate interaction with society. Biotech is an immensely readable and gripping account of the human side of science, capturing the reactions of those involved in and affected by biological research during this crucial time.