Cancer from beef

About this book

"After World War II agricultural college laboratories discovered in diethylstilbestrol (DES) a growth-promoting hormone of potentially wide commercial use in the cattle industry. In the postwar period of high prosperity and public confidence in science, government approval came quickly. Mass production began in 1954, and the promotional efforts of cattle feed manufacturers soon convinced farmers of the drug's growth-enhancement - and profit-boosting - powers." "Yet gradually, writes Alan I Marcus, other scientists began to suspect links between DES-produced beef and cancer in humans. In Cancer from Beef Marcus traces these developments, as DES emerged as a cause celebre - a source of "expert" factionalism and subject of various attempts to establish "safe" public policy. Marcus shows how DES figured in the enactment of three major pieces of federal regulatory legislation and how the DES controversy led to the establishment of new kinds of risk-assessment models in human health. Fears of cancer in beef, Marcus argues, played a prominent role in the rise of the American consumer movement." "Cancer from Beef uses the DES story to explore the intersection of institutional science, government rule making, and growing skepticism in popular attitudes toward both public protection and scientific authority. Marcus concludes that the DES story provides a case study in the attempt to control uncertainty in our lives when neither science nor government seem effective. The DES debate thus reflects a postmodern American accommodation with doubt, moral relativism, and the rueful calculus of cost and benefit."--BOOK JACKET.