2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
Henrietta Lacks, at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Although Lacks died
just 8 months following the biopsy, her cervical cells lived on, and since that
time have been used by scientists the world over in a multitude of experiments
ranging from testing the Salk polio vaccine to basic cancer research. While the
HeLa cell line ostensibly lost its connection to race and gender once in the petri
dish, the context of these cells and the way that they have been and continue to
be represented in the popular and scientific literature retain vestiges of the sociallyderived
connection between science and race, class and gender stereotypes.
Furthermore, current scientific debate regarding the naming of this cell line and
its potential classification as a new, non-human species requires that the historical
context of race and gender in this scientific story be acknowledged and attended
to. This paper will present a feminist perspective on the case of Henrietta Lacks
and the HeLa cell line, showing how race, gender and science intersect in both
the practice and the subject matter of science.
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Kathleen␣ A. Wellman Southern Methodist University
Physicians and Philosophes:
Biology and Sexual Morality in the French Enlightenment
The eighteenth-century saw a great revival of interest in medicine and physiology,
areas which would eventually take shape as the biological sciences in the nineteenth
century and which led to much investigation and speculation about living creatures.
The emphasis on the biological served many functions in the texts of the period—
it caused a redirection of scientific interest away from the mechanical and the
mathematical and towards the natural sciences in general and functions of living
creatures in particular. The emphasis on the biological was particularly influential
in altering the understanding of human beings. They were much more clearly
integrated into an understanding of natural processes, much less likely to be
separated by a distinctly human soul, directly compared to animals in their abilities,
etc. Biological interest led to much speculation about sexual mores and morality.
This paper will compare and contrast the treatment of sex by enlightenment
physicians and philosophes. It will focus in particular on the works of Nicholas Le
Cat, Antoine Le Camus, Jean Astruc, and Pierre Chirac. There are many points of
similarity between physicians and philosophes. Because physicians sought relief
from pain for their patients, many of them were inclined to advocate tolerance, a
perspective they shared with their philosophical counterparts. Both groups explored
connections between sex and disease (obviously venereal diseases but also mental
illnesses) and highlighted the role of sex in human nature. But physicians were
inclined to take a more therapeutic approach, narrowing both the extent of the
problem and the scope of its treatment. They also used the biology of sex to enhance
their professional authority. The philosophes, in particular La Mettrie, Diderot,
Holbach (even more moderate thinkers like Voltaire) were willing to advance a
much more radical biological agenda through unfettered speculation.