Interferon: The Science and Selling of a Miracle Drug (review)

Interferon is not just another valuable drug. In the 1970s, it was the wonder drug that was to be to the age of genetics what penicillin had been to the era of the antibiotic. Yet in the early 1980s its apparently limited success in the treatment of cancer changed the story from triumph to dismay. Yet again in the 1990s it proved beneficial in the management of a range of conditions including hepatitis, malignant melanoma, and Karposi's sarcoma.

Remarkably, the analytical literature on the history of this drug is rather limited, with the outstanding exception of Sandra Panem's Interferon Crusade. Toine Pieters has been tracking this ambiguous beast for many years. The appendix listing interviews shows the earliest to have been conducted in 1988, and in 1993 Pieters published an article on the early clinical trials in Medical History. The project that led to this book was therefore contemporary with major developments in the story it tells; perhaps for this reason, its treatment of the 1990s is rather sketchy. On the other hand, he is able to deal with the history as open-ended, as a "voyage" that is far from complete. Moreover, the accounts of interferon's discovery during the 1950s and explorations in the 1960s are destined to be definitive.

Although interferon became well-known during the 1970s as a potential cancer therapy, it began its life as an antiviral magic bullet. In an era when antibiotics had seemed to have brought the problem of bacteria under control, viruses looked like the next frontier. For a British medical establishment still stung by the loss of discovering penicillin to the United States, the discovery made at London's National Institute for Medical Research was therefore a second chance. Pieters had the opportunity to speak with such key figures as David Tyrrell, then director of the Common Cold Research Centre, who explored the properties of the potential wonder drug.

The heart of the book, however, is not the iteration of preserved anecdote. Instead, Pieters follows the changing story: as he says of accounts in American and British media around 1980, "there is essentially one major script centering around the theme of 'promise and hope'" (p. 157). This focus on the changing story about the drug is perhaps what makes this a history of technology with implications for scholars beyond the narrow band of aficionados of modern medicines.

The analysis is conducted well, constantly locked in not just to the public press, but also to the changing parameters of use anticipated in industrial and academic laboratories. Sometimes, indeed, this conscientious attention to detail can overwhelm the reader. The remarkable repeated constructions of public stories around this one medicine make it an ideal prototype of "breakthroughs" in the modern age. One might indeed have wished for more reflection on the larger set of questions of which this may be exemplary.