Discovering Environmental Cancer: Wilhelm Hueper, Post-World War II Epidemiology, and the Vanishing Clinician's Eye

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-1997

Abstract

Today, our understanding of and approach to the exogenous causes of cancer are dominated by epidemiological practices that came into widespread use after World War II. This paper examines the forces, considerations, and controversies that shaped postwar risk factor epidemiology in the United States. It is argued that, for all of the new capabilities it brought, this risk factor epidemiology has left us with less of a clinical eye for unrecognized cancer hazards, especially from limited and localized exposures in the workplace. The focus here is on Wilhelm Hueper, author of the first textbook on occupational cancer (1942). Hueper became the foremost spokesman for earlier identification practices centering on occupational exposures. The new epidemiological methods and associated institutions that arose in the 1940s and 1950s bore an unsettled relation to earlier claims and methods that some, Hueper among them, interpreted as a challenge. Hueper's critique of the new epidemiology identified some of its limitations and potentially debilitating consequences that remain with us today.

Identifier

0031279318 (Scopus)

Publication Title

American Journal of Public Health

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.87.11.1824

ISSN

00900036

PubMed ID

9366640

First Page

1824

Last Page

1835

Issue

11

Volume

87

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