Cancer from beef

"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, gove