Making PCR

A Story of Biotechnology

Paul Rabinow

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780226701479, 9780226701462
• eBook ISBN: 9780226216874
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Cell Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Making PCR is the fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of the invention of one of the most significant biotech discoveries in our time—the polymerase chain reaction. Transforming the practice and potential of molecular biology, PCR extends scientists' ability to identify and manipulate genetic materials and accurately reproduces millions of copies of a given segment in a short period of time. It makes abundant what was once scarce—the genetic material required for experimentation.

Making PCR explores the culture of biotechnology as it emerged at Certus Corporation during the 1980s and focuses on its distinctive configuration of scientific, technical, social, economic, political, and legal elements, each of which had its own separate trajectory over the preceding decade. The book contains interviews with the remarkable cast of characters who made PCR, including Kary Mullin, the maverick who received the Nobel prize for "discovering" it, as well as the team of young scientists and the company's business leaders.

This book shows how a contingently assembled practice emerged, composed of distinctive subjects, the site where they worked, and the object they invented.

"Paul Rabinow paints a . . . picture of the process of discovery in Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology [and] teases out every possible detail. . . . Makes for an intriguing read that raises many questions about our understanding of the twisting process of discovery itself."—David Bradley, New Scientist

"Rabinow's book belongs to a burgeoning genre: ethnographic studies of what scientists actually do in the lab. . . . A bold move."—Daniel Zalewski, Lingua Franca

"[Making PCR is] exotic territory, biomedical research, explored. . . . Rabinow describes a dance: the immigration and repatriation of scientists to and from the academic and business worlds."—Nancy Maull, New York Times Book Review

NOTES

Introduction

1. I started this project with an inquiry into the Human Genome Initiative, specifically at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and continued it in a biotechnology company after political struggles over future directions at LBL made it a difficult place to work. During 1995 I began a study of the major French genome mapping center, the Centre d’Etude du Polymorphisme Humain, in Paris.

2. King and Stansfield 1990, 247.

3. Daniel E. Koshland Jr., “Perspective,” Science, 22 December 1989, 1541.

4. Guyer and Koshland 1989, 1543.

5. Patricia A. Morgan, managing editor, Science, letter to Kary B. Mullis, 12 March 1986.

6. Kary Mullis, interview for the Smithsonian Museum by Raymond Kondratas, San Diego, Calif., 11 May 1992, as part of an archival project on the history of biotechnology. Emphasis is mine. I have drawn quotes from Mullis from published or public documents. I have done so essentially for two reasons: first, by the 1990s Mullis was telling the same stories with the same details regardless of context; second, this procedure simplified the legal picture. I have interviewed Mullis a number of times; he has lectured in my Berkeley class on the Anthropology of Science; I played an active role in framing questions and filling in the background for a part of the Smithsonian interview. I would like to thank Ray Kondratas formally for his generosity and openness.

7. Stephen Scharf, personal communication.

8. Henry Erlich, personal communication.

9. Jacob 1988, 234.

10. Norman Arnheim, personal communication.

11. Although he refused to testify at the trial, Khorana later let it be known that he agreed with Du Pont’s claim. During the trial, another Nobel Prize laureate, Arthur Kornberg, supported the claim that PCR was obvious from his own previous work on DNA polymerase. Another Nobel Prize laureate, Hamilton Smith, testified for Cetus against accepting this position.

12. Nor did Arthur Kornberg mention PCR in the first edition of his textbook on DNA amplification.

13. Henry Erlich, personal communication, 10 April 1993.

14. Mukerji 1989, 197.

15. Wright 1986a, 356.

16. Keller 1985; Keller 1992. See also Kay 1993. Many of these themes were first explored by Yoxen (1982).

17. Pauly 1987.

18. For an example see Swann 1988.

19. Rockefeller’s Medicine Men; Kohler 1976.

20. Dickson 1988.

21. Merton 1973, 267.

22. Mulkay, “Sociology,” 51.

23. Collins 1975.

24. Shapin 1994, 410.

25. Ibid., 413.

26. Ibid., 412.

27. Ibid., 414–15.

28. Weber, 1946, 135.

29. Dewey 1953, introduction, 73–74.

Chapter One

1. Rabinow 1992.

2. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) 1988, 49.

3. Kloppenburg 1990.

4. Eisenberg 1987, 186.

5. The changing conceptions of nature are the heart of the matter. See, for example, Thomas 1983.

6. OTA 1988, 50.

7. Jameson 1991.

8. OTA 1988, 7.

9. Eisenberg 1987, 186.

10. Teitelman 1989, 14.

11. Smith 1990.

12. Teitelman 1989, 17.

13. Dickson 1988, ix.

14. Ibid., 21.

15. Krimsky 1982; Wright 1986b.

16. Comparison of the regulatory environment in other countries highlights this contingency. Wright 1994.

17. Krimsky 1982, 10.

18. Kenney 1986, 27.

19. P. Schaffer, “The architect’s strategic role in planning and designing facilities for biotechnology,” Genetic Engineering News 3 (March/April 1983): 23. Quoted in Kenney 1986, 180.

20. Kenney 1986, 182.

21. Ibid., 179.

22. Wright 1986a, 347. Robert Teitelman’s Gene Dreams presents several detailed examples of the strategic involvement of several pharmaceutical giants in the fields of biotechnology. Basic information is contained in OTA 1984a,b. An excellent analysis is found in Kenney 1986.

23. Kenney 1986, 91.

24. Ibid., 18.

25. Kornberg 1989, 294.

26. Paul Billings, personal communication, 16 June 1992. Billings, an active spokesman in the genome and ethics world, never heard of any distinguished scientist refusing monetary rewards for serving as an advisor.

27. Kornberg 1989, 289.

28. Ibid., 291.

29. Former Cetus scientist, 8 June 1992.

30. Cetus “spun off” two subsidiaries, Cetus Palo Alto and Cetus Immune Corporation, that were set up and directed by faculty from Stanford University. There were exceptions to this general picture. Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg was a long-term member of Cetus’s SAB. He neither placed his students in the company nor took money for his lab. He took his mandate to “think five years ahead,” removed from the day-to-day aspects of the labs, quite seriously. Cetus scientists report that Lederberg was neither taken in by the politics, nor involved in putting down the founders, nor particularly hierarchical in his dealings with younger scientists. On the other hand, he apparently often said nothing at advisory board meetings.

31. Cetus Corporation, Annual Report, 1981, 6.

32. For example,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• One: Toward Biotechnology
• Two: Cetus Corporation: A Credible Force
• Three: PCR: Experimental Milieu + the Concept
• Four: From Concept to Tool
• Five: Reality Checks
• Conclusion: A Simple Little Thing
• Photographs
• A Note on the Interviews
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography