In This Issue:

Seminar Series on Science,
Technology, and Society

In the 1980s, oncologists began using an innovative procedure to treat breast cancer: high dose chemotherapy accompanied by autologous bone marrow transplantation. More than 30,000 women suffering from breast cancer received this treatment, known as HDC/ABMT, before studies proved that it was ineffective, actually shortening patients’ lives and adding to their suffering.

Richard A. Rettig, an adjunct senior social scientist at RAND, discussed “the rise and demise” of HDC/ ABMT as the first speaker in the Science, Technology, and Society Seminar Series. He is the author of False Hope: Bone Marrow Transplantation for Breast Cancer, a new book that is an in-depth study of one new breast cancer therapy that was initially promising but eventually failed.

The seminar series is one of several initiatives to augment the School’s leadership in science, technology, and society (STS) studies at Columbia. Now in its third year, the STS seminar series is sponsored jointly by SEAS, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of International and Public Affairs, and the School of Public Health. Noted historians, physicians, political scientists, philosophers, and researchers address a wide range of topics in this burgeoning field of interdisciplinary study.

STS focuses on the ways in which science and technology influence, and are influenced by, social factors. The growth of STS “illustrates that the separations between disciplines is slowly disappearing,” says SEAS Vice Dean Morton Friedman. “This exciting program allows for the blending of the technological with the societal.” The eventual goal, says Friedman, is to develop a vibrant STS program at Columbia, including a minor for SEAS undergraduates.

In October, Duke University Assistant Professor of Philosophy Andrew Janiak spoke on Isaac Newton’s God: Theology and Physics in the Late Seventeenth Century. Other lectures scheduled for this year include: Columbia Professor of History Marcia Wright, speaking on Science and Society in Malaria Control: Local History in Natal, South Africa and World Malariology, 1929-1939, and Katharine Park, Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor at Harvard, on Observation in the Middle Ages.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, or to be added to the seminar series mailing list, please e-mail sts_seminars@columbia.edu.

Seminar Series on Science, Technology, and Society

Seminar Series on Science,
Technology, and Society