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Creager Angela N.H. , Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (Chicago, IL and London : University of Chicago Press , 2013), pp.ￂ xvi, 489, $45, ISBN:ￂ 978-0-226-01780-8.
Book Review
In Life Atomic, Angela Creager recasts the history of science and medicine in the United States. Hers is a history from below. In Creager's hands, we see the full scope of biomedical research from the perspective of the radioisotopes that flowed out of nuclear production facilities and through an intricate network of laboratories, environments and living bodies. Isotopes went everywhere in the post-war period, and Creager follows them with rigour and verve.
As its title suggests, Life Atomic unearths that sweeping impact of the atomic age, and especially the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), on medicine and the life sciences. While radioisotopes had been in use for decades, the rapid growth of nuclear technology during and after World War II inaugurated a new supply chain and, especially after the war, a new need to depict the atom as a symbol of progress in an era of peace. This need energised the immense and rapid dispersion of radioisotopes and sustained a range of uses - therapeutic, scientific and industrial - in the face of mounting evidence about the unforeseen consequences of exposure to radioactive material.
Creager's account is in a sense, then, an ironic one. The hope required to build and sustain the vast infrastructure at the heart of Life Atomic