Hueper, Wilhelm

It is of more than a little interest to note that the sites of tumor formation do not always match across species. Benzidine, a substance once widely used in dye manufacture, was shown many years ago to be a carcinogenic risk for the bladder in workers exposed to excessive levels. The rat bladder is not responsive to this substance, but its liver is. It wasn t until Wilhelm Hueper turned to the dog that bladder cancer could be reproduced in a laboratory animal. It is now understood that benzidine metabolism is similar in dogs and people, and that metabolism in the rat takes a different course. It is also understood that certain benzidine metabolites, and not benzidine itself, are the proximate causes of tumors. Knowledge of metabolic differences helps explain the species similarities and differences in tumor response. If we had available the rat data and no human data, we would be in error to conclude that benzidine was a cause of human liver cancer. 

The story of environmental cancer in the mid-twentieth century is inextricably linked with the name of Wilhelm Hueper (1894—1979). Hueper was a scientific pioneer in a field that did not fully flower until his career was at an end. Beyond that, his story epitomizes the era s struggles over environmental protection. Hueper s stubborn insistence on the dangers of modern industry made him a bete noire for chemical manufacturers even before the appearance in 1962 of Rachel Carson s Silent Spring, for which he was a principal scientific source. In the history of the industry s often successful efforts to suppress Hueper s research, one sees the sharply etched image of behavior that more often can only be glimpsed through a fog of evasions and excuses. 

Dr. Wilhelm Hueper, pioneer of environmental cancer research, at his microscope in the pathology laboratory at the Cancer Research Laboratories of the University of Pennsylvania, 1931. (Courtesy of the National Museum of American History.)... 

Wilhelm Hueper during his years at the National Cancer Institute, where he struggled against industry obstruction of his work. (Courtesy of the Office of National Institutes of Health History.)... 

Hue Wilhelm Hueper papers, National Library of Medicine. 

This story has been told many times Hueper autobiography, pp. 148-158 Hounshell and Smith, Science and Corporate Strategy, pp. 561-564 Proctor, Cancer Wars, pp. 38-40 C. Sellers, Discovering Environmental Cancer Wilhelm Hueper, Post-World War II Epidemiology, and the Vanishing Clinician s Eye, American Journal of Public Health, vol. 87, pp. 1824—1835 (1997) D. Davis, The Secret History of the War on Cancer (Basic Books, New York, 2007), pp. 75-77, 91-96 D. Michaels, Doubt is Their Product (Oxford University Press, New York, 2008), pp. 21-24. 

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