Biological aging and social characteristics: Gerontology, the Baltimore City Hospitals, and the National Institutes of Health

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 68, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 49-86

  Park, Hyung Wook ^a,b  

^a NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY   (Singapore)

^b Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology   (South Korea)

Author keywords

Baltimore City Hospitals; Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging; Gerontologists; National Institutes of Health; Social bias; The elderly

Indexed keywords

ADULT; AGED; AGING; ART; ARTICLE; FEMALE; GERIATRICS; HEALTH SURVEY; HISTORY; HOSPITAL; HUMAN; LONGITUDINAL STUDY; MALE; MEDICAL RESEARCH; METHODOLOGY; MIDDLE AGED; NATIONAL HEALTH ORGANIZATION; PHYSIOLOGY; SOCIOECONOMICS; UNITED STATES; VERY ELDERLY;

ADULT; AGED; AGED, 80 AND OVER; AGING; BALTIMORE; BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH; FEMALE; GERIATRICS; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOSPITALS, URBAN; HUMANS; LONGITUDINAL STUDIES; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH (U.S.); POPULATION SURVEILLANCE; RESEARCH DESIGN; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 84877354022     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: 14684373     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrr048     Document Type: Review

References (172)

1. "Nathan W. Shock," in Profiles in Gerontology: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. W. Andrew Achenbaum and Daniel M. Albert (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995), 321-26;
2. George T. Baker III and W. Andrew Achenbaum, "A Historical Perspective of Research on the Biology of Aging from Nathan W. Shock," Exper. Gerontol., 1992, 27, 261-73;
3. W. Andrew Achenbaum, Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 89-100;
4. Tiago Moreira and Paolo Palladino, "Ageing between Gerontology and Biomedicine," BioSocieties, 2009, 4, 349-65;
5. Tiago Moreira and Paolo Palladino, "'Population Laboratories' or 'Laboratory Populations'? Making Sense of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, 1965-1987," Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. Biomed. Sci., 2011, 42, 317-27.
6. For a more descriptive account by a gerontologist, see James E. Birren, "A Brief History of the Psychology of Aging," Gerontol., 1961, 1, 127-34.
7. Baker and Achenbaum, "A Historical Perspective," 262;
8. Achenbaum, Crossing Frontiers, 95-100.
9. Moreira and Palladino, "Ageing between Gerontology and Biomedicine," 356.
10. Moreira and Palladino, "'Population Laboratories' or 'Laboratory Populations'," 318.
11. The notion of "epistemic culture" was borrowed from Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
12. Steven Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 30-52.
13. The role of American public hospitals in caring for indigent and sick people has been well documented. See, Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 322-27.
14. Also see Morris J. Vogel, The Invention of the Modern Hospital: Boston, 1870-1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 72-75;
15. Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1989), 9-10, 28-29.
16. Douglas Carroll, "The First Almshouse: Abating a Public Nuisance (1773-822)," Maryland State Med. J., 1966, 15:1, 87-90, 87.
17. Douglas Carroll, "The Baltimore City Hospitals under the Department of Public Welfare: Social Change (1935-1955)," Maryland State Med. J., 1966, 15:9, 105-8.
18. King to Stieglitz, 23 May 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, Nathan W. Shock Papers, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan (hereafter NWS).
19. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers, 326
20. Steele to King, 17 February 1939, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS.
21. King to Waxter, 23 February 1939, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS.
22. Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth, pp. 28-29.
23. See King to Steele, 6 March 1939, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS;
24. King to Steele, 7 June 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS.
25. Frank to Thompson, 11 March 1940; Thompson to Karl Meyer, 1 May 1940, Records of NIH 1930-48, Individual Institutes (Org. File) Chemistry, Physiology, Biology, National Heart Institute, folder 0110, Box 135, Record Group 443, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
26. Stieglitz to King, 21 May 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS.
27. King to Stieglitz, 8 June 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1941 I, Box 11, NWS;
28. King to Stieglitz, 16 September 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1939-941 I, Box 11, NWS.
29. King to Stieglitz, 4 October, 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1939-1941 I, Box 11, NWS.
30. Victoria A. Harden, Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887-1937 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 55;
31. Buhm Soon Park, "The Development of the Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Health after World War II," Perspect. Biol. Med., 2003, 46, 383-402, 386. (Pubitemid 36900713)
32. "Opening Remarks of Surgeon General Thomas Parran," 23 May 1941, p. 2, folder admin., files, E. J. Stieglitz Conference on Mental Health 1941, Box 11, NWS.
33. Hyung Wook Park, "Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States," J. Hist. Biol., 2008, 41, 529-72, 544-53. The relationship between the Great Depression and the making of gerontology was already briefly mentioned by Gerald Gruman.
34. See, Gerald Gruman, "Introduction," in Roots of Modern Gerontology and Geriatrics, ed. Gerald J. Gruman (New York: Arno, 1979), 4-5. On the multidisciplinarity of gerontology
35. see also Stephen Katz, Disciplining Old Age: The Formation of Gerontological Knowledge (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 104-34.
36. See W. Andrew Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land: The American Experience since 1790 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 127-41;
37. W. Andrew Achenbaum, Social Security, Visions and Revisions: A Twentieth Century Fund Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 13-37;
38. William Graebner, A History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution, 1885-1978 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 153-214;
39. Carole Haber and Brian Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History, (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994), 172-85.
40. Cowdry to Ludwig Kast, 9 October 1935, folder 9, Box 31, Edmund Vincent Cowdry Papers, Bernard Becker Medical Library, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri (hereafter EVC).
41. Cowdry, "Citizen Cells: How Cells Manage Their Social Problems," undated but likely written in the 1930s, pp. 56A(84)-57(85), folder 1, Box 142, EVC.
42. The Club for Research on Ageing, Minutes of Meeting, 11-12 January 1940, folder 2, Box 41, EVC.
43. Cowdry to Kast, 28 October 1935, folder 9, Box 31, EVC.
44. Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land, 52-53.
45. This view has been critically discussed by many scholars. See Brian Gratton, "The New History of the Aged: A Critique," in Old Age in a Bureaucratic Society: The Elderly, the Experts, and the State in American History, ed. David Van Tassel and Peter Stearns (Connecticut.: Greenwood, 1986), 3-29;
46. Katz, Disciplining Old Age, 27-76.
47. On the role of medical science in this process see, Thomas R. Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 161-211;
48. Carole Haber, Beyond Sixty-Five: The Dilemmas of Old Age in America's Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 47-81.
49. King to Stieglitz, 16 September 1940, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz 1939-41 I, Box 11, NWS.
50. "Clinical Material in Four Chronic Medical Wards at Baltimore City Hospitals as of March 20, 1941," 20 March 1941, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz Research Proposals, Box 11, NWS.
51. "U.S. to Launch Old-Age Study in Baltimore," Baltimore Sunday Morning, 6 October 1940.
52. Haber and Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security, 179.
53. The medical discourse on the distinction between normal age changes and pathological alteration has been documented by several scholars. See, Gerald N. Grob, "From Aging to Pathology: The Case of Osteoporosis," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 2011, 66, 1-39;
54. Thomas G. Beach, "The History of Alzheimer's Disease: Three Debates," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 1987, 42, 327-49;
55. Patrick Fox, "From Senility to Alzheimer's Disease: The Rise of the Alzheimer's Disease Movement," Milbank Q., 1989, 67, 58-102; (Pubitemid 20041686)
56. Laura Davidow Hirshbein, "'Normal' Old Age, Senility, and the American Geriatrics Society in the 1940s," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 2000, 55, 337-62.
57. "IV. Clinical Studies in Uric Acid Clearance in Relation to Age, Arteriosclerosis, Gout, and Renal Disease," undated but probably written in 1940 or 1941, p. 3, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz Research Proposals, Box 11, NWS.
58. "Diagnosis Routine A," undated but probably written in 1940 or 1941, p. 5, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz Research Proposals, Box 11, NWS.
59. Susan Lederer, Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
60. As far as the archival records show, there is only one instance of antivivisectionists' attack on gerontology. Even this attack was not directed upon those in the NIH. See James H. Cruikshank to William deB. MacNider, 19 November 1937, folder 414, Box 11, William deB. MacNider Papers, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (hereafter WDM).
61. For example, see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
62. Park, "Edmund Vincent Cowdry," 544-53.
63. In most cases, gerontologists used the term "he" rather than "she" whenever they mentioned an aged person in a singular form. Gerontologists rarely discussed the issue of women's aging. See, The Club for Research on Ageing, Minutes of Meeting, 21-22 March 1941, p. 11, folder 2, Box 41, EVC;
64. Cowdry to Kast, 19 November 1935, folder 9, Box 31, EVC.
65. Minutes of the First Meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Gerontology, 26 November 1940, pp. 12-13, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz National Advisory Committee First Meeting, Nov. 25-26, Box 11, NWS.
66. Edward Stieglitz, "Geriatrics in National Defense," 5 June 1941, p. 3, folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz-Speeches, Box 11, NWS.
67. See, "Proposed Investigations by Unit on Gerontology," folder admin. files, E. J. Stieglitz Research Proposals, Box 11, NWS.
68. Edward J. Stieglitz, "Studies in Uric Acid Clearance," Pub. Health Rep., 1942, 57, 1306-10.
69. It seems that the expiration of the Macy funding was not the only reason of Stieglitz's resignation. Lawrence Frank, in his personal letter, stated that Stieglitz had to leave the NIH "because of a development in his own personal family life which led the Surgeon General to request his resignation." See Frank to Clive McCay, 26 September 1953, folder Macy Foundation Contribution, Box 30, NWS.
70. Sebrell to Shock, 23 May 1941, folder Career Appointments, Box 1, NWS.
71. Hastings to Shock, 5 June 1941, folder Career Appointments, Box 1, NWS.
72. See, for example, "Outline of Course: Physiology #102," folder U of C Physiology of Growth, Box 2, NWS;
73. "Inventory of Procedures in Study of Adolescence," 1 January 1938, folder U of C Adolescent Studies, Box 2, NWS;
74. "The Physiological Changes Taking Place during Adolescence," September 1938, p. 5, folder Research Proposal, Box 2, NWS.
75. Frank to Robert Underhill, 10 January 1940, folder U of C correspondence K-Z, Box 2, NWS.
76. Progress Report, October 1943, p. 2, folder Annual Report 1943, Box 12, NWS.
77. Shock to "Tommy," 30 May 1944, folder Correspondence 1934-1974, Box 7, NWS.
78. Shock to "Bob," 13 January 1942, folder Correspondence 1934-1974, Box 7, NWS.
79. Shock to "Herbert," 27 July 1942, folder Correspondence 1934-1974, Box 7, NWS.
80. Hastings to Shock, 5 June 1941, folder Career Appointments, Box 1, NWS.
81. Club for Research on Ageing, Minutes of Meeting, 28 February 1942, p. 16, folder Club for Aging 1942 March, Box 30, NWS.
82. "Conference on Nutritional Requirements for the Ageing Population," 1-2 November 1941, pp. 10-15, folder Conference on Nutrition, Box 30, NWS.
83. Report of Unit on Gerontology: Oct. 1941 to Oct. 1943, p. 1, folder Annual Report 1943, Box 12, NWS;
84. Nathan W. Shock, "Older People and Their Potentialities for Gainful Employment," J. Gerontol., 1947, 2, 93-102.
85. Report of Unit on Gerontology: Oct. 1941 to Oct. 1943, pp. 4-5, folder Annual Report 1943, Box 12, NWS.
86. See Sebrell to Shock, 24 July 1946, 6 November 1947, folder 1941-49 (incomplete), Box 13, NWS.
87. "Space Used by Section on Gerontology," 10 December 1947, folder 1941-1949 (incomplete), Box 13, NWS.
88. Shock to "Roy and Frieda," 30 May 1944, folder Correspondence 1934-1974, Box 7, NWS;
89. "Budget," 6 June 1945, p. 6, folder 1941-49 (incomplete), Box 13, NWS.
90. Stephen P. Strickland, Politics, Science, and Dread Disease: A Short History of United States Medical Research Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 154-57, 213.
91. Harden, Inventing the NIH, 182.
92. Moreira and Palladino, "Ageing between Gerontology and Biomedicine," 357-58;
93. Hyung Wook Park, "Refiguring Old Age: Shaping Scientific Research on Senescence, 1900-1960." PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2009, 178-81.
94. For a historical explanation on why geriatrics fared better in Britain, see David K. Carboni, Geriatric Medicine in the United States and Great Britain (Connecticut: Greenwood, 1982).
95. On how old age was considered a social rather than a medical problem in Britain see Moira Martin, "Medical Knowledge and Medical Practice: Geriatric Medicine in the 1950s," Soc. Hist. Med., 1995, 8, 443-61.
96. Shock to Hastings, 11 March 1953, folder Shock 1942-71, Box 25, Albert Baird Hastings Papers, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland (hereafter ABH). He also said in an interview that he had a particularly hard time in persuading James Shannon, who was then associate director of the NHI, and Robert Berliner, one of Shannon's colleagues. See "NIA Interview Transcript," pp. 27-29, folder Biography, Box 1, NWS.
97. See "NIA Interview Transcript," pp. 25-26, folder Biography, Box 1, NWS. The city government's budget for the BCH also covered the cost of electricity, water, gas, and nursing services for the human subjects.
98. See Nathan W. Shock, Trends in Gerontology, 1st ed., (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), 98.
99. "NIA Interview Transcript," p. 24, folder Biography, Box 1, NWS.
100. "National Heart Institute Operating Budget," July-December 1949, folder Budget & Operating Plan Jul-Dec 1949, Box 13, NWS.
101. Most research proposals of gerontologists did not specify how they were related to heart diseases even though the official project description form had an item on "Significance of Heart Research."
102. See, for example, N. W. Shock, S. P. Baker, G. W. Gaffney, F. A. Silverstone, "Analysis of NIH Program Activities," undated, folder Annual Report 1955, Box 12, NWS.
103. "Adaptive Enzymes and Age," folder Annual Report 1952-56, Box 12, NWS;
104. N. W. Shock, Gerontology Branch Annual Report, 1957, folder Annual Reports 1957, Box 12, NWS.
105. See, for example, Charles H. Barrows, "Individual Project Report: Age Changes in Cellular and Tissue Biochemistry," 1956, folder Annual Report 1956, Box 12, NWS.
106. C. Fox and J. E. Birren, "Some Factors Affecting Vocabulary Size in Later Maturity, Age, Education, and Length of Institutionalization," J. Gerontol., 1949, 4, 19-26.
107. Park, "Edmund Vincent Cowdry," 546;
108. Hyung Wook Park, "Longevity, Aging, and Caloric Restriction: Clive Maine McCay and the Construction of a Multidisciplinary Research Program," Hist. Stud. Nat. Sci., 2010, 40, 79-124, 108.
109. For traditional standpoint, see, for example, Hippocrates, "Aphorisms," in The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, tr. Francis Adams (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939), 294;
110. Galen, "The Nature and Sources of Growth and of Disease," in A Translation of Galen's Hygiene, tr. Robert Montraville Green (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1951), 6-8;
111. Roger Bacon, The Cure of Old Age and Preservation of Youth (London: Tho. Flesher and Edward Evets, 1683), 2;
112. Francis Bacon, History Natural and Experimental of Life and Death or of the Prolongation of Life (London: William Lee and Humphrey Moseley, 1658);
113. Christopher William Hufeland, The Art of Prolonging Life (London: J. Bell, 1797), 35, 63-64;
114. Marie François Xavier Bichat, Physiological Researches upon Life and Death, tr. Tobias Watkins (Philadelphia: Smith and Maxwell, 1809), 1-2;
115. Homer Bostwick, An Inquiry into the Cause of Natural Death or Death from Old Age (New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1851), 7.
116. Charles S. Minot, The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death: A Study of Cytomorphosis (New York: Putnam, 1908), 214-16;
117. Alfred E. Cohn and Henry A. Murray, Jr., "Physiological Ontogeny I. The Present Status of the Problem," Q. Rev. Biol., 1927, 2, 469-90, 482, 490;
118. Raymond Pearl, The Biology of Death (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1922), 138-49, 225;
119. A. J. Carlson to Cowdry, 28 Jun 1937, folder 397 Box 10, WDM. Reading Alexis Carrel's papers along with Cowdry's also reveals this point clearly.
120. See Alexis Carrel, "Tissue Culture and Cell Physiology," Physiol. Rev., 1924, 4, 1-20;
121. Edmund Vincent Cowdry, "Ageing of Tissue Fluids," in Problems of Ageing: Biological and Medical Aspects, ed. E. V. Cowdry (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1939), 642-94, 643, 685, 689.
122. Indeed, it was one of Shock's six "axioms" illustrated in Baker and Achenbaum's paper. Baker and Achenbaum, "A Historical Perspective," 265-66.
123. Nathan W. Shock, "Ageing of Homeostatic Mechanism," in Cowdry's Problems of Ageing, 3rd edition, ed. Albert I. Lansing (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1952), 415-46, 421, 430, 436.
124. Nathan W. Shock, "Kidney Function Tests in Aged Males," Geriatrics, 1946, 1, 232-39.
125. Nathan W. Shock, "Physiological Aspects of Mental Disorders in Later Life," in Mental Disorders in Later Life, ed. Oscar J. Kaplan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1945), 33.
126. Also see, J. A. Murray, "The Chemical Composition of Animal Bodies," J. Agr. Sci., 1922, 12, 103-10;
127. H. H. Donaldson and S. Hatai, "On the Weight of the Parts of the Brain and on the Percentage of Water in Them according to Brain Weight and to Age, in Albino and in Wild Norway Rats," J. Comp. Neurol., 1931, 53, 263-307.
128. Shock, "Physiological Aspects," 44, 48.
129. NathanW. Shock and Marvin J. Yiengst, "Age Changes in the Acid-Base Equilibrium of the Blood of Males," J. Gerontol., 1950, 5, 1-4, 4.
130. The postwar economic recovery brought forth more positive views on aging. See Richard B. Calhoun, In Search of the New Old: Redefining Old Age in America, 1945-1970 (New York: Elsevier, 1978), 1-12.
131. Shock, "Older People," 101;
132. National Heart Institute Annual Report, Calendar Year 1952, p. 65, folder Annual Report, 1952, Box 12, NWS;
133. Summary Statement of Research Accomplished, 1955, folder Annual Report 1955, Box 12, NWS.
134. Shock, "Older People," 96.
135. National Heart Institute Annual Report, Calendar Year 1952, p. 66, folder Annual Report, 1952, Box 12, NWS;
136. Shock, "Older People," 98-99.
137. Shock to Hastings, 11 March 1953, folder Shock 1942-71, Box 25, ABH.
138. As Epstein, Londa Schiebinger, Robert Blakely and Judith Harrington have noted, the result of research using underprivileged people was often considered to have an implication for humanity in general, including those of a higher social status. See Epstein, Inclusion, 39-41;
139. Londa Schiebinger, "Human Experimentation in the Eighteenth Century: Natural Boundaries and Valid Testing," in The Moral Authority of Nature, ed. Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 384-408;
140. Robert Blakely and Judith Harrington, "Grave Consequences: The Opportunistic Procurement of Cadavers at the Medical College of Georgia," in Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training, ed. Robert Blakely and Judith Harrington (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), 162-83.
141. Saul Baker, George Gaffney, Nathan Shock, and Milton Landowne, "Physiological Responses of Five Middle-Aged and Elderly Men to Repeated Administration of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (Thyrotropin; TSH)," J. Gerontol., 1959, 14, 37-47, 46.
142. Donald Watkin, Eleanor Lawry, George Mann, and Max Halperin, "A Study of Serum Beta Lipoprotein and Total Cholesterol Variability and Its Relation to Age and Serum Level in Adult Human Subjects," J. Clin. Invest., 1954, 33, 874-83, 880.
143. "Conference on Nutritional Requirements for the Ageing Population," 1-2 November 1941, p. 10, folder Conference on Nutrition, Box 30, NWS.
144. Memorandum, 30 August 1949, p. 4, folder Club for Aging, Box 30, NWS.
145. nd ed., (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957), 123.
146. Gerald M. Oppenheimer, "Becoming the Framingham Study, 1947-1950," Am. J. Public Health, 2005, 95, 602-10;
147. Katz, Disciplining Old Age, 115-16.
148. Lederer, Subjected to Science, 128.
149. A. H. Norris to Shock, 6 November 1957, folder Longitudinal Studies W. W. Peter July-Dec. 1958, Box 21, NWS.
150. Shock to Peter, 29 October 1958, folder Longitudinal Studies W. W. Peter July-Dec 1958, Box 21, NWS.
151. Shock to Barbara C. King, 8 August 1958, folder Longitudinal Studies W. W. Peter July-Dec 1958, Box 21, NWS.
152. Norris to Shock, 16 September 1958, folder Longitudinal Study Questionnaire, Box 22, NWS;
153. Clyde E. Martin and Arthur H. Norris, "The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging: Characteristics of the Sample," 11 November 1976, p. 14, folder Longitudinal Studies Program Conference on Women's Aging, Box 24, NWS.
154. In 2011, more than fourteen hundred volunteers are participating in the longest-running research project on aging. Available on line at http://www.grc.nia.nih.gov/branches/blsa/blsanew.htm (accessed 19 July 2011).
155. "The Aging Program of the National Institutes of Health," 30 July 1959, p. 2, folder Longitudinal Study Administrative Record 1956-1962, Box 22, NWS.
156. Peter to "Neighbor," 8 April 1958, folder Longitudinal Study W. W. Peter 1957-1958 June, Box 21, NWS.
157. "Clinical Examinations of Outpatients," and "Longitudinal Studies: THIRD SERIES Testing Schedule," folder Longitudinal Study Administrative Record 1956-1962, Box 22, NWS.
158. This table is based on The National Heart Institute, "Publications of the Gerontology Branch, National Heart Institute, 1940-1962" (Bethesda: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1962). A copy in box 5 of the Nathan Shock Papers includes the articles published after 1962. The papers with "unspecified human subjects" are mostly abstracts or short articles published in conference proceedings without details on the identity of human subjects.
159. Norris to Shock, 16 September 1958, folder Longitudinal Study Questionnaire, Box 22, NWS.
160. Peter to Shock, 3 September 1958, folder Longitudinal Studies W. W. Peter July-Dec 1958, Box 21, NWS.
161. According to gerontologist Arthur Norris, women's applications were rejected because the "facilities are geared to house only men." See, Norris to S. F. Ashelman, 16 January 1958, folder Longitudinal Studies W. W. Peter Correspondence 1957-1958 June, Box 21, NWS.
162. In fact, many clinical trials in America after the mid-twentieth century relied only on Caucasian men. Yet it is also known that the reasons for determining the typical human subjects varied according to each research group's priorities in their historical context. See Epstein, Inclusion, 31-33. On how white male students in prestigious universities were considered to have the "normal" body, see Heather Munro Prescott, "Using the Student Body: College and University Students as Research Subjects in the United States during the Twentieth Century," J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci., 2002, 57, 3-38. (Pubitemid 41309794)
163. Cole, Journey of Life, 139-58.
164. Cole, Journey of Life, 227-33.
165. "Managing the Creative Scientist," Lab. Manage., September 1969, 36.
166. As many people have pointed out, however, Medicare and Medicaid have had significant limitations. For example, see Laurie Kaye Abraham, Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
167. Moreira and Palladino, "'Population Laboratories' or 'Laboratory Populations'," 325.
168. On model organisms, see Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994);
169. Karen Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004).
170. Clyde E. Martin and Arthur H. Norris, "The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging: Characteristics of the Sample," 11 November 1976, p. 12, folder Longitudinal Studies Program Conference on Women's Aging, Box 24, NWS.
171. Moreira and Palladino, "'Population Laboratories' or 'Laboratory Populations'," 323-35.
172. For a thorough sociological discussion of these complex problems, see Epstein, Inclusion, 203-32.