The Corner Society: “Cancer Research and Educational Film in the Mid-Twentieth Century”

“Cancer Research and Educational Film in the Mid-Twentieth Century” 

David Cantor the Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social (IDES), Buenos Aires, Argentina, and School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA

In 1949, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare (DNHW) commissioned a film, eventually called Challenge: Science Against Cancer, as part of a major effort to recruit young scientists into cancer research. Both organizations were concerned that poor recruitment would stifle the development of the field at a time when funding for research had grown as never before and was expected to continue to grow in the foreseeable future. The fear was that there would not be enough new young scientists to meet the demand, and that the shortfall would undermine cancer research and the hopes invested in it. Challenge aimed to persuade young scientists to think of cancer research and biomedicine as careers. This talk is the story of that film: why it was commissioned, how it was made, and how it was promoted and packaged.