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“Essential Collaborators”: Locating Middle Eastern Geneticists in the Global Scientific Infrastructure, 1950s–1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2018

Elise K. Burton
Elise K. Burton*
Affiliation:
Newnham College, University of Cambridge
*
ekb44@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the aftermath of World War II, a new international infrastructure based on United Nations agencies took charge of coordinating global biomedical research. Through this infrastructure, European and American geneticists hoped to collect and test blood samples from human populations across the world to understand processes of human heredity and evolution and trace the historical migrations of different groups. They relied heavily on local scientific workers to help them identify and access populations of interest, although they did not always acknowledge the critical role non-Western collaborators played in their studies. Using scientific publications, personal correspondence, and oral histories, I investigate the collaborative relationships between Western scientists, their counterparts in the Middle East, and the human subjects of genetic research. I comparatively examine the experiences of Israeli and Iranian scientists and physicians engaged in genetic anthropology and medical genetics between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, noting how they both applied nationalist historical narratives to their genetic data and struggled to establish the value of their local knowledge and scientific labor. I argue that the Israeli and Iranian experience of transnational scientific collaboration is representative of how Western scientists relegated their collaborators from “developing” regions to a subordinate positionality as collection agents or native informants. Meanwhile, within their own countries, the elite professional identity of Israeli and Iranian scientists granted them the authority to manipulate their research subjects, who often belonged to marginalized minority communities, and to interpret their biology and history within contexts of Jewish and Persian nationalism.

Keywords

IranIsraelMiddle Eastgeneticsbiologyscientific collaborationnationalismethnicity
Type
Trans-Figured
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 119 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2017 

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References

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26 I thank the anonymous CSSH reviewer who highlighted this issue.

27 The deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase (G6PD), a condition often known as “favism” in individuals of Mediterranean descent, causes red blood cells (erythrocytes) to break down in the response to specific triggers, notably fava beans, certain anti-malarial drugs, and aspirin. Kirsh, Nurit, “Population Genetics in Israel in the 1950s: The Unconscious Internalization of Ideology,” Isis 94, 4 (2003): 631–55CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; El-Haj, Nadia Abu, The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 103–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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36 Bonné-Tamir, Ḥayim ʻim ha-genim, 50.

37 Bonné to Mourant, 19 Feb. 1963, PP/AEM/K.8, box 28, Mourant Papers. Mourant, for his part, was nonplussed by the Samaritans’ behavior, writing to Leslie Dunn of the incident, “Unfortunately we came up against social and psychological factors which we did not understand, and work came to a full stop” (27 Sept. 1963, PP/AEM/K.21, box 29, Mourant Papers).

38 Bonné-Tamir, Ḥayim ʻim ha-genim, 55.

39 Bonné to Mourant, 3 Dec. 1963, PP/AEM/K.8, box 28, Mourant Papers.

40 Bonné to Mourant, 10 Oct. 1963, PP/AEM/K.8, box 28, Mourant Papers.

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43 Bonné to Mourant, 3 Dec. 1963, PP/AEM/K.8, box 28, Mourant Papers.

44 Bonné-Tamir, Ḥayim ʻim ha-genim, 64.

45 Mourant to Bonné, 26 June 1967, PP/AEM/K.10, box 28, Mourant Papers.

46 Mourant to Bonné, 11 Aug. 1967, PP/AEM/K.10, box 28, Mourant Papers.

47 Bonné to Mourant, 15 Feb. 1966, PP/AEM/K.9, box 28, Mourant Papers.

48 Bonné to Mourant, 17 Apr. 1969, PP/AEM/K.11, box 28, Mourant Papers (her emphasis).

49 Mukharji, “From Serosocial to Sanguinary Identities.”

50 “I should be extremely grateful if you would have a word, even if only on the phone, with Sheba, to try to break the deadlock about collaboration with Bonné. We have some extremely important results which we cannot publish until things are cleared up.” Mourant to Lehmann, 3 Aug. 1969, PP/AEM/K.336, box 41, Mourant Papers. He clarified in a further letter to Lehmann (4 Aug. 1969), “I am particularly anxious to maintain good relations with Sheba himself and all those colleagues such as Adam, Szeinberg etc with whom we have worked in harmony before. I also want to be on good terms with Batsheva but she is, as you know, a very difficult personality although a brilliant and charming woman.”

51 Bonné to M. Hauge, 28 Apr. 1970, PP/AEM/K.12, box 28, Mourant Papers.

52 Bonné to Mourant, 29 Apr. 1970, PP/AEM/K.12, box 28, Mourant Papers.

53 Tills to Bonné, 5 May 1970, PP/AEM/K.12, box 28, Mourant Papers (my emphasis).

54 Ibid.

55 See Bonné, Batsheva et al. , “The Habbanite Isolate I. Genetic Markers in the Blood,” Human Heredity 20, 6 (1970): 609–22CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bonné, Batsheva et al. , “South-Sinai Beduin: A Preliminary Report on Their Inherited Blood Factors,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 34, 3 (1971): 397–408 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

56 Bonné to Mourant, 26 May 1970, PP/AEM/K.12, box 28, Mourant Papers (her emphasis).

57 Tills to Bonné, 5 May 1970, PP/AEM/K.12, box 28, Mourant Papers.

58 “James Bowman oral history interview, Session I—June 26, 2006,” Oral History of Human Genetics Collection (Ms. Coll. no. 316), History and Special Collections Division, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA (hereafter “Bowman oral history interview, 2006”).

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60 Bowman oral history interview, 2006.

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62 Ibid. The article cites the 1960 edition of Montagu's Introduction to Physical Anthropology (New York: Charles C. Thomas).

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68 Ibid., 585–86. Note that the conclusion of Bowman and his colleagues that Zoroastrians, by extension Aryans, were “reservoirs” of the B blood type differs markedly from contemporary genetic discourses emerging from India, where type B was associated with non-Aryan autochthonous populations. See Mukharji, “From Serosocial to Sanguinary Identities.”

69 Bowman, “Haptoglobin and Transferrin Differences,” 88.

70 Bowman oral history interview, 2006.

71 Beaconsfield, Peter et al. , “Glucose 6 Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency in Iran and Its Relation to Physiopathological Processes,” Acta Medica Iranica 9, 1–2 (1966): 35–42 Google Scholar. The survey was carried out in response to the WHO-sponsored malaria eradication program for Iran, which relied heavily on the use of primaquine—a medication that can cause a dangerous hemolytic reaction when taken in multiple doses by individuals with G6PD deficiency.

72 Lehmann, Hermann et al. , “The Hereditary Blood Factors of the Kurds of Iran,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 266 (1973): 195–205 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 196.

73 Mourant to Lehmann, 3 Aug. 1969, PP/AEM/K/336, box 41, Mourant Papers (my emphasis).

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75 Bowman oral history interview, 2006.

76 For example, his Iranian students, carrying on his genetic research program, chose to publish in Israeli journals; see Mohallatee, Ekmal A. and Haghshenas, Mansoor, “Frequency and Distribution of ABO and Rh(D) Blood Groups in Shiraz,” Israel Journal of Medical Sciences 5, 5 (1969): 1081–82Google ScholarPubMed.

77 The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is a highly diverse series of cell-surface proteins that allows the immune system to distinguish between the body's own cells and foreign matter. By the early 1970s, the seemingly unlimited variability of the HLA proteins, and the genes that encode them, drew the attention of genetic anthropologists who hoped to use them to study human evolutionary history at a finer scale than previously possible.

78 Sheba, Chaim, “Jewish Migration in Its Historical Perspective,” Israel Journal of Medical Sciences 7, 12 (1971): 1333–41Google ScholarPubMed, 1339–40.

79 Ibid., 1336–37.

80 Ibid., 1336.

81 See Der Matossian, Bedross, “The Armenians of Palestine 1918–48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, 1 (2011): 24–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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83 Bonné-Tamir, Ḥayim ʻim ha-genim, 110.

84 Bonné-Tamir et al., “HLA Polymorphism in Israel 8.”

85 Ibid., 230–31.

86 Batsheva Bonné, “Chaim Sheba (1908–1971),” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 36, 3 (1972): 308–13, 312.

87 Bonné-Tamir, Batsheva et al. , “HLA Polymorphism in Israel: 9. An Overall Comparative Analysis,” Tissue Antigens 11, 3 (1978): 235–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 248.

88 Tabatabai, Hamideh, Mohammad, K., and Mohagheghpour, Nahid, “HLA Antigens in Two Iranian Populations: The Armenians and The Jews,” Tissue Antigens 12, 5 (1978): 309–14CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, 309.

89 The authors further identified Armenians as racially “Mongolo-Aryan”; ibid., 310.

90 Ibid., 314.

91 Sheba, “Jewish Migration.”

92 Mohagheghpour to Bodmer, 8 Dec. 1976; and Bodmer to Mohagheghpour, 24 Jan. 1977, MS Bodmer 94, fol. 1, Bodleian Library. As further evidence of Bonné’s recommendation of Sheba's work, Tabatabai's 1977 thesis, completed before the corresponding article went to press, does not include the reference to Sheba.

93 Hamideh Tabatabai, “Barrasī-yi muqāyisah-ī zhinitīk-i īrāniyān-i armanī va yahūdī” (M. Sc. thesis, University of Tehran, 1977). I thank Ehsan Amini for providing a copy of the thesis.

94 Oral history interview with James E. Bowman, 27 Sept. 2002. The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/dr-james-bowman-39 (accessed Mar. 2016).

95 Bangham, “Blood Groups,” 11.

96 See Mattson, “Nation-State Science.”

97 Anderson and Pols, “Scientific Patriotism,” 97.