Comrades in Science? US-USSR Exchanges in Health and Medicine

In November 1967, Washington University professor of earth sciences H. Leroy Scharon joined the Soviet Union's Thirteenth Antarctic Expedition as an exchange scientist, representing both the university and the National Science Foundation. For the next sixteen months, Scharon worked with scientists and engineers in fields ranging from geophysics and atmospheric science to biology and medicine. The experience was, he reflected, "an unusual and successful period of comradeship and scientific cooperation, of understanding and learning. I learned to know the Soviet people as one of the friendliest in the world and I learned that, regardless of political systems, it is possible to work with them and enjoy everyday life together."

Though widespread use of the term "science diplomacy" is relatively recent, the concept has a longer, global history. Particularly in the United States and Western Europe, science is often construed as "inherently well-intended, apolitical and non-normative, and universal," and thus well-suited to international cooperation.¹ The pure pursuit and exchange of knowledge, the argument goes, can transcend borders and ideologies. This is especially true in global health discourse: everyone, everywhere, deserves to be healthy, and scientific advancement through collaborative research is seen as a means to that end.

Yet exchanges cannot be disentangled from their political and economic contexts. During the Cold War, for example, science and technology took on an increasingly prominent role in U.S. national security objectives, bolstered by government investment in research and development, such as through the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). At the same time, the outcomes of such endeavors are not always foreseeable. Individuals may act to reinforce stated foreign policy goals. They also, however, may act in ways that do not align with, or even undermine, those goals, influencing or being influenced by people and institutions in unexpected ways. In short, the mutually constitutive relationship between science and foreign relations ranges from complementary to contradictory.

From informal exchanges to formal agreements

Cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in health and medicine took place through informal exchanges, bilateral agreements, and multilateral institutions. At the onset of the Cold War, in the absence of an intergovernmental agreement, most interactions took place through informal exchanges. That began to change in January 1958, when U.S. Ambassador William S.B. Lacy and Soviet Ambassador G.N. Zarubin signed the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Agreement on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical, and Education Fields. The Lacy-Zarubin Agreement was to be renewed every two years, and it included sections on health and medical cooperation that provided for exchanges of people, like delegations and lecturers, and resources, like journals and films.²

1972 marked another shift in U.S.-U.S.S.R. exchanges. At the Moscow Summit that May, U.S. and Soviet leaders signed a series of science and technology agreements, including the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Medical Science and Public Health. The culmination of conversations initiated at a World Health Organization gathering, the agreement identified three initial areas of cooperation: cancer, heart disease, and environmental health. Additionally, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) also began to sponsor exchanges with Soviet scientists in 1972, after the National Cancer Act, signed in December 1971, authorized NCI to support collaborative research and training activities between U.S. and foreign scientists.³

In the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Health and the Academy of Medical Sciences coordinated health and medicine exchanges, together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other state agencies. One such agency was Intourist, through which nearly all foreign visitors' trips to the Soviet Union were carefully planned. In the United States, officials from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health sponsored, planned, and implemented programs, in collaboration with the Department of State. U.S.-sponsored exchanges also involved funding and participation from private organizations, often, though not always, in cooperation with the government.

Universities also played a prominent role in exchanges. What follows are just a few examples of the experiences Washington University School of Medicine faculty and staff had with their Soviet counterparts both at home and abroad.

Soviet women doctors visit the School of Medicine

In October 1957, a delegation of women doctors from the Soviet Union visited the School of Medicine in what the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called "an opportunity for personal exchanges between scientific people from opposite sides of the world."⁴ In addition to university leaders, the delegation met with Helen Tredway Graham, professor of pharmacology; Maragret G. Smith, professor of pathology; Mildred Trotter, professor of gross anatomy; and Sarah A. Luse, associate professor of anatomy and pathology. Cancer researcher Valentina Suntzeff—herself born in Kazan, Russia, in 1891, and a 1917 graduate of the Women's Medical Institute in Petrograd (St. Petersburg)—also met the group and assisted with translation.

St. Louis was one of six cities the delegation visited during their tour of U.S. medical centers, and a reciprocal tour of Soviet sites was to take place the following year. The physicians' visit illustrates the many actors, state and non-state, involved in making such exchanges possible: the group came at the invitation of the American Women's Medical Association; they were considered guests of the State Department; the sponsoring agency was the National Academy of Sciences; and the Rockefeller Foundation made their travel arrangements. In a post-visit report, Edward Dempsey, assistant to the dean of the School of Medicine, noted the visitors were pleased that "they had learned many valuable things and had made many associations they hoped would be enduring."⁵

Delegation on Medical Education in the Soviet Union

In 1963, Edward Dempsey, now dean of the School of Medicine, traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a six-person Delegation on Medical Education under the auspices of the Lacy-Zarubin Agreement. In just three weeks, the group visited more than 40 educational and research institutions in Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Kiev, Baku, Tashkent, and Novosibirsk, where they met with medical educators, research scientists, and health officials to learn about the Soviet system of medical education. While acknowledging the limitations of the program—such as sacrificing depth for breadth—the members of the delegation unanimously endorsed future exchanges, noting that "exchanges of this type are of significant value in providing the opportunity to learn of varying approaches to comparable problems. The contributions of such missions toward furthering mutual understanding and stimulating international cooperation in health and the medical sciences warrant emphasis."⁶

People-to-People Medical Tour

President Eisenhower established People-to-People as a government program in 1956, and it transitioned into a non-governmental organization in the 1960s. In 1970, David N. Kerr, a 1941 School of Medicine graduate and former instructor in clinical medicine, was one of ten doctors who participated—"with the blessing of the Missouri State Medical Association"—in a People-to-People medical tour through Europe and the Soviet Union. The group visited a clinic and a hospital in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Moscow, respectively, and like other travelers, they experienced Russia through the lens of Intourist: "It is hard to judge a system, or a city—or a country for that matter—on a whirlwind two-to-three-day stay. However, every move a visitor makes in the Soviet Union is supervised by Intourist, and the medical facilities shown us must have been at least their best average. If so, they leave much to be desired."

International Biophysics Congress in Moscow

Jerome R. Cox Jr., director of the Biomedical Computer Laboratory (BCL), was invited to organize a panel discussion on biomedical computing for the Fourth International Biophysics Congress in 1972. The conference was held in Moscow in August, and it was sponsored by the International Union for Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) and the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. Though not a direct consequence of the joint agreements signed in May 1972, Cox's trip occurred during a period of increased communication between the two countries. In addition to the conference, he had the opportunity to meet with six cardiac surgeons and to tour two computing facilities, where he was surprised by what he saw as limited technological progress. Cox also recounts in his memoir how he later learned that one of their guides was known to the CIA as "spotter," a person who identified possible "soft targets" with whom the KGB might pursue future relationships.⁷

Soviet scientists tour the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology

In November 1972, as part of a National Cancer Institute exchange program, two scientists from the Herzen Oncological Institute in Moscow visited St. Louis during a two-month tour of cancer centers and medical schools. They expressed interest in the Cancer Teaching Program at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) and were especially impressed with MIR's computer facilities. Two years later, another Soviet delegation of five scientists toured the institute as part of a U.S.-U.S.S.R. cooperative project on evaluating and treating ischemic heart disease. The scientists were in St. Louis as guests of Saint Louis University Medical Center, and "[a] congenial atmosphere of interest and respect prevailed throughout the visit as Dr. [Ronald] Evens effectively explained and demonstrated some of MIR's newest installations."

Endnotes

1. Matthew Adamson and Roberto Lalli, "Global Perspectives on Science Diplomacy: Exploring the Diplomacy-Knowledge Nexus in Contemporary Histories of Science," Centaurus 63, no. 1 (2021): 3–4, https://doi.org/10.1111/1600-0498.12369.

2. Mary E. Corning, "A Review of the United States Role in International Biomedical Research and Communications: International Health and Foreign Policy," NIH Publication, no. 80-1638 (Bethesda, MD; Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, 1980), 275–78, http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/8008509.

3. Mark Parascandola et al., "The Development of Global Cancer Research at the United States National Cancer Institute," Journal of the National Cancer Institute 114, no. 9 (May 28, 2022): 1231, https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djac104.

4. "Soviet Women Doctors On a Visit to St. Louis," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 10, 1957, Sunday edition, sec. Pictures, 6.

5. Edward W. Dempsey, "Our Soviet Visitation," October 6, 1957, RG01C-SG01-S09-B28-F05, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives.

6. "Medical Education in the Soviet Union: Report of the Delegation on Medical Education under the US-USSR Cultural Exchange Agreement, October 20-November 8, 1963" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of the Secretary, 1964), 26; RG01C-SG01-S10-B41-F01, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives.

7. Cox's account of the trip can be found in Work Hard, Be Kind: A Memoir (St. Louis, MO: Pesca Publishing and Productions, LLC, 2022), 136–43.