Shimkin, Michael Boris, 1912-

A pioneering contributor to oncology research in the United States, an editor of professional medical journals, and an author of books and articles treating the development of cancer research (e.g., effects of carcionogens, various aspects of experimental clinical chemotherapy, and analyses of cancer statistics). Shimkin was born in Siberia in 1912 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1928. After earning a medical degree in 1936 from the University of California, San Francisco, Shimkin held successive posts with the United States Public Health Service, the National Cancer Institute, Temple University and UC, San Diego.

Biography

Michael Boris Shimkin (1912-1989), the son of Boris M. and Lydia J. Shimkin, was born in Siberia, immigrated to the United States in 1921, and became a U.S. citizen in 1928.

As an editor of two of the cancer research community's major journals, a US representative for US/USSR medical exchanges, and a popularizer and historian of cancer research, Shimkin was a key spokesperson for cancer researchers throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The pioneering clinical and experimental research he conducted during the 1940s and '50s is considered by some cancer researchers today to have determined the subsequent path of cancer research within the United States. During his fifty-year career, Shimkin published over 300 articles representing clinical and laboratory research on tumors in mice, the effects of carcinogens, various aspects of experimental clinical chemotherapy, and analyses of cancer statistics. He also wrote two books on the history of the study of cancer from ancient times to the present (SCIENCE AND CANCER, revised three times between 1964 and 1980, and CONTRARY TO NATURE, 1977).

Shimkin graduated from the University of California, San Francisco Medical School in 1936. He had barely begun his medical career with the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) before the U.S. entered World War II, and he fulfilled his military service as a public health officer for the USPHS. In 1943, Shimkin was selected to be part of the Office of Scientific Research and Development's planned medical exchange with the USSR. Shimkin chronicled his experiences as a member of this and other US medical exchanges with the USSR between 1942 and 1962 in an article, "Road to Oz: A Personal Account of Some US-USSR Medical Exchanges and Contacts, 1942-1962." In 1944-1945, he was appointed by the Public Health Service to serve in the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's (UNRRA) European recovery program. On the basis of personal observation, he wrote reports on the health conditions of the concentration camps and their inmates liberated by the Allies, as well as documented the health status of civilian communities. In 1946, the USPHS sent Shimkin to Liberia to review the agency's medical mission there. Shimkin wrote a report briefly reviewing the history of American interests in Liberia as well as assaying the country's public health situation and outlining a three-year plan to be implemented by the agency's medical mission in Liberia.

After the war, Shimkin returned to the laboratory to resume his experimental research on cancer, where he began pioneering work in the clinical study of cancer. In 1947, the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute (NCI) appointed Shimkin to establish the Laboratory for Experimental Oncology (LEO) at the UC-San Francisco Medical School. The laboratory was housed at the Laguna Honda Home in San Francisco. Shimkin reviewed the history and research of the laboratory in a retrospective article.

The LEO was unusual in its combination of clinical and laboratory research in a single setting. Research focused on testing the effects of chemotherapeutic, radiation and surgical treatment on both mice and humans. The use of terminally ill human subjects, albeit volunteers, in experimental research caused some distress. Prompted by his anxiety in this regard, Shimkin organized a symposium on the use of human subjects. At the request of NIH, Shimkin deliberately failed to disclose his affiliation with the agency when he co-authored a report of the results in SCIENCE magazine in 1953. After NCI established its own clinical research hospital in Bethesda, the LEO was closed (1954) and Shimkin returned to Maryland to head NCI's Biometry and Epidemiology Division.

At NCI headquarters, he participated in writing the "Joint Report of the Study Group on Smoking and Health" (1957), a position paper critical in effecting the popular acceptance of the link between smoking and lung cancer. In his role as chief of two research divisions at the NCI during the 1950s and 1960s he determined the research agenda and controlled up to $5 million in annual research funds. His analysis of cancer statistics at this time caused him to be skeptical about the advantages of radical mastectomies; he strove to popularize less radical surgery and the early detection of breast cancer.

After 1963, Shimkin's research activity was more fully based in academia, first at Temple University and later at UCSD. He maintained his ties with the federal government, however, by serving as a consultant for the NCI until his death. He also worked for other agencies, including the National Research Council (1963-67) and, during 1970-1971, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture. When he joined Temple University in 1963, he began a long association with the journal CANCER RESEARCH, serving six years as editor and another twenty as associate editor. He left Temple in 1969 to join the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, where he co-ordinated the California Department of Public Health's Regional Medical Program (RMP) for San Diego and Imperial counties. The RMP was dissolved in 1973 and Shimkin returned to epidemiology and laboratory study. As a member of the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Shimkin taught courses in epidemiology and clinical research. He received grants from the NCI to conduct studies of tumors in mice, as well as to write a history of the study of cancer (CONTRARY TO NATURE, 1977). Shimkin became emeritus professor at UCSD in 1980 and died in 1989.