ABSTRACT
I have recently read a book about the 20th century history of immunotherapies to cure cancer. Nowadays immunology provides some of the most important conceptual and medicinal means to treat cancer and other diseases, but how it has become so is a complicated twisted story, populated by fads and subsequent disillusions as well as huge financial investments intermingling successes and fiascoes. Drugs that produced stunning cures subsequently emerged as of uncertain therapeutic value, either because of their toxicity, unpredictable effects, or extravagant cost. Remedies that appeared almost magical in laboratory animals did not work with humans. As a result, the field grew cautious. These days it is common that cautionary remarks, caveats, and statements of uncertainty surround the report of a new immunotherapy even if the experimental results were “spectacular.” There is an analogy between the history of the idea of activating the immune system to combat cancerous cells and of the idea of learning through open-ended projects chosen and shaped by the learners, the latter entailing the creation of supportive environments in which learners control their own time and activities and knowledgeable teachers focus their energies in helping students to develop their own initiatives. The analogy has two elements: 1. Both ideas are consequential, valuable, and inspiring; and 2. in social practice both ideas are extraordinarily complex, uneven in how individuals react to it, and full of unanticipated secondary complications.
