ABSTRACT
Like many other techniques for identifying and tracking molecular agents, radioimmunoassays rely on radioisotopes – unstable variants of chemical elements that give off detectable radiation as they decay – to label molecules of interest. e widespread availability of radioisotopes after World War II was facilitated by the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which managed the massive infrastructure of the American bomb project. e Atomic Energy Act of charged the AEC with pursuing and promoting the civilian benefits of the atomic age. Among the ‘medical dividends’ of the atom were radioactive isotopes mass-produced in the government’s nuclear reactors.4 e AEC made these radioisotopes available to scientists and physicians and encouraged their use through a combination of training programmes, subsidies, and incentives to companies to produce laboratory equipment and reagents. As part of this enterprise, the AEC began supplying radioisotopes for clinical research and therapy to Veterans Administration (VA) Hospitals. One of the first such units was established at the VA Hospital in the Bronx, New York, where Rosalyn Yalow, a nuclear physicist, and Solomon Berson, an MD, developed the radioimmunoassay technique. Hence the emergence and early history of radioimmunoassay manifest the priorities and resources of the atomic age.
