Ruth Hubbard has not alwaysstood outside science looking in.She was once on the inside look-

ing around, a biologist exploring the vi-sual system of frogs, cattle and squid.But as she sits in the sun-Þlled, green-hued closed porch of her home inWoods Hole, Mass., and revisits herpast, it seems unlikely that she couldhave become anything other than ascrutinizer of science, an advocate andwriter. Hubbard, initially famous for herbiochemical forays, is now principallyknown for her work on womenÕs health,on the position of women in academiaand research and, more recently, onthe tangled ethics of gene therapy andgenetic testing.

Just as being a member of the clubappears to have given Hubbard insightinto the scientiÞc establishment, so hasbeing a woman and Jewish seeming-ly given her an outsiderÕs perspective.From somewhere between those twoworlds, Hubbard lobs what several ofher colleagues describe as stinging crit-icism about how science Þts, or doesnot Þt, into society.

Hubbard was born in Vienna to twodoctors. Her family was among the Þrstto leave Austria several months afterthe Nazi invasion in 1938, when Hub-bard was 14. With their possessions butno money, they settled in Boston, whereher father reestablished his practice.Hubbard pursued medicine as an under-graduate at RadcliÝe College, becauseÒeveryone around me was a doctor.Ó

For a brief time she considered study-ing philosophy and physics. ÒNo onesaid, ÔDo not go into physics,Õ but in thephysics course I took there were 350men and I and another woman. So youknow, there are messages,Ó she sayslaughing, drawing one foot up underher. Hubbard moves and speaks with acertain languor, even though her voiceis studied and strong and her opinionsunmistakable. Her writing has the samesteady directnessÑwhich has made hermany books widely accessible. ÒMindyou, I am not pretending that I was as-tute enough to pick up the cues in anovert form,Ó she continues. ÒIf you hadasked me why there were so few womenin this physics course, I guess I wouldhave said because they were not goodenough. I did not have any feminist con-sciousness about these matters.Ó Thatawareness was to come later.

Her college years coincided withWorld War II, and Hubbard wanted todo something for the Allied eÝort. Shewent to work on infrared vision withGeorge Wald at Harvard University un-til she moved down to Tennessee for ashort time, where her Þrst husband, aG.I., had been stationed. She remem-bers their Chattanooga sojourn as bi-zarre. Soldiers began returning home,and there, in the Deep South, Òpeoplewere wondering if there was going tobe civil war now that black men hadbeen taught to shoot white men.Ó

Hubbard soon returned to the morefamiliar terrain of the Northeast, and in1946 went back to RadcliÝe to earn adoctorate in biology. She continued towork in WaldÕs laboratory, investigatingvision. SpeciÞcally, Hubbard studied thearchitecture of visual pigments such asrhodopsin, a molecule that responds tolight. ÒEveryone knew that vitamin A wasinvolved, but we found that it came indiÝerent shapes and that only one ofthose can be used to form rhodopsin,Óshe explains. ÒThen we found that whatlight, in fact, does is change the shapeof visual pigments, and that initiates allthe changes that lead to electrical charg-esÓ and, ultimately, to neurotransmis-sion. (WaldÑwhom Hubbard later mar-riedÑreceived the Nobel Prize in Medi-cine in 1967 for the laboratoryÕs workon vision.)

Although Hubbard says she loved theresearch, her interests began to shifttoward Òthe whole issue of social rele-vance that was part of the Vietnam War:What were we doing and why, and whatgood was it for anybody anyway?Ó Shewas further disconcerted by one, pivot-al aspect of her studies. ÒAt that point Iwas working with squid, and I thinksquid are the most beautiful animals inthe world. And it just began to botherme. I began to have the feeling thatnothing I could Þnd out was worth kill-ing another squid.Ó

At about this timeÑafter almost 20years of vision-related experimenta-tionÑHubbard recalls, ÒThe womenÕsmovement sort of hit me over the head.ÓIn the late 1960s, she was asked to givea talk at an American Association forthe Advancement of Science meetingabout being a female scientist. For add-ed material, she interviewed other fe-male scientists and discovered thatthere were more than subtle similarities

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN June 1995 49

Turning the Inside Out

PROFILE: RUTH HUBBARD

Copyright 1995 Scientific American, Inc.

in their experience: ÒI donÕt know wheth-er any of us, until that moment, realizedthat we were all accomplished and wereall recognized in our Þelds but thatnone of us had real jobs.Ó Every womanin what became an ongoing, informaldiscussion group was ÒoÝ-ladder,Ó thatis, an associate, a lecturer, an assistant.

Hubbard simultaneously joined anorganization at Harvard that petitionedthe university to examine the status offaculty women. As a result, the univer-sity began, albeit slowly, to oÝer wom-en tenure-track positions. In 1973 Hub-bard became the Þrst woman to receivetenure in the sciences at Harvard. Shecontinued to lecture on photochemistrybut soon added courses on health andwomenÕs issuesÑa combina-tion she taught until she be-came professor emerita Þveyears ago.

Despite the public attentionthat has been given to hurdlesfaced by women professional-ly, Hubbard claims the situa-tion is not much improved.According to the National Sci-ence FoundationÕs most recentestimate, only 18.8 percent ofemployed U.S. scientists andengineers are women; althoughopinions vary greatly, manyfemale researchers say theyexperience direct discrimina-tion from male colleagues ormore subtle dissuasion fromÞelds such as physics.

Nor has the workplace beenreconÞgured so as to accom-modate both sexes. ÒThe focusis on this as a womanÕs prob-lem rather than as a problemfor society, which has a verylimited view of the participa-tion of men in family life. Imean it is always phrased interms of how are women goingto be able to structure workand family, as though this werenot an issue for men at all,Ó Hubbardobserves.

Hubbard says she felt no compunc-tion about devoting herself to herworkÑand raising two children. ÒI grewup in central Europe, in Austria, in a so-ciety in which women of my class wereexpected to be professionals and en-trust the care of their children to otherwomen. So I did not have any majoremotional barriers to cross over what Iwas doing to my children,Ó she states.

Hubbard has criticized science forexcluding women and for being struc-tured around a view of society deter-mined only by European and Americanmen. This notion has been explored byseveral feminist thinkers who question

the culture of scienceÑlooking at howgirls and boys are socialized differentlyfrom the outset, at the positions thatmen reach in the hierarchy as opposedto women. Their writingsÑHubbardÕsThe Politics of WomenÕs Biology, amongthemÑhave argued that feminist theoryenriches science by raising questionsabout point of view or bias. The result-ing dialogue, according to Hubbard, canonly make science more egalitarian.

This vision of equality is central toHubbardÕs current preoccupation withgenetics and molecular biology. Shecautions that society is undergoingÒgenomania,Ó oversimplifying scienceand assigning every trait, including be-haviors, a genetic cause. Hubbard re-

views the implications of this trend inExploding the Gene Myth, which she co-authored with her son, Elijah Wald, andwhich was published two years ago, justbefore the genes-as-destiny argument ofThe Bell Curve swept the nation again.(As for the late Richard J. Herrnstein,who was also at Harvard, ÒheÕs sayingthe same things he was saying in the1970s,Ó Hubbard comments. ÒItÕs justwarmed-over racism.Ó)

Hubbard argues that the search toidentify all genes, including those fordiseasesÑthe $3-billion travail of theHuman Genome ProjectÑwill necessi-tate ethical choices that society and par-ticularly scientists are not confrontingwith enough energy. These quandaries

include potential abuse by insurers,who may deny coverage because of ge-netic conditions, as well as the abilityto craft custom-made embryos. ÒI sus-pect I came to this by virtue of being aHitler refugee and being interested ineugenics and then in the revival of eu-genics and the race and IQ debate inthe 1960s and early 1970s,Ó she muses.

Further, Hubbard maintains that sci-ence is being presented in terms thatobscure the truth. By saying, for in-stance, that a gene has been found forbreast cancer, researchers obfuscate in-teractions between many biological fac-tors, including genes, and the environ-ment. As she painstakingly explains, agene is only a piece of DNAÑit rarely

represents a one-to-one link toa disease. Knowledge may notbe helpful if a patient cannotdo anything with it. ÒYou aretelling somebody that you havea greater than average tenden-cy to get cancer, and somehowit is assumed that this predic-tion in itself somehow func-tions as prevention,Ó she says.

The choices made as a resultof such knowledgeÑhoweverincomplete it may beÑmay re-visit eugenics. One of her favor-ite examples is that of Hunting-tonÕs disease: What if parentsdecide not to bring to term a fe-tus that tested positive for thedisease, which often strikes latein life? Society would have beendenied a talent such as WoodyGuthrie, Hubbard warns. ÒIhave gone out on a limb onthis by saying that most peoplein our culture are very judg-mental about women who ter-minate a pregnancy because ofsex. How different is that fromterminating a pregnancy be-cause of Down syndrome?Óshe asks. And when people useeconomic justiÞcation: ÒIt is

very much like what the Nazis were do-ing when they decided it was cheaperto kill mentally ill people and retardedchildren than to care for them.Ó

Some of HubbardÕs fears about ethi-cal considerations may be borne out.Although the Working Group on theEthical, Legal and Social Implications ofthe Human Genome Project can grapplewith complex issues in meetings, it hasno enforcement powers, no means ofestablishing policy.

Hubbard, meanwhile, refuses to waitand see. And on her porchÑwhichseems simultaneously indoors and outamid the overgrown, knotted wetlandthat surrounds the houseÑthere isroom to move. ÑMarguerite Holloway

50 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN June 1995

RUTH HUBBARD scrutinizes science in society.

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