Transcript:

[Introduction]

Welcome and hello! In this episode, we discuss our bodies and their ability to adjust to new environments.

Have you ever been to a place and wondered to yourself, “How can anyone bear to live here?” Or maybe you felt the opposite and thought, “Wow, I can live here forever.”

Well, according to my husband, Denver, Colorado is apparently the best place to live in America. This is if the only criterion for judging is the weather. My husband was born and raised in Denver and absolutely cannot stand the heat. Whenever he visited me in Atlanta, Georgia during the summer, he would always comment on just how hot it is. And I don’t disagree with him there. Atlanta is much warmer than Denver.

But I never really thought about the effects of altitude on our bodies until I visited him in Denver. When I visited Denver for the first time, I had a horrible headache during the first few days, and I felt unusually tired for almost an entire week. I learned from locals there that I may have been suffering from what’s called altitude sickness. Denver is nicknamed the Mile High City because it stands exactly one mile above sea level. Some people speculate that the city’s altitude is the reason why the Denver Broncos does so well against other football teams if games are held on home turf. Athletes who live and train in Colorado have bodies that are just better adjusted to the effects of the altitude.

Our bodies are amazing and great at adapting to things they aren’t used to. Athletes are perfect examples of showing how our bodies can be trained to do so many physically demanding and impressive things. But what about people who seem to be just born naturals at withstanding extreme environments?

If you know anything about mountain climbing in the Himalayas, you are probably familiar with the Sherpa population. The Sherpas are a Nepali ethnic group who have lived in the Himalayas for generations. They are world-famous for their seemingly superhuman abilities to live and work at high altitudes. Since the 19th century, European explorers hired Sherpas to carry their gear up Mount Everest. And today, Sherpa mountaineers are the first ones to climb Mount Everest each season. They are the first ones to go up the mountain so that they can place ladders and ropes for later climbers. Quite the dangerous job, actually.

In recent years, scientists have been interested in seeing if the key to the Sherpas’ superhuman strength could be found in their bodies. One team of scientists from the University of Cambridge collected blood and muscle samples from the Sherpas and concluded that the Sherpas have a genetic advantage that allows them to be more efficient at using oxygen and producing energy.

Such efforts to understand the human body’s ability to live in very hot, very cold, or very high places is not new. In this episode, we will explore acclimatization studies on human bodies during the years after the end of World War II. Acclimatization is a fancy word to describe the process by which bodies adjust to short-term environmental changes—like changes in altitude, temperature, and humidity.

After the end of World War II, there was much anxiety about nuclear apocalypse and another global war. These anxieties prompted great military and scientific interest in extreme environments—meaning, the hottest, coldest, and highest points on the earth’s surface. For the U.S., the government became very interested in the question of what the perfect Cold War soldier’s body would be like. So in other words, what kind of body could fight in the Cold War against the Russians? To answer these questions, the U.S. looked to the Northern Pole and its indigenous people. Perhaps indigenous peoples’ bodies and their cultures were the key to unlocking the secrets of surviving in extreme environments. So obviously, there are lots of racial assumptions built into acclimatization studies. Our goal here is to unpack some of these racial undercurrents and explore the history of America’s experiments with extreme environments during the Cold War.

 

[Acclimatization and Race in the 18th and 19th Centuries]

But first, let’s briefly consider how people thought about climates, places, and race before the 20th century.

Most ancient and early modern theories about disease included an assumption that the environment matters to human health and well-being. Such theories include the Greek humors and the notion of miasmas. Thus, not only were some places considered specifically healthy or unhealthy, but medical theories also claimed that the environment had a direct effect on the individual. The environment was thought to shape the body and mind and make the person susceptible to certain sicknesses and personality traits.

These ideas never really went away. The belief that the environment mattered in how someone experienced illness was also incredibly important during the age of empires. By the early 18th century, the global traffic of human bodies and material objects became crucially important for political and economic reasons to European empires. This was the heyday of colonialism. Europe is generally characterized by a temperate climate. Temperate climates experience four seasons, and the summers and winters are not considered “extreme.” If you live in the U.S., most of the U.S. is also considered to be temperate. So this might help you visualize what Europe’s climate is like.

Because Europeans looked to the Americas, Africa, India, and other tropical areas to fulfill the promises of colonialism, it was important to address two questions: one, can European bodies survive in non-temperate climates, and two, can useful plants and animals from these non-temperate regions be successfully grown in Europe and her colonies? Acclimatization was therefore a prime example of a colonial science.

Europeans were initially optimistic. The scientific consensus in Europe toward the end of the 18th century was largely that European bodies could successfully thrive in non-temperate environments. Likewise, it was believed that it would be possible to acclimatize tropical plants and animals to climates similar to Europe.

However, travelers who left Europe encountered a peculiar medical issue: why did they become sick when they arrived, and if they recovered, why did they never become so sick again? The widely accepted answer at the time was that newcomers had to become “seasoned to the climate.” The idea of being seasoned to a place meant that newcomers had to adjust to a new place. A seasoning sickness was therefore seen as a rite of passage. You only had to experience it once to get your body adjusted to the new environment. This is because 18th century travelers, doctors, soldiers, and sailors noticed that seasoning did not affect native populations or those who had already spent a lot of time in a particular place. It was only when these individuals left for another place that they were considered newcomers and fell ill. If we follow this logic, the altitude sickness I experienced during my very first trip to Denver was a sort of seasoning sickness because I was not used to that environment.

Despite the notion of seasoning sickness, Europeans were generally optimistic about acclimatization until the end of the 18th century. However, this optimism faded during the course of the 19th century. This was partially due to economic and military setbacks and disease outbreaks. The other major reason is due to scientific racism.

In the 19th century, new ideas about racial fixedness and inferiority rose in response to the growing abolitionist movement. Those who were pro-slavery used race to justify differences. They argued that African bodies were naturally more pain tolerant than European bodies. They also argued that Africans’ darker skin was proof that they were biologically better-suited to work in warm climates. This scientific racism portrayed Africans as having an innate capacity for labor that made it impossible for Europeans to take their place.

Thus, notions of racial difference are more than skin deep and have long been tied to ideas about the relationship between bodies and environments.

 

[Arctic Laboratories and the Cold War]

Now back to the Cold War…

So for the remainder of this episode, we will talk about the enormous military and scientific investment made into Alaska at the end of World War II.

As mentioned before, the U.S. saw the Arctic as a potential theater for war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. military feared that its forces would be at a significant disadvantage because of the weather conditions of the North. Alaska basically became a natural laboratory of sorts for the armed forces. It was a giant laboratory to study how humans can survive—and succeed—in the extreme cold.

At the end of World War II, Alaska was still a territory and not a state quite yet. Alaska would become the 49th state of America on January 3, 1959, but even this decision was highly debated. The greatest concern was the issue of national security. Initially, President Dwight Eisenhower was reluctant to grant statehood to Alaska because the amount of public land in the territory. 99 percent of the territory was owned by the federal government, and if Alaska were to become a state, the federal government would have to transfer a lot of these lands to the state government. Ultimately, a compromise was made, and Alaska was granted statehood. This ensured that there would be a permanent military defense in the Far North.

So right after the end of World War II, the U.S. government established a bunch of new military bases and research labs in Alaska.

A lasting legacy of World War II and the Manhattan Project is how science research in America came to be funded immensely by the government and the military. The Manhattan Project was thought by the US government to be so effective because of immense military funding. This funding allowed scientists to work collaboratively on a scale larger than ever before.

The research conducted in Alaska was a product of this new funding structure. There, scientists funded by organizations like the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, or the National Academy of Sciences worked on projects across a variety of disciplines. However they all had the shared goal of inventing technologies that would help soldiers survive the cold.

In 1947, the Navy’s Office of Naval Research established the Arctic Research Laboratory in Point Barrow, which was at the northernmost tip of Alaska. This remote facility was focused mostly on studying non-human organisms to understand adaptation to cold. Researchers here studied mammals, birds, insects, aquatic invertebrates, and even mosses and lichens to study adaptation to the cold.

During this time period, a set of rules in ecology called Bergmann’s Rule and Allen’s Rule played a large role in discussions about adaptation, variation, and geography. Bergmann’s Rule states that warm-blooded animals in colder climates have larger bodies. It was thought that larger bodies would minimize heat loss because they would have a smaller surface area to volume ratio compared to smaller animals. Bergmann’s rule was thought to explain why polar bears are so much bigger than other bear species. Allen’s rule states that warm-blooded animals in colder climates have shorter limbs because shorter limbs meant less surface area and thus the animal would conserve heat better. Allen’s rule was thought to be reason why rabbits in the arctic have smaller ears and shorter limbs than ones who live in deserts. Desert hares tended to have really long ears and long legs. These generalizations worked for a lot of animal species, and some scientists thought that these rules could be applied to humans. Such reasoning was often used as scientific proof for racial differences.

However, some researchers at this lab, namely two physiologists named Laurence Irving and Pete Scholander, were highly critical of Bergmann’s Rule and Allen’s Rule. Irving and Scholander also believed that these rules did not necessarily apply to humans. For example, Scholander argued that there was no evidence that Alaskan indigenous people had shorter limbs relative to their body size compared to other populations. Both Scholander and Irving were interested in the question of thermoregulation in humans. However, they believed that the success of indigenous arctic people in adapting to cold climates was mostly due to cultural reasons than biological ones. They thought that indigenous people conquered the arctic due to their ingenuity in creating warm clothing and shelter. Irving and Scholander saw all warm-blooded animals as active and adaptable agents that relied on both physiology and behavior to regulate their internal body temperatures.

Nonetheless, the extent to which adaptations reflected racial characteristics or were the product of physiological acclimatization remained an open question.

The Arctic Research Laboratory in Point Barrow targeted non-human animals in their studies, but it had an eye on the broader question of how humans could survive in the difficult and extreme conditions of the North. Many of the studies conducted at other labs in Alaska operated under the assumption that there was a biological basis for human races.

In 1947, which was the same year that the Navy opened the Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, the US Air Force opened the Arctic Aeromedical [sic] Laboratory (I said “library” instead of “laboratory”) just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The group at this Air Force lab consisted of about 60 military and civilian researchers. They were charged with the task of finding the best way to wage warfare in the extreme cold.

Projects from this lab included making clothing suited for cold weather. One invention was called the “walk-around sleeping bag.” Yes, that’s what it was really called. And as its name states, this was basically a giant sleeping bag you can wear and walk around in—kind of like a cross between a Snuggie and a giant parka.

Other studies looked at the body structure and function of bears, ground squirrels, and other hibernating animals. So there were some overlaps with the studies conducted by the Navy’s lab in Point Barrow.

However, the most controversial studies involved studying indigenous populations in Alaska.
By studying indigenous bodies and their cultures, could the military find ways for white soldiers to adapt to the cold better? And also, if indigenous people have successfully adapted to the harsh Alaskan climate, could white American soldiers learn to do the same?

Scientists often looked to the lifestyles and technologies of Arctic peoples for tips on surviving in the cold. Researchers borrowed techniques in building shelters to withstand wind, wet, or cold, as well as designing sleds, and making clothing. Western scientists had a tendency to erase indigenous ingenuity by presenting these ideas as basic concepts that have been “improved” by Western scientific principles. Historian Vanessa Heggie calls these instances as examples of bioprospecting. She uses this term to describe how local knowledge became adopted and appropriated into Western scientific theory and practice.

In addition to appropriation of indigenous knowledge, the U.S. government also conducted experiments directly on indigenous bodies. In 1950, the U.S. military hired Kaare Rodahl, a prominent Norwegian doctor who specialized in physiology and nutrition. Rodahl was tasked to head a research team at the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory to study indigenous Alaskans. Rodahl hypothesized that indigenous people in Alaska were acclimatized to the Arctic environment because they had been living there for generations and generations. Thus, many of the studies Rodahl and his team carried out focused on comparing non-white bodies to white bodies. And these studies assumed that the white body was the racial norm to differentiate indigenous bodies from.

By 1952, Rodahl’s team concluded that there were no racial differences between indigenous bodies and white bodies in terms of body heat production. But this result did not convince Rodahl or his colleagues to abandon racial categories or the research methods that they shaped. Alaska’s military scientists thus persisted in categorizing Alaskan natives as fundamentally Other.

Perhaps the most controversial experiment that came out of the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory was when researchers fed Alaskan Natives with radioactive drugs. Rodahl and his team gave pills containing a radioactive isotope of iodine called iodine-131 to Alaskan Natives, The researchers measured the drugs’ effect on their thyroid glands. The thyroid was chosen because other research, including some conducted at the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, suggested that there was a correlation between severe cold and increased thyroid activity in animals. This research also suggested that the thyroid was somehow involved in human acclimatization to the cold. Thus, researchers believed that the thyroid gland might some clue as to how indigenous people in Alaska could survive so well during intensely cold arctic winters.

After giving these radioactive drugs to the subjects, researchers analyzed the levels of iodine-131 in their blood, saliva, thyroid, and urine. The result was disappointing. Rodahl concluded from the results that the thyroid does not play a significant role in human acclimatization to the arctic. This conclusion did not support the findings of earlier studies however and was subsequently refuted by other researchers.

In addition to the racial assumptions embedded in these studies, the iodine experiments were deeply problematic from the point-of-view of medical ethics.

The iodine-131 experiments were performed without adequate consent from the Alaska Native test subjects. Some subjects believed that the drugs they received were medical treatments. Others believed that they were participating in a nutrition study. Rodahl himself later admitted that when he sought test subjects, he did not use the word “radioactive” in describing the experiments to his prospective subjects. It was clear that indigenous subjects were not aware that they were ingesting radioactive tracers when they gave the go-ahead to the Air Force researchers.

Countless features of the US military’s scientific focus on Alaska saw parallels elsewhere in Cold War America. Most significantly, these included military involvement in scientific research, the militarization of civilians and their environment, and the justifications of unethical human experimental practices.

 

[Concluding Remarks]

Alaska was not the only place during the Cold War where government-funded scientists studied indigenous populations to understand the human body’s ability to adapt to challenging environments. The Space Race between America the Soviet Union was a major part of the Cold War. Just as how Alaska was seen as a place of strategic importance in the battle against the Soviets, space was also in many ways seen as a potential battleground.

At around the same time as the iodine-131 experiments, the U.S. Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine forged a partnership with physiologists at the Institute for Andean Biology in Lima, Peru. The Air Force was interested in sending humans to outer space.

So in exchange for grant money and expensive equipment, Peruvian scientists allowed Air Force scientists to perform risky experiments on indigenous miners. These miners worked in high-altitudes and were thought to have bodies specially adapted to labor in low-pressure environments. Air Force scientists believed that the bodies of Peruvian miners held clues to conditioning future astronauts to ultra-thin atmospheres.

A former Nazi doctor and mountaineer named Bruno Balke led many of the experiments on indigenous miners. Balke’s own background as a mountaineer led him to see the cold as a foe that could be resisted through rigorous physical training. For Balke, America’s Cold Warriors needed to be toughened up to endure the literal cold.

Starting in 1954, Balke compared the performance of Peruvian miners in pressure chambers to his own efforts to acclimatize to the altitude in the Andes. These research efforts incorporated practices and assumptions that were similar to Kaare Rodahl’s in Alaska. Balke made racialized comparisons between white bodies and the bodies of indigenous peoples. In these cases, white bodies were seen as the control variable or the norm to be compared to.

Even Balke’s Peruvian hosts at the Institute for Andean Biology promoted the indigenous miners as examples of a pre-colonial “Andean Man.” Thus, the miners were seen as a sort of exceptional human unique to the region. For Balke, he hoped to appropriate the unique physiology of the Peruvian miners to create a new kind of military “superman.”

It is evident from the cases in Alaska and in Peru I that acclimatization studies have deep colonial roots and are [sic] embedded in troubling assumptions about race. The very first story I talked about regarding the Sherpas in the Himalayas also have many overlaps with these earlier cases.

Even though the term acclimatization is used to refer to short-term changes to the environment, theories of acclimatization get conflated with more long-term evolutionary explanations for racial differences. Thus, there are many lingering questions about ethics in these types of studies. How do we get ethical approval for such experiments? Who are the sort of people doing this kind of work? And how can we talk about diverse groups of people without essentializing them or racializing them?

These are difficult questions without easy answers, but the hope is that sharing these stories about the cold—about cold bodies, and about cold places—will allow us to imagine and realize more ethical presents and futures.

 

Cited Works and Further Reading:

1. Bhandari, Sushil, and Gianpiero Cavalleri. “Population History and Altitude-Related Adaptation in the Sherpa.” Frontiers in Physiology 10 (2019): https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.01116/full.

2. Bimm, Jordan. “Anticipating the Astronaut: Subject Formation in Early American Space Medicine, 1949-1959.” PhD dissertation. York University, 2018.

3. Clements, Philip W. Science in an Extreme Environment: The 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018.

4. Elliott, Kamilla. Theorizing Adaptation. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

5. Farish, Matthew. “The Lab and the Land: Overcoming the Arctic in Cold War Alaska.” Isis 104, no. 1 (2013): 1-29.

6. Gunga, Hanns-Christian. Human Physiology in Extreme Environments. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2014.

7. Hagen, Joel B. “Bergmann’s Rule, Adaptation, and Thermoregulation in Arctic Animals: Conflicting Perspectives from Physiology, Evolutionary Biology, and Physical Anthropology after World War II.” Journal of the History of Biology 52, no. 2 (2017): 235-265.

8. Hagen, Joel B. Life Out of Balance: Homeostasis and Adaptation in a Darwinian World. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2021.

9. Heggie, Vanessa. Higher and Colder: A History of Extreme Physiology and Exploration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.

10. Monge, Carlos. Acclimatization in the Andes. Historical Confirmations of “Climatic Aggression” in the Development of Andean Man.” Translated by Donald F. Brown. Introduction by Isaiah Bowman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1948.

11. Seth, Suman. Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

12. Tracy, Sarah W. “The Physiology of Extremes: Ancel Keys and the International High Altitude Expedition of 1935.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 86, no. 4 (2012): 627–660.

13. Whitehead, John. “Alaska and Hawai’i: The Cold War States.” In The Cold War American West, 1945–1989. Edited by Kevin J. Fernlund. Albuquerque: Univ. New Mexico Press, 1998.