From The New England Journal of Medicine
Karen Rader has written a valuable book. The story is that of inbred mice -- their development, their adoption as the favored organism of mammalian geneticists, and the distribution system that arose to provide the research community with a variety of strains and mutants. It is also very much the story of one man and one institution. The man was Clarence Cook "Prexy" Little, who initiated the development of inbred mice in 1909 while working as an undergraduate at Harvard's Bussey Institution. Later, Little's passionate drive and influence were instrumental in gaining acceptance of genetically standardized mouse models. The Jackson Laboratory, which Little founded, became the research world's central repository and distribution center for inbred and mutant mice. The story is also very much about the intertwining of the evolution of inbred mice and cancer research during the first half of the 20th century. (Figure) For Rader, this story became a case history for evaluating the effects that social factors have had on research processes and necessities. Those topics include private versus governmental financing of research, public influences on the choice of research priorities, the public's relative acceptance of alternative animal models (rodents are all right; dogs and cats are not), and the influence of large-scale government initiatives, particularly those involved in screening anticancer drugs and assessing the genetic hazards of radiation. Rader's expressed goal was to describe "the means by which scientists developed JAX mice into standard mammalian research organisms not just through the eyes of researchers doing experiments in laboratories, but through their encounters with politicians and policymakers of the fledgling national system of biomedical research emerging in this period." At this effort, she succeeds admirably; less convincing is her conclusion that "to understand how broader cultural imperatives shaped the practical nature of standardization in research, and vice versa, is to understand the social and scientific meaning of biology in twentieth-century American life." Surely, the "meaning" of biology lies in its discoveries, not in the technical and political struggles attending the acceptance of new forms of research technology. Even a partial list of those discoveries suffices: insulin, penicillin, BRCA1, Dolly, the human genome sequence. One hopes that Rader will write a sequel; her research has been painstakingly detailed and cogently analyzed, and we deserve to see her carry the story beyond 1955. She ends her saga before the expansion of mammalian genetics beyond the problem of cancer and into new areas of research and well before the revolution in molecular genetics that brought mice front and center in our efforts to understand human biology and pathophysiology. These advances created a crisis in the very distribution system Rader describes, as new genetic strategies generated new types of resources (such as recombinant inbred lines), genetic engineering created thousands of new transgenic and gene-knockout strains, high-throughput mutagenesis programs created hundreds of new mutants, and new genetic-marker systems made it possible to identify the multiple genes underlying genetically complex, common diseases. And as time passed, distribution problems were exacerbated by an increasing concern about preventing infectious agents from spreading between colonies. For the historian of science, one remaining question concerns the extent to which our present policymakers were able to draw on the lessons of the past in addressing these current issues and the extent to which they reinvented solutions to past problems. The answer to that question, and the why of the answer, may ultimately be the most valuable insight this case history has to offer.
Kenneth Paigen, Ph.D.Copyright © 2004 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
Review
Extremely well written and enjoyable to read. . . . The study of human diseases using standardized animal models has now become routine practice, but its acceptability was established in large part through the use of inbred mice, as Rader convincingly argues. (Rachel A. Ankeny
American Scientist )
A brilliant synthesis of scientific, intellectual, and cultural history. Its subject matter is new, and the book's ultimate impact on scientific history will be significant. The product of ten years of research and writing, the tome is polished, cogent, and magnificently documented. (
Choice )
Karen Rader has written an insightful and, at times, humorous chronological history of the famous Jax mice and their unflagging promoter, C.C. Little. . . . Rader beautifully illustrates the give and take between the scientific community and the general society. (
Biology Digest )
In this compelling historical analysis, Karen Rader shows how the common mouse (Mus musculus) was transformed into a commodity, manufactured, and marketed not only to American research laboratories, but to politicians, health policy makers, and the members of the general public as well. (Susan E. Lederer
Journal of the History of Biology )
Rader's carefully researched and well-produced book will be indispensable reading for everyone interested in the laboratory mouse and more generally in the tools and practices of twentieth-century biomedicine. (
aya de Chadarevian,"Journal of the History of medicine and Allied Sciences )
