Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (review)

Karen Rader's book is an outstanding contribution to the burgeoning field of "animal studies." This thoroughly researched volume details the institutional, social, and political circumstances surrounding the adoption of inbred mice as the experimental animal of choice in the first half of the twentieth century. The introductory chapter, in particular, offers a magisterial analysis of the choice of the mouse as an experimental animal. Rader's focus is on the United States and on genetics research; other research sites, such as Europe, and other uses for experimental mice, such as infectious-disease research, are mentioned little or not at all. The tight focus of this study is part of its value, but it is important to note that Rader does not tell the whole story of the use of mice in research, which would indeed require a volume many times the size of this one.

Within these boundaries, Rader tells a fascinating story, centered on the career of Clarence Cook Little and the Jackson Laboratory. Founded in 1929 as a research institute, the Jackson Lab became the main supplier of experimental mice to institutions across the United States by 1950. The intertwined stories of the early years of cancer research and the development of genetics as a discipline are engagingly told, and the focus on Little and his work in developing inbred mice personalizes the institutional and political struggles surrounding the birth of "big science." It is salutary to be reminded of the tenuous nature of research funding in the era before the NSF and the NIH, when a patronage system not unlike that of the Renaissance operated by means of personal contacts. The Boston Brahmin Little was well situated to exploit the foundations and private individuals who funded his research and that of the Jackson Lab in the 1920s and 1930s. Little's personality and social standing helped to "sell" genetic arguments for cancer causation, and the importance of inbred mice in determining these causes, as much as did his actual research results.

The Depression drastically reduced most of these sources of funds and forced Little to commercialize the production of inbred mice at the Jackson Lab—to sell mice that had previously been given away. JAX mice, as they were known, became the gold standard for inbred mice, and were central to cancer research as well as other areas of biomedical research. Rader portrays very well the tension between the commercial and the research sides of the laboratory, but she misses the chance to explore more fully the issue of the commodification of living subjects of research. The mice at times disappear among the institutional detail.

Rader begins her book with the 1947 "Great Bar Harbor Fire" that destroyed the Jackson Lab's breeding facility, seeing this as a turning point in the laboratory's history as well as in American consciousness about scientific research and research animals. However, her account of the 1950s largely shifts the focus from the Jackson Lab to genetics research on radiation risk, particularly that at Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee. She closes her account with a look at current issues, noting briefly the "cultural legacy" of experimental mice. Although this reader would have liked more on this cultural significance, this is a minor criticism of a very valuable book on an important topic. While the book itself is nicely designed and well-illustrated, it has a truly astounding number of typographical errors (about one per page), which is not the standard I would expect from Princeton University Press.