“Standardization through Mechanization”: Germ-Free Life and the Engineering of the Ideal Laboratory Animal

This article examines efforts to establish germ-free animals as ideal laboratory animals, tracing the development of germ-free technology by James Reyniers (1908–67) and Philip Trexler (1911–) at the University of Notre Dame. Despite capturing the scientific imagination between 1942 and the late 1950s, germ-free animals never became the generic tools that Reyniers hoped. This article shows how Reyniers failed to establish germ-free animals because the tension between standardization and the need for novelty was not successfully managed. However, Trexler adapted techniques of producing germ-free life to produce more successful Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) animals. Now so ubiquitous as to be invisible, SPF animals succeeded where germ-free animals failed because they embodied a standard that could be reconfigured to suit local research agendas, while also remaining highly defined and capable of representing natural forms of life. SPF animals became the ideal laboratory animal, used around the world.