Modeling Man: The Monkey Colony at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, 1925--1971 (2012)
Though better recognized for its immediate endeavors in human embryo research, the Carnegie Department of Embryology also employed a breeding colony of rhesus macaques for the purposes of studying human reproduction. This essay follows the course of the first enterprise in maintaining a primate colony for laboratory research and the overlapping scientific, social, and political circumstances that tolerated and cultivated the colony's continued operation from 1925 until 1971. Despite a new-found priority for reproductive sciences in the United States, by the early 1920s an unfertilized human ovum had not yet been seen and even the timing of ovulation remained unresolved. Progress would require an organized research approach that could extend beyond the limitations of working with scant and inherently restrictive human subjects or with common lab mammals like mice. In response, the Department of Embryology, under the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), instituted a novel methodology using a particular primate species as a surrogate in studying normal human reproductive physiology. Over more than 40 years the monkey colony followed an unpremeditated trajectory that would contribute fundamentally to discoveries in human reproduction, early embryo development, reliable birth control methods, and to the establishment of the rhesus macaque as a common model organism.
...MoreDescription Focuses on the work done to investigate human reproduction with rhesus macaques.
Similar Citations
Book
Craig, Patricia Parratt;
(2004)
Centennial History of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Vol. 4: The Department of Plant Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB000520112/)
Book
Sandage, Allan;
(2004)
Centennial History of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Vol. 1: The Mount Wilson Observatory: Breaking the Code of Cosmic Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB000501451/)
Book
Brown, Louis;
(2004)
Centennial History of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Vol. 2: The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
(/isis/citation/CBB000550072/)
Book
Yoder, Hatten S.;
(2004)
Centennial History of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Vol. 3: The Geophysical Laboratory
(/isis/citation/CBB000550019/)
Article
Radick, Gregory;
(2006)
What's in a Name? The Vervet Predator Calls and the Limits of the Washburnian Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB000770730/)
Book
Baulu, Jean;
Dance, Peter;
(2005)
Singes et grands singes: la découverte des primates par les naturalistes et leur représentation dans la gravure et le dessin au cours des cinq derniers siècles
(/isis/citation/CBB000774122/)
Article
Le Grand, Homer E.;
(1990)
Rise and fall of paleomagnetic research at Carnegie's DTM
(/isis/citation/CBB000030053/)
Book
McGinnies, William G.;
(1981)
Discovering the desert: Legacy of the Carnegie Desert Botanical Laboratory
(/isis/citation/CBB000047068/)
Article
Servos, John W.;
(1983)
To explore the borderland: The foundation of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington
(/isis/citation/CBB000027964/)
Article
Rossiianov, Kirill;
(2002)
Beyond Species: Il'ya Ivanov and His Experiments on Cross-Breeding Humans with Anthropoid Apes
(/isis/citation/CBB000300215/)
Chapter
Sober, Elliott;
(2007)
Sex Ratio Theory, Ancient and Modern: An Eighteenth-Century Debate about Intelligent Design and the Development of Models in Evolutionary Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB000774728/)
Chapter
Kingsland, Sharon E.;
(1993)
An elusive science: Ecological enterprise in the Southwestern United States
(/isis/citation/CBB000055090/)
Article
Kosmachevskaia, E. A.;
Gromova, L. I.;
(2011)
Tropics in the Subtropics: I. P. Pavlov and the Sukhumi Primate Station
(/isis/citation/CBB001211392/)
Book
Greene, Meg;
(2008)
Jane Goodall: A Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB000774885/)
Book
Hazen, Margaret Hindle;
Trefil, James;
(2002)
Good Seeing: A Century of Science at the Carnegie Institution of Washington
(/isis/citation/CBB000201410/)
Article
Richard W. Burkhardt;
(2018)
An Orangutan in Paris: Pondering Proximity At the Muséum D’histoire Naturelle in 1836
(/isis/citation/CBB939394522/)
Article
van Wyhe, John;
Kjaergaard, Peter C.;
(2015)
Going the Whole Orang: Darwin, Wallace and the Natural History of Orangutans
(/isis/citation/CBB001422415/)
Article
Rees, Amanda;
(2006)
A Place That Answers Questions: Primatological Field Sites and the Making of Authentic Observations
(/isis/citation/CBB000770729/)
Book
Rees, Amanda;
(2009)
The Infanticide Controversy: Primatology and the Art of Field Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001023035/)
Essay Review
Kimler, William;
(2012)
Case Studies, Controversy and the “Fieldworker's Regres”s
(/isis/citation/CBB001566820/)
VIET: Voprosy Istorii Estestvoznaniia i Tekhniki
Science in Context
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences
Eos: Transactions, American Geophysical Union
Be the first to comment!