Article ID: CBB001221002

Modeling Man: The Monkey Colony at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, 1925--1971 (2012)

unapi

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.

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Description Focuses on the work done to investigate human reproduction with rhesus macaques.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001221002/

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Authors & Contributors
Radick, Gregory
Peterson, Dale
Yoder, Hatten S.
Trefil, James S.
Sober, Elliott R.
Servos, John W.
Concepts
Primates
Research institutes; research stations
Primatology
Physical anthropology
Zoology
Plant ecology
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
18th century
Renaissance
19th century
17th century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Africa
Institutions
Carnegie Institution of Washington
Primate Station, Sukhumi
Mount Wilson Observatory
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