Article
ID: CBB398870305

Pig Mentations: Race and Face in Radiobiology (2021)

unapi
Skin Medical research Laboratory animals Dermatology Radiobiology Experimental organisms Animal experimentation Pigs 20th century Washington (state, U.S.) Bustad, Leo K. Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)

In the 1950s, Leo K. Bustad and his colleagues at the Hanford “Experimental Animal Farm” began breeding small pigs to study the effects of radiation on human skin. Within a few years, Hanford miniature swine were called a transformative new experimental organism that might replace canines in the laboratory. Weighing around 160 pounds, the same as radiobiology’s “Standard Man,” their skin was white, which was said to make “seeing” radiation damage easier. This essay traces the emergence of the scientific minipig from experimental agriculture and postwar atomic tests to research at the Hormel Institute and Hanford. It situates the pigs as one part of a broader scientific effort to construct a multispecies “composite” human in the twentieth century, exploring how the pig’s lingering significance to dermatology reveals the role of “racializing assemblages” in the production of experimental organisms and scientific facts.

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Authors & Contributors
Ramsden, Edmund
Kirk, Robert G. W.
Brad Bolman
Ankeny, Rachel A.
Creager, Angela N. H.
Guerrini, Anita
Journals
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Journal of the History of Biology
Science in Context
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Publishers
Johns Hopkins University Press
MIT Press
University Press of Kansas
Concepts
Experimental organisms
Laboratory animals
Animal experimentation
Models and modeling in science
Laboratory techniques and procedures
Medical research
People
Alighieri, Dante
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
Medieval
20th century, late
Ancient
Places
United States
Great Britain
Europe
Denmark
Sweden
Washington (state, U.S.)
Institutions
Hanford Nuclear Site (Washington)
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