Making Mice: The Standardization of Mus Musculus for Scientific Research

科学模型在指导研究方面起着极其重要的作用。本杰明·富兰克林在提出第一个关于电学的现代科学理论时，使用了“双流体”模型。自笛卡尔和牛顿时代以来，两个模型--波和粒子模型--一直指导着对光的研究。尽管自本世纪发现量子力学以来，这两个模型似乎都不正确。模型在生物学研究中也扮演着重要的角色。由于我们在人类身上进行实验时必须格外小心，生物学家必须转向其他物种来模拟人类生理学中发生的事情。在19世纪，人们选择的模型是青蛙。灵长类动物、猪、猫、蝾螈，甚至马蹄蟹、鱿鱼和鼻涕都是某些研究领域的模型。每一项都提供了特定的机会，但也限制了研究人员的能力。科学家必须在有机体为研究人员提供的机会和对他们可以提出的问题种类的限制之间取得平衡。20世纪生物学中选择的生物体越来越多地变成了老鼠。这一决定是如何以及为什么做出的，以及它在过去50年里如何影响了生物学研究的方向，这是雷德博士研究的主题。近交系小鼠是美国生物学和医学研究中使用最广泛的实验动物。然而，围绕着老鼠崛起为标准有机体的历史环境却被完全忽视了。雷德博士正在对C·C·利特尔和杰克逊实验室选择标准化小鼠Mus Musculus作为生物医学研究模型的早期研究进行扩展。根据这笔拨款，她正在研究老鼠模型在美国两个生物医学领域日益增长的重要性：辐射遗传学和癌症研究。她试图展示近亲交配的小鼠是如何发展成为一种精心制作的实验技术的，这种技术可以建立广泛的生产关系，包括生物医学科学家之间的关系，以及这些科学家和支持他们工作的社会之间的关系。这项研究还应该阐明顶尖生物医学研究和研究政策之间的联系，以及构成生命科学中的科学实践和有机体的复杂的社会、政治和智力关系。

Models in science serve an enormously important role in guiding research. Benjamin Franklin used a "two-fluid" model when he advanced the first modern scientific theory for electricity. Two models, the wave and the particle model, have guided research on light since the time of Descartes and Newton though since the discovery of quantum mechanics in this century, neither model seems correct. Models serve an important role in biological research as well. Since we must be extraordinarily careful in experimenting on humans, biologists must turn to other species to model what goes on in human physiology. In the 19th century, the model of choice was the frog. Primates, pigs, cats, newts, even horse-shoe crab, squid and slugs serve as models for certain areas of research. Each offers specific opportunities but also limit researchers in what they can do. Scientists must balance the opportunities an organism offers researchers with the limits it places on the kinds of questions they can raise. The organism of choice in 20th century biology has increasingly become the mouse. How and why this decision has been made and how it has shaped the direction of biological research for the past five decades is the subject of Dr. Rader's research. Inbred mice are the most widely-used experimental animals in American biological and medical research. Yet the historical circumstances surrounding the mouse's rise as a standard organism have been completely ignored. Dr. Rader is expanding on her earlier studies of the process by which C. C. Little and the Jackson Laboratory chose a standardized mouse, mus musculus, as a model for biomedical research. Under this grant, she is examining the increasing importance of mouse models in two American biomedical fields: radiation genetics and cancer research. She is trying to demonstrate how the inbred mouse developed as a carefully crafted experimental technology which enable a wide range of productive relations, including among biomedical scientists and betw een these scientists and the society that supported their work. The study should also elucidate the connections between bench-top biomedical research and research policy, as well as illuminate the complex social, political, and intellectual relations that constitute scientific practices and organisms in the life sciences.