Harvesting toads in South Africa for pregnancy testing in Britain

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
• Monday 11 March 2013, 13:00-14:15
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact jh567.

After World War II, various toads replaced mice and rabbits as pregnancy-test animals in diagnostic laboratories around the world. This talk examines the divergent strategies adopted by competing laboratories to acquire and maintain stock of exotic and domestic toads for human pregnancy diagnosis in postwar Britain. Commercial dealers and the Department of Inland Fisheries in South Africa harvested the locally abundant species, Xenopus laevis, from the wild and attempted to breed the animal in captivity. However, as only a handful of large and specialised ‘pregnancy diagnosis centres’ in Britain could afford the elaborate and expensive equipment required to sustain a healthy colony of Xenopus, many small hospital laboratories preferred the ordinary British toad, Bufo bufo, which they could obtain and discard indiscriminately. Ironically, the imported Xenopus proved less resistant to laboratory life in Britain than did the domestic Bufo, which often starved to death or died of ‘unknown causes’ in captivity.

This talk is part of the Cabinet of Natural History series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cabinet of Natural History
• DS list 1
• Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Featured lists
• Featured talks
• History and Philosophy of Science long list
• Philosophy Events
• Philosophy and History of Science
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.