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SUMMARY:Harvesting toads in South Africa for pregnancy testing in Britain 
 - Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20130311T130000Z
DTEND:20130311T141500Z
UID:TALK42489@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:29667
DESCRIPTION:After World War II\, various toads replaced mice and rabbits a
 s 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 pregn
 ancy diagnosis in postwar Britain. Commercial dealers and the Department o
 f Inland Fisheries in South Africa harvested the locally abundant species\
 , Xenopus laevis\, from the wild and attempted to breed the animal in capt
 ivity. However\, as only a handful of large and specialised 'pregnancy dia
 gnosis centres' in Britain could afford the elaborate and expensive equipm
 ent 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 Xenop
 us proved less resistant to laboratory life in Britain than did the domest
 ic Bufo\, which often starved to death or died of 'unknown causes' in capt
 ivity.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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