Projects per year
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate the ways in which a group of scientists in Edinburgh worked across mice and sheep during the last quarter of the twentieth century. With this local episode, we show the utility of an interspecies perspective to investigate recent historical transformations in the life sciences. We argue that the emergence of animal biotechnology was the result of interactions between neoliberal policymakers, science administrators, molecular biologists, agricultural breeders, and the laboratory and farm organisms with which they worked. During the early 1980s, all these actors believed that the exportation of genetic engineering techniques from mice to farm animals would lead to more effective breeding programmes in the agricultural sciences. However, the circulation of people, money, expertise and infrastructures that the experiments required, as well as the practical constraints of working with mice and sheep, resisted a simple scaling-up from one organism to the other. This displaced the goals of the Edinburgh scientists from the production of transgenic sheep to stem cell research and human regenerative medicine. We account for this unexpected shift by looking at the interplay between science policy and its implementation via collective action and bench work across different organisms. The emergence of animal biotechnology in Edinburgh also provides historiographical insights on the birth of Dolly the sheep and, more generally, on the interactions between the molecular and the reproductive sciences at the fall of the twentieth century.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 24-33 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences |
Volume | 75 |
Early online date | 29 Jan 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 30 Jun 2019 |
Keywords
- genetic
- embryology
- agricultural biotechnology
- animal model
- Dolly
- neoliberalism
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Between mice and sheep: Biotechnology, agricultural science and animal models in late-twentieth century Edinburgh'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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Dolly at Roslin: A Collective Memory Event
Myelnikov, D. & Garcia Sancho Sanchez, M. (ed.), 21 Apr 2017, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh.Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
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The Invisible History of the Visible Sheep: How a Look at the Past may Broaden our View of the Legacy of Dolly
Garcia Sancho Sanchez, M., Myelnikov, D. & Lowe, J., 2017, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, UK). 20 p.Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report
Open AccessFile -
Animal breeding in the age of biotechnology: The investigative pathway behind the cloning of Dolly the sheep
Garcia-Sancho, M., Sep 2015, In: History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 37, 3, p. 282-304 23 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile
Profiles
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Miguel Garcia Sancho Sanchez
- School of Social and Political Science - Chancellor's Fellow - Senior Lecturer
- Innogen Institute
Person: Academic: Research Active