Between the farm and the clinic: agriculture and reproductive technology in the twentieth century
A one-day workshop, organised by Sarah Wilmot and Nick Hopwood, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, was held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge on Friday 29 April 2005.
The reproductive technologies that through the twentieth century were increasingly used to detach sex from reproduction continue to attract intense interest. But while the history, sociology and anthropology of reproductive medicine have been actively studied for several years, we have hardly begun to explore agriculture, the other major field of reproductive innovation, and its relations to medicine. The use of animal breeding as a resource for eugenics is clear and a rich body of research on the making of hormones has linked abattoirs with laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and clinics. Yet though Adele Clarke long ago highlighted the importance of the intersection of biology, medicine and agriculture in the making of the reproductive sciences, we still know very little about farms as sites of technological innovation in the reproduction of both other animals and human beings. This workshop aims to break new ground in two main ways. First, we want to promote work on the making, organization and communication of reproductive knowledge among experts and laypeople in agricultural settings. We hope to bring together agricultural history with methodological insights from the sociology and anthropology of science, technology and medicine. Second, we want to explore the networks linking animal breeding, reproductive science, experimental biology, clinical medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. How have, not just raw materials, but also technologies and discourses, circulated between farms, abattoirs, research laboratories and clinics? To what extent and in what ways have farm animals served as a testing ground for technologies, from hormones to artificial insemination and embryo transfer, that were later developed for humans?
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Lamb born as a result of the first long range air transport of semen. Left: A Suffolk x Polish lamb from semen sent from Cambridge to Warsaw. Right: A pure Polish lamb.
(John Hammond, Farm Animals, 1952)
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