When Giants Walked the Earth a Pedigree of Darwin’S Well Bred English Bulldogs

books and arts When giants walked the Earth A pedigree of Darwin’s well bred English bulldogs.

A Reason for Everything: Natural

Selection and the British CORBIS Imagination by Marek Kohn Faber & Faber: 2004. 400 pp. £20 Steve Jones A. BROWN/SPL BARRINGTON What’s this cult of personality in evolutionary biology all about? There’s the Great Leader, Chairman Charles, of course, and various lesser but substantial figures who are also worthy of the occasional parade. But why do we need so many? Experts on chloroplasts or chlorine manage, as far as I know, with living facts, and are not forced to attach them to dead heroes. But there’s something in evolution that calls for immortals to whom we plebs must defer. A Reason for Everything explores the lives of six members of the central committee of the English Evolutionary Party and their hangers-on. With a single exception, the players are toffs to a man,products of famous public schools followed by one of the older A statistical geneticist and the Rajah of provincial universities. Charles Darwin Bomb: R. A. Fisher (left) and J. B. S. Haldane. (Shrewsbury and Cambridge) blotted his copybook by spending a student year in tion led to death threats (and contempt from Haldane’s representative on Earth was, Scotland, but of the six discussed here, his better-off colleagues) but was good sci- for nearly forty years, John Maynard Smith R.A.Fisher (Harrow and Cambridge),J.B.S. ence. He turned, alas, to spiritualism and, as (who had himself hung the hammer and Haldane (Eton and Oxford), John Maynard so often when scientists use their knowledge sickle from his Eton window). Maynard Smith (Eton and Cambridge), Bill Hamilton of nature to interpret the world of man, Smith inspired many young evolutionists, (Tonbridge and Cambridge) and Richard abandoned common sense. and I have seen him hold an entire pub Dawkins (Oundle and Oxford), all had a Some of his successors were also happy entranced as he discoursed to a group of grand English education. Kohn’s one great to use Arts Faculty science — sweeping undergraduates. His interview for this book anomaly is Alfred Russel Wallace, who generalizations without the need for facts — reveals many details of his life and way of enjoyed a short period at Hertford Grammar when discussing human affairs. Fisher was, thinking, and shows how conflict has over- School and thereafter had to make do with like his near-contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, taken cooperation as the key to understand- the University of Life. an undergraduate fan of the Nordic myths. ing animal behaviour. Each is given a sympathetic hearing, His Genetical Theory of Natural Selection In a recent magazine poll, Richard although one senses that Kohn’s patience is became evolution’s equivalent of The Lord Dawkins, with his trademark hobbit smile, tried by the miasma of self-congratulation of the Rings: full of gnomic and portentous was voted Britain’s top intellectual (a wel- that surrounded some of the actors in his truths with rather a nasty social agenda come kick in the teeth for the new generation drama. Fisher claimed that his fundamental lurking beneath (Fisher felt it his biological of Creationists in our privately funded theory of natural selection occupied the duty to beget eight children).As Kohn points schools).He,too,spoke to Kohn,but perhaps supreme position among the biological out, Fisher’s followers, like those of Wagner not for long (“Dawkins, the most public sciences, although others dismissed it as a — composer of a musical on the same theme but most private of scientists…”). Darwin’s verbal trick. Fisher’s colleague E. B. Ford, — are obsessed with the fine detail of what latest bulldog is, it seems clear, not best a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a silly the great begetter meant and are still far friends with the Bush regime but, unlike man in a silly place, did some desultory from sure. too many others, Dawkins has been scrupu- research and spent his later years bemoaning Set against the bearded bigot, the Gan- lous in not allowing his science to control the presence of women in lectures and wait- dalf-like figure of Haldane is revealed in a his politics. ing for ecological genetics to supplant all that rather better light. A daring and often reck- The most ambiguous character to emerge dull molecular stuff. less experimenter, he was known in the from these pages is Hamilton. He found it The most remarkable character is the trenches as the Rajah of Bomb and was pur- hard to make friends and nursed long, earliest of Darwin’s bulldogs (although he sued by the whiff of cordite throughout his Gollum-like resentments in his search for lived long enough to worry about air war- career. He stuck with the Communist party the ring of truth. Kohn suggests that he may fare).Wallace’s expeditions were followed by long after his colleagues had abandoned have suffered from autism. Autistic or not, a lifetime of devotion to the Great Leader and it, and Kohn provides a telling account of Bill Hamilton was an outstanding biologist. to a series of ingenious observations,includ- Haldane’s readiness to support Comrade Darwin’s ability to generalize came from his ing an attempt to prove, for a bet, that the Lysenko even in the face of powerful evi- huge knowledge of plants and animals. world was not flat. His elegant demonstra- dence against his theories. Few of his intellectual descendants can tell

NATURE | VOL 431 | 2 SEPTEMBER 2004 | www.nature.com/nature 21 © 2004 Nature Publishing Group books and arts a hawk from a handsaw, let alone from an service to the research community. eagle. Hamilton could, and his daring tropi- In 1947 the Jackson Laboratory cal trips gave him the raw material for many was destroyed in a fire that killed leaps of the scientific imagination. His last, 14 people and thousands of mice. published posthumously, argues that the Little received many offers of CKSON LABORATORY plants with the brightest autumn colours are help, and research scientists from JA telling parasites that they are fit and healthy, throughout the United States sent and to go elsewhere. Hamilton, sad to say, back breeding pairs of mice to re- was also a martyr to political vapourings establish the colonies. By 1949 it and lobbied for a cracked eugenical Utopia had been rebuilt and continued in with Margaret Thatcher as Life President its role as a centre for mammalian and caesarian births banned. genetics and biomedical research. A Reason for Everything is a well-written Making Mice is not exactly a and carefully researched account of some of history of inbred mice. There is the main British players in the world of no scientific account of the charac- evolution. Every evolutionist should read it teristics of such strains, nor of — as a warning against personality cults, if how they have made such a sub- nothing else. Kohn makes it clear that giants stantial contribution to biomed- walked the Earth in those days. Those days ical research. Nor is it a biography are gone, but after perusing his chapter on of Little, who did so much to the Oxford school of evolutionary biology promote them; we learn only in- in the 1950s and 1960s — some geniuses, no directly about the man and his doubt, but also a fair sprinkling of prima background. I suspect that he was donnas and right-wing zealots — one can driven by his vision of pure-line only mutter, through gently clenched teeth, A helping hand: the pure-bred mice developed by Clarence mice as an essential research tool, “Thank God!” ■ Cook Little are a valuable tool for biomedical researchers. and was intolerant of anyone who Steve Jones is in the Galton Laboratory, disagreed with him. Nor is it really University College London, Gower Street, scientific feud with Maud Slye,who claimed, a history of the Jackson Laboratory; there London WC1E 6BT, UK. based on studies with outbred mice, that is, for example, a long section on the ‘mega- cancer was inherited as a simple mendelian mouse’ experiments at Oak Ridge National recessive character. Little was right: the Laboratory in Tennessee. cause of cancer is much more complicated, Rather, the book puts its three themes — depending on many genes and environmen- mice, Little and the Jackson Laboratory — Well bred rodents tal factors. into historical context and weaves them Making Mice: Standardizing Little continued his research at the Cold together, the chapters following a rough Animals for American Biomedical Spring Harbor Laboratory, but in 1922, chronology. It shows the tortuous path that Research, 1900–1955 aged just 34, he was appointed president of finally led to the establishment of this by Karen Rader the University of Maine. He subsequently world-renowned institute, and should be of Princeton University Press: 2004. 312 pp. met many of the rich summer visitors to interest both to historians and to scientists $45, £29.95 Bar Harbor, including Roscoe B. Jackson, an who work with genetically defined mice. Michael Festing engineer and joint founder of the Hudson There are a few misprints, however, and the Motor Car Company, who supported some book is incorrect in implying that rats, mice Clarence Cook Little started his undergrad- of Little’s research projects. With these con- and birds are now protected under the US uate work in genetics at Harvard’s Bussey nections and his strong research interests, Animal Welfare Act. Institute in the class of 1910. This was soon Little obtained an even more prestigious The Jackson Laboratory has become an after the field of genetics was established appointment in 1925, as president of the internationally recognized centre of excel- following the rediscovery of Gregor University of Michigan. lence for research, teaching, informatics and Mendel’s classical paper on unit inheritance Four years later, Little set up his own the supply of genetically defined mice. The in peas. Initially Little studied the inheri- research institute in Bar Harbor on land case for using inbred mice in research has tance of coat colour in mice. In order to donated by George Dorr. It was named, with largely been accepted, except in a few reac- produce a pure line purged of recessive Dorr’s approval, the Roscoe B. Jackson tionary disciplines, such as toxicology. How- genes, and to study the effects of inbreed- Memorial Laboratory, after Jackson, who ever, I consider it a major scientific scandal ing, he mated brother and sister mice for had died unexpectedly from influenza. Little that in 2004, nearly a century after Little first several generations to produce DBA, the could not have chosen a worse time. The advocated the widespread use of inbred, first inbred strain. He soon realized the stock-market crash of 1929 occurred within pure-line mice, more than 80% of scientific importance of using pure-line mice in days and sources of support among the papers using the rat still involve genetically research, something that many research seasonal residents of Bar Harbor dried up. undefined Wistar or Sprague-Dawley rats. workers still do not appreciate today. Little’s Little was forced to sell mice to keep the According to Little: “Just as the purity of mice have made major contributions to our lab going, despite a tradition of supplying the chemical assures the pharmacist of the understanding of cancer and many other genetically interesting stock to colleagues proper filling of the doctor’s prescription, so branches of mammalian biology. Without free of charge. In subsequent years, many the purity of the mouse stock can assure a them we would probably not have mono- scientists and bureaucrats have found it research scientist of a true and sure experi- clonal antibodies or a technique for knock- difficult to understand how an organization ment.”How many rats are being wasted as a ing out individual genes in order to study could be both a research institute and a sup- result of the inability of many scientists to their function. plier of animals.Little emphasized repeatedly understand this simple point? ■ In 1915, Little came to prominence in that the prime purpose of the laboratory Michael Festing was formerly at the MRC cancer research when he started a 30-year was research, the supply of animals being a Toxicology Unit, Leicester LE1 9HN, UK.