Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Frying and I'm Tracy d Wilson. So Tracy.
Speaker 1: This weekend, I was hanging out in another city with
Speaker 1: some friends. UM, and I made a joke referencing the
Speaker 1: movie The Rabbit Test. Do you know that movie? I
Speaker 1: know of it, but I don't think I've ever seen it.
Speaker 1: I will tell you a funny story after I tell
Speaker 1: you what the movie is about, because it evidences the
Speaker 1: mind of a child and how they process information. So
Speaker 1: in that movie, which is a comedy directed by the
Speaker 1: late great Joan Rivers, Billy Crystal stars as a man
Speaker 1: who gets pregnant and the title is a joke based
Speaker 1: on the now outdated practice of using rabbits as part
Speaker 1: of a medical test to determine if a woman was pregnant. Now,
Speaker 1: this movie came out, like I said, in seventy eight.
Speaker 1: So I was seven when it huh out, And I remember, Um,
Speaker 1: I had said something like I don't know if I
Speaker 1: had seen a poster or an ad or something, and
Speaker 1: I was like rabbits, Like I was excited to see
Speaker 1: this movie and my siblings, who are all a good
Speaker 1: bit older than me. We're like, oh, no, that movie
Speaker 1: is not for you, because of course it was about
Speaker 1: sex and reproduction. But my perception as a seven year
Speaker 1: old was that it must be a terrifying horror movies.
Speaker 1: I didn't know until I was in my twenties and
Speaker 1: it was a comedy. I was like, no, it's like
Speaker 1: a scary sci fi thriller, is what I made up
Speaker 1: in my head. Well, and and based on everything I
Speaker 1: know of you, Holly, I was genuinely astonished when I
Speaker 1: got this email from you with this outline last night,
Speaker 1: because it contains a number of things that are just
Speaker 1: not your bag, right, like talking about you know, pregnancy
Speaker 1: and um um, and I'm going to get to the
Speaker 1: animal testing things and we have a we have our
Speaker 1: our our opt out discussion in a moment. But my
Speaker 1: point in all of this is that I had had
Speaker 1: mentioned this movie to friends, and those friends are all
Speaker 1: a bit younger than my husband and I are, and
Speaker 1: they had never heard of the movie, and they had
Speaker 1: never heard of the use of rabbits in pregnancy testing.
Speaker 1: And I was trying to explain this to them with
Speaker 1: my not scientific knowledge and their eyes got really big
Speaker 1: and they seemed completely incredulous and thought maybe I was
Speaker 1: pulling one over on them. So, um, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I know what I want to work on next, and
Speaker 1: it's this Because I thought everybody knew, they don't. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you also listen to the podcast saw Bones and
Speaker 1: you should, they indicated an episode on the history of
Speaker 1: pregnancy testing, and it mentions the rabbit test very briefly,
Speaker 1: but it's really more of a broad overview of how
Speaker 1: pregnancy testing has evolved over the centuries, and we are
Speaker 1: instead going to look really closely at how this particular
Speaker 1: test and one very like it both were developed in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. So you may have surmised already, but
Speaker 1: heads up, this episode is going to involve a significant
Speaker 1: amount of discussion of animals being used in medical testing,
Speaker 1: with an outcome of mortality for the animal in most cases. Um,
Speaker 1: So if that is something that you would rather not
Speaker 1: hear about or rather not perhaps share with younger history buffs,
Speaker 1: you can tap right out of this one. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still have a whole layer of surprise of like, well,
Speaker 1: I love science, I know you do. It just seems
Speaker 1: like you know you're talking about the movie coming across
Speaker 1: as a terrifying horror movie. I feel like the subject
Speaker 1: is like a holly terrifying horror movie. Yeah. No, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not me. It's not me having a child,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really talk about like any of the
Speaker 1: actual pregnancy, just the pathology and medical testing. So I
Speaker 1: think that's why it's a little easier for me to
Speaker 1: dig in on. And somehow I don't know why I
Speaker 1: seem to be able to handle this particular discussion of
Speaker 1: animal testing. Yeah, we'll see. I could start crying halfway through.
Speaker 1: We'll see how it goes. It's always different typing it
Speaker 1: than it is saying it. But definitely one of those
Speaker 1: subjects that is always on, like the right of first
Speaker 1: refusal list what I'm thinking of things to talk about. So,
Speaker 1: uh today, Home pregnancy tests they're inexpensive, very common. Usually
Speaker 1: the first way people find out if they are pregnant
Speaker 1: just go to the store and pick one up. But
Speaker 1: there have been plenty of folk medicine tests that people
Speaker 1: could try on their own over the years before they
Speaker 1: were actual working pregnancy tests and for a scientific confirmation
Speaker 1: of that pregnancy. Up until the seventies, you pretty much
Speaker 1: had to go to the doctor. You couldn't just pick
Speaker 1: up a home test. The use of urine to test
Speaker 1: for pregnancy was nothing new at all. It had been
Speaker 1: part of how people tested for pregnancy for centuries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people had intuited that there was something going on with
Speaker 1: urine where uh it was a way to determine if
Speaker 1: someone was in fact carrying a child, But they were
Speaker 1: not necessarily rooted in science. Always they involved things like,
Speaker 1: you know, peeing on grain and see if it turned color.
Speaker 1: But a really major development took place in nineteen o
Speaker 1: two when E. H. Starling, who was a physician, and W. M. Bayliss,
Speaker 1: who was a physiologist, discovered secreton. And secreton is a
Speaker 1: polypeptide that is made up of more than two dozen
Speaker 1: amino acids. But what is really important is that it
Speaker 1: was the first hormone ever discovered. Secreton is a digestive hormone.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do specifically with reproduction and Starling
Speaker 1: didn't start using the word hormone for several years. He
Speaker 1: first introduced it into medical nomenclature and a lecture that
Speaker 1: he gave at London's Royal College of Physicians in nineteen
Speaker 1: o five titled on the Chemical Correlation of the Functions
Speaker 1: of the Body, and in that lecture, Starling defined hormones
Speaker 1: as quote the chemical messengers which, speeding from cell to
Speaker 1: sell along the bloodstream, may coordinate the activities and growth
Speaker 1: of different parts of the body. And from the point
Speaker 1: where he established the term, all manner of discovery and
Speaker 1: research in the field of hormones began. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: still the pretty basic definition that you learn of what
Speaker 1: a hormone is in school. Yeah, at a very basic level.
Speaker 1: So from the nineteen teens, a number of researchers were
Speaker 1: examining the link between hormones and pregnancy. Through the introduction
Speaker 1: of extracts of human placenta into other animals in a
Speaker 1: variety of laboratory experience, it became clear that there were
Speaker 1: hormones in the mix that were related to reproduction. All
Speaker 1: of this sounds so obvious now, but at the time,
Speaker 1: I know, I think about like the shorthand of how
Speaker 1: people just attribute like people's urge to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: have romantic involvement with one another, they'll just go hormones.
Speaker 1: But like at the time, this was like mind blowing
Speaker 1: concept that that was what was driving your romantic interest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the hormone that was eventually identified in all of
Speaker 1: this was human choreonic gonadotropin, which is more commonly known
Speaker 1: as hCG, and that was the hormone that unlocked the
Speaker 1: door to pregnancy testing. So just for a little bit
Speaker 1: of clarity, but not too much, because I'm not going
Speaker 1: to give you the hard science because I will miss
Speaker 1: something up. But hCG is actually four independent molecules which
Speaker 1: each have their own functions in which are produced by
Speaker 1: separate cells. hCG is not only used as an indicator
Speaker 1: of pregnancy. Certain cancers can also be detected based on
Speaker 1: tests which analyze hc G content in a person's bloodstream.
Speaker 1: And hCG is present in women even when they are
Speaker 1: not pregnant, although it's a pretty small amount. They don't
Speaker 1: produce significant amounts unless they are crying a child. But
Speaker 1: pregnancy tests are designed to measure the levels of hCG
Speaker 1: and once that passes a certain threshold, it is a
Speaker 1: reliable indicator of pregnancy. In six two German doctors Selma
Speaker 1: Asheim and Bernhard Zondeck developed a pregnancy test that used mice.
Speaker 1: The preparation was described in a nine team thirty article
Speaker 1: in the journal California and Western Medicine by authors Herbert M. Evans,
Speaker 1: m d. And Miriam E. Simpson, m D. As follows
Speaker 1: the morning urine is sent into the laboratory and clean bottles.
Speaker 1: They meaning Ashaim and Zondeck recommend the addition of one
Speaker 1: drop of tri cresal per twenty five cubic centimeters of
Speaker 1: urine if it is necessary for the sample to be
Speaker 1: sent by mail. A group of five mice each wing
Speaker 1: six to eight grahams is used to test each urine specimen.
Speaker 1: So the mortality rate for mice just to test a
Speaker 1: single person sample was quite high at that point, but
Speaker 1: per Evans and Simpson, this test was far more reliable
Speaker 1: than any other options, and it produced results in as
Speaker 1: few as four days. It worked because the urine sample,
Speaker 1: which was injected into very young mice in a specified regiment.
Speaker 1: It was multiple injections over the course of several days
Speaker 1: would catalyze sexual maturation in the mice if the urine
Speaker 1: was from a pregnant woman. On the fifth day, between
Speaker 1: ninety six hundred hours after the start of the injection process,
Speaker 1: the mice were killed and then the crop seed based
Speaker 1: on an examination of the mice's ovaries, doctor could determine
Speaker 1: if the woman who had given the urine sample was pregnant.
Speaker 1: If the ovaries remained mostly small and smooth, the test
Speaker 1: was negative, but if there was enlargement and maturation beyond
Speaker 1: the normal development, it was positive. Ash I'man's on Deck
Speaker 1: also developed a variation on this test for cases where
Speaker 1: someone might more urgently need to know if they were pregnant.
Speaker 1: Although it came at a cost of more mice, They
Speaker 1: used more mice in the experiment and then that they
Speaker 1: dissected them earlier in the range past when they had
Speaker 1: begun the testing. That larger sample set made up for
Speaker 1: the shorter testing period. We are about to talk about
Speaker 1: a little variation on the method that they developed, but
Speaker 1: first we'll pause and have a quick word from one
Speaker 1: of the sponsors that keeps the show going. Other doctors
Speaker 1: took the work of the German team and the Asheim
Speaker 1: Zondeck test, which was often abbreviated to just called be
Speaker 1: called the AZ test, and they made slight tweaks to
Speaker 1: the method for what worked best for their laboratory situation
Speaker 1: and their staff at the University of California at Berkeley
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen twenties, researchers opted to use six
Speaker 1: rats for the procedure rather than mice, and they stored
Speaker 1: the urine samples at freezing temperature before injection. They of
Speaker 1: course heated it back up so that the animals were
Speaker 1: not going to shock after the injection. Using rats was
Speaker 1: actually more cost intensive than mice, but you see, Berkeley
Speaker 1: had already had an established rat colony for use in
Speaker 1: their laps. The primary benefit and using rats instead of
Speaker 1: mice was the fact that all of the rats usually
Speaker 1: survived the test at least the injection and sort of
Speaker 1: incubation portion of the test, but in mouse based testing,
Speaker 1: fift of the rodents died before they reached that day
Speaker 1: five exam a nation stage, and both tests the error
Speaker 1: rate was quite small, between one and two percent, and
Speaker 1: according to data collected in Ashiman Zondex lab, this test
Speaker 1: was also quite good at early detection. There were recorded
Speaker 1: instances of positive results before any other clinical signs of
Speaker 1: pregnancy were present, for example, just three to four days
Speaker 1: after the patient had missed a menstrual period. Results were
Speaker 1: most reliable though in cases of normal pregnancy, so in
Speaker 1: instances of more problematic situations like a tubal pregnancy. The
Speaker 1: results were, according to the German doctor's data, slightly less accurate.
Speaker 1: This was at a time in medical science when diagnostic
Speaker 1: tests weren't always common practice in Western medicine, and they
Speaker 1: certainly weren't common specifically for women. Additionally, a lot of
Speaker 1: doctors felt as though it was extraneous. They trusted their
Speaker 1: experience and diagnostic abilities to determine if someone was pregnant
Speaker 1: or not. There was concerned that testing labs removed for
Speaker 1: the relationship and the trust between the doctor and the patient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was particularly a problem UM in Great Britain. I
Speaker 1: was reading one article that UM mentioned that this one
Speaker 1: particular lab in Edinburgh had started taking mail in samples
Speaker 1: and people were like, but they're bypassing their doctors just
Speaker 1: to do a direct thing. Um. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of concerns. And this is at a
Speaker 1: point where there was insurance in Great Britain, but it
Speaker 1: didn't always cover women, and it certainly didn't cover them
Speaker 1: just wanting to find out if they were pregnant. That
Speaker 1: was usually only for like an emergency, which we'll talk about. Additionally,
Speaker 1: most of the time most women suspected they were pregnant
Speaker 1: already and they went to their doctor just to confirm
Speaker 1: what they already thought. And family practitioners used this as
Speaker 1: evidence that there was not a real need for such
Speaker 1: tests to become mainstream. In most cases, unless there was
Speaker 1: an urgent medical dean to know if a woman was pregnant.
Speaker 1: Health organizations and insurance companies where they existed, because insurance
Speaker 1: didn't really start until the late nineteen twenties, were unlikely
Speaker 1: to approve coverage for the cost of the test. Testing
Speaker 1: samples sent through the mail was particularly looked down upon
Speaker 1: us we just sort of alluded to. It was referred
Speaker 1: to as postal pathology. That's a a criticism that still
Speaker 1: exists today with all the various things that you can
Speaker 1: test at home and kind of mail away. But this
Speaker 1: test was recognized for its efficacy and it became more
Speaker 1: and more commonly administered. Both Selmer Asheim and Bernard Zondeck
Speaker 1: were Jewish, and both of them chose to leave Germany.
Speaker 1: I say chose, but they really had to for their
Speaker 1: lives in nineteen thirty three as the Nazi Party came
Speaker 1: into power, and they left their lab behind in the process.
Speaker 1: In thirty one, the landscape for pregnancy testing shifted when
Speaker 1: a similar test to the A Z test was introduced
Speaker 1: at the University of Pennsylvania by Maurice Harold Friedman and
Speaker 1: Maxwell Edward Lapham. Freedman, who was born on October three
Speaker 1: and Gary, Indiana, had been with the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: as a faculty member since he had earned his bachelor's
Speaker 1: degree PhD and m d at the University of Chicago
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen nine, so he went into his undergrad
Speaker 1: at just sixteen, so he was still quite young when
Speaker 1: he developed the rabbit test, and Maxwell E. Lapham, who
Speaker 1: was born in newfe New York, was just three years
Speaker 1: older than his collaborator, and he was working at the
Speaker 1: university hospital at the time. And an article titled a
Speaker 1: Simple Rapid Procedure for the Laboratory Diagnosis of Early Pregnancies
Speaker 1: in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics
Speaker 1: and Gynecology, Friedman and Lapham wrote about their choice to
Speaker 1: move away from mice for their test, starting with a
Speaker 1: reference to the as test, It said quote Yet this
Speaker 1: test admirable, though it is has some distinct disadvantages, one
Speaker 1: of which may make it impractical in a laboratory or
Speaker 1: hospital not closely affiliated with some university or institute. To
Speaker 1: perform the zondek Asheim test, it's essential to be in
Speaker 1: in a position to command a ready supply of amateur
Speaker 1: mice weighing from sixt grahams. If a large breeding colony
Speaker 1: of mice is not easily available, some difficulty might be
Speaker 1: encountered in procuring suitable animals at a time as test
Speaker 1: as desired. Moreover, even if one had at hand enough
Speaker 1: of the immature mice to answer the calculated requirements for
Speaker 1: a given week, and for some reason or other the
Speaker 1: number of samples submitted fell below expectations, the unused animals
Speaker 1: would soon mature beyond their usefulness, so that another group
Speaker 1: of the immature animals would have to be gotten. Freedman
Speaker 1: and Lapham's test used rabbits instead of mice, and just
Speaker 1: as rats were more of a burden to support than mice,
Speaker 1: rabbits took a lot more effort and resources to keep
Speaker 1: in a lab setting. But there were some very significant
Speaker 1: benefits to rabbits over mice. For one, it required only
Speaker 1: one to two specimens rather than six. Aside from just
Speaker 1: the number of creatures harmed. This also just meant one
Speaker 1: or two necropsies rather than half a dozen, and unlike mice,
Speaker 1: rabbits only ovulate after mating. That meant they didn't need
Speaker 1: to use only very young animals. With mice, the very
Speaker 1: young specimens were used to avoid any confusion that might
Speaker 1: arise should Amounse just be developing a natural estrous cycle,
Speaker 1: which would look pretty similar to a positive result in
Speaker 1: the testing. As long as they knew the rabbit's history
Speaker 1: and it had been isolated because exposure to other female
Speaker 1: rabbits could cause estrus, it could stay viable as a
Speaker 1: test subject until it was needed, instead of aging out
Speaker 1: of usefulness for testing purposes. But even if a rabbit
Speaker 1: had not been fully isolated, it could still potentially be
Speaker 1: used per Friedman and Lapham quote. In case one has
Speaker 1: not had opportunity to isolate the rabbits for the desired period,
Speaker 1: and it is found necessary to perform a test, it
Speaker 1: is safe to use a rabbit that has been isolated
Speaker 1: in the laboratory for only eight or ten days, even
Speaker 1: if the rabbit in question had had coitus just before
Speaker 1: it was obtained. The corporal lutilla of pregnancy or pseudo
Speaker 1: pregnancy would then be least eight or ten days old
Speaker 1: and could not be confused with the fresh corporate lutia
Speaker 1: or corporal hemorrhagica produced by the injections of an active urine. Briefly,
Speaker 1: then one may safely use all rabbits that are not
Speaker 1: demonstrably pregnant at the end of three weeks of isolation.
Speaker 1: Pathologists also found the rabbits easier to handle, and it
Speaker 1: was easier to administer injections into the veins of their ears.
Speaker 1: They could perform the necropsy without the need for a
Speaker 1: microscope or a magnifying glass because the results were observable
Speaker 1: to the naked eye rather than needing to be magnified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was not the case with mice or you had
Speaker 1: to look very closely at their tiny, tiny organs. You
Speaker 1: could literally just do the necropcy and go yep, this
Speaker 1: one is positive. But the big, big difference was that
Speaker 1: a rabbit test could be turned around in forty eight
Speaker 1: hours rather than five days. While Lapham and Friedman tried
Speaker 1: a similar method of earlier necropsy that had been used
Speaker 1: in mice, as you remember, they had just up the
Speaker 1: number of mice used and then did a test doing
Speaker 1: sort of pattern recognition at a shorter interval. They actually
Speaker 1: found the results a lot less reliable when they try
Speaker 1: a similar method in rabbits. We're about to get into
Speaker 1: the numbers involved in the research that Freedman and Lapham
Speaker 1: used to test their rabbit method, but first we will
Speaker 1: take a quick sponsor break. To test their approach, the
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania team used a hundred and eleven samples.
Speaker 1: Three samples were deemed too toxic to use in the test,
Speaker 1: and the specific nature of the toxicity is not described
Speaker 1: in the Freedman and lap of paper, but a lab
Speaker 1: in Edinburgh, Scotland, which did quite a lot of pregnancy
Speaker 1: testing in the nineteen thirties, described sometimes getting samples of
Speaker 1: urine which were green because the women who had given
Speaker 1: them had used some sort of chemical means to try
Speaker 1: to avoid pregnancy. Those samples were lethal to mice, which
Speaker 1: was the testing animal that the Edinburgh lab used, so
Speaker 1: the test would not work. Freedman and Lapa mentioned as
Speaker 1: a desire to find a way to handle so called
Speaker 1: toxic samples. Writing quote zon Deck reports that about six
Speaker 1: percent of the samples submitted were too toxic. To be handled,
Speaker 1: and to obviate this difficulty, he has devised a method
Speaker 1: by which these toxic urines may be made innocuous. Since
Speaker 1: the appearance of this paper, we have not encountered a
Speaker 1: sample with which to test this procedure, so that left
Speaker 1: a hundred and eight samples for the study, and twenty
Speaker 1: five of those samples were from women who were in
Speaker 1: their last months of gestation, and all of their samples,
Speaker 1: as expected, yielded positive test results. Thirty two of the
Speaker 1: samples were from women who had gone to the clinic
Speaker 1: at the university hospital to determine if they were pregnant.
Speaker 1: Twenty five of them tested positive for pregnancy, and the
Speaker 1: research team was able to track twenty two of those
Speaker 1: women to further verify that they had been pregnant, although
Speaker 1: not all of them carried those pregnancies to full term.
Speaker 1: The remaining three did not remain in contact with the study.
Speaker 1: There were fifty one negative test results from this viable
Speaker 1: group of a hundred eight samples. Two of those samples
Speaker 1: were from men and were from women in the hospital
Speaker 1: who were known to have been not pregnant at the
Speaker 1: time of testing, including several with conditions that might clinically
Speaker 1: present as looking pregnant without a test, like they had
Speaker 1: nausea or their abdomens were swollen, something like that. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they wanted to include people that they absolutely knew
Speaker 1: were not pregnant to prove that the tests was accurate
Speaker 1: in both positive and negative and also people who might
Speaker 1: be told by a doctor who was just examining them
Speaker 1: that they were probably pregnant but were in fact not.
Speaker 1: Twenty four of the negative test results had been for
Speaker 1: women who had visited the clinic to determine if they
Speaker 1: were pregnant, and the study remained in contact with eighteen
Speaker 1: of those patients and they were verified as non pregnant.
Speaker 1: That left ninety two cases for which the doctors felt
Speaker 1: they had adequate data for the inclusion in the study
Speaker 1: statistical analysis, and that left them with an error rate
Speaker 1: of zero. But in their paper Forman and Lapham wrote,
Speaker 1: it is likely that if we had more material, we
Speaker 1: might have encountered an error or two. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: not asserting that it was a percent effect of all
Speaker 1: the time, um, but of the ninety two that had
Speaker 1: been that it had been paired down to after they
Speaker 1: uh had to leave out the toxic urine samples and
Speaker 1: the ones that they lost track of it was accurate
Speaker 1: in that data. The Freedman Lapham test was adopted more
Speaker 1: readily than its predecessor, the mouse version, in part because
Speaker 1: the asy test had blazed a trail already, so people
Speaker 1: already had this idea that this test was worthwhile and
Speaker 1: was accurate, and also for all of the reasons that
Speaker 1: were laid out in the paper published by Freedman and Lapham.
Speaker 1: For example, hospitals found it much easier to set up
Speaker 1: a lab for a smaller number of rabbits than huge
Speaker 1: numbers of mice, which they would have to continually be
Speaker 1: breeding to get workable um animals that they could use
Speaker 1: in testing, even though it was still more expensive to
Speaker 1: house a rabbit, and the reliability and the speedier assessment
Speaker 1: during necropsy made this test much more appealing as well.
Speaker 1: And as a bit of myth busting, you may have
Speaker 1: heard the joke the rabbit died as a shorthand way
Speaker 1: to say that somebody is pregnant, and this has been
Speaker 1: a long a longstanding misconception connected to this test. I
Speaker 1: think both Holly and I at some point have probably
Speaker 1: said that I know I have repeated that myth, So
Speaker 1: apologies to anyone that heard that from my lips. You
Speaker 1: got misinformation. Yeah, the positive test result was not indicated
Speaker 1: by the rabbit dying. The rabbits had to be euthanized
Speaker 1: and necrop seed. The positive test result was definitely not
Speaker 1: the cause of the death. Correct. And while the rabbit
Speaker 1: test was more popular than the mouse test that preceded it,
Speaker 1: there was another way to test for pregnancy that followed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, so not very long after the
Speaker 1: rabbit test was introduced, called the frog test, and this
Speaker 1: one introduced into Western medicine by British biologist Lancelot hogban
Speaker 1: didn't kill the test animal, Xenopus levis. Frogs used in
Speaker 1: this test would begin ovulating and dropping eggs quite quickly
Speaker 1: after being injected with urine that contained hCG in the
Speaker 1: levels consistent with pregnancy. You will also sometimes hear this
Speaker 1: referred to as the Buffo test. That species was originally
Speaker 1: named Buffo levis before the name changed to Xenopus. So
Speaker 1: these frogs displayed their results in mere hours compared to
Speaker 1: the days that it took with previous methods of mice
Speaker 1: and rabbits, and the same frog could be used for
Speaker 1: repeated testing since there wasn't a necropsy needed to confirm
Speaker 1: these results. Yeah, this is also one of those things
Speaker 1: that has possibly led to some species integration in places
Speaker 1: it is not natural for it to exist, because it appears,
Speaker 1: at least based on what I read, that this really
Speaker 1: caused no harm to the frogs whatsoever. And so these
Speaker 1: labs would end up with lots and lots of frogs
Speaker 1: and eventually they would start letting some go. So they
Speaker 1: had originated in South Africa and then ended up up
Speaker 1: being let loose outside of labs throughout the Western world.
Speaker 1: We've done, uh like invasive species have come up on
Speaker 1: the show before, but I don't think I have ever
Speaker 1: heard of invasive pregnancy test frogs and the invasive frogs
Speaker 1: that have have gone on to retire from being pregnancy
Speaker 1: tests ers. They also eventually realized that they could use
Speaker 1: male frogs as well, and they would basically release sperm,
Speaker 1: and they actually had a much faster test result than
Speaker 1: the female frogs, So both both males and females of
Speaker 1: the species ended up being used. But hogg Ban did
Speaker 1: not get to retain a clear claim to this discovery.
Speaker 1: While he had apparently suggested that these frogs could be
Speaker 1: used to detect certain hormones and pregnant women. He didn't
Speaker 1: really land at the idea that the frogs could be
Speaker 1: used to design a pregnancy test, and he did not
Speaker 1: set up any of the testing around it. It was
Speaker 1: Hogben's student Hill L. Shapiro and Shapiro's research partner, Harry's
Speaker 1: Warrenstein who act took the idea from theoretical to practical
Speaker 1: by designing executing studies with the frogs. Of course, the
Speaker 1: frog test caught on because if its benefits over the
Speaker 1: other options, and it was used until the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when pregnancy tests were developed that didn't involve the use
Speaker 1: of animals at all. After that, home kits eventually hit
Speaker 1: the market in the nineteen seventies, the first of which
Speaker 1: was called Predictor and which took two hours to offer
Speaker 1: a result. These were a lot more convoluted than today's
Speaker 1: where you just pe honest stick. If you have watched
Speaker 1: the Netflix series Glow, you've seen what one looks like. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I should say that they there were other tests
Speaker 1: being developed that did not involve animals before the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but they just you know, had not reached a level
Speaker 1: of reliability that they could supplant these animal based testing options.
Speaker 1: And as for the developers of the rabbit test, Maxwell E.
Speaker 1: Lapham wrote a book titled Maternity Care in Rural Communities
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, so later in that same decade after
Speaker 1: they introduced the rabbit test. The year before that, he
Speaker 1: had joined the faculty at Tulane University School of Medicine,
Speaker 1: and he actually stayed with Tulane until the end of
Speaker 1: his career. When he died at the age of eighty three,
Speaker 1: it was in Tulane University Hospital and per his New
Speaker 1: York Times obituary, during his time as dean of the
Speaker 1: medical school, he had significantly bolstered the financing of the
Speaker 1: school's research program, taking it from thirty thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: five point five million, and that was basically just through
Speaker 1: grant money. Maurice Freedman moved to the Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: Area and worked for the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. He
Speaker 1: served in the Army Air Force in World War Two
Speaker 1: as a medical officer and opened a private practice after
Speaker 1: the war was over, specializing in internal medicine. He died
Speaker 1: of cancer in nine at the age of eighty seven,
Speaker 1: and one of Dr Friedman's more famous quotes regarding the
Speaker 1: rabbit test was quote, it's highly reliable. The only more
Speaker 1: reliable test is to wait nine months. That seems like
Speaker 1: a fun place to end it, uh, since it is
Speaker 1: a little bit to me, it's very fascinating, but you know,
Speaker 1: it does get into animal testing, which is not the
Speaker 1: most delightful topic, but it's an important part, I feel
Speaker 1: like of our scientific um history, particularly as it relates
Speaker 1: obviously to reproductive medicine, and it's something that people maybe
Speaker 1: don't realize that this was something that was that was
Speaker 1: not only commonplace, but it was also already being considered
Speaker 1: in terms of animal welfare. I know in Great Britain
Speaker 1: they already had laws in place by the time the
Speaker 1: mouse test was being used about how animals could be
Speaker 1: used for medical testing. That was one of the other
Speaker 1: things that led to some of the debates around whether
Speaker 1: people should adopt the test. It was it was like, yes,
Speaker 1: but we're harming animals and you would just realize you
Speaker 1: were pregnant in a couple of weeks anyway, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of a lot of interesting layers
Speaker 1: to it, and it kind of evidence is a discussion
Speaker 1: about animal rights that was happening I think earlier than
Speaker 1: we maybe think of it exists. Yeah. Well, and that
Speaker 1: conversation connects to something that listeners asked us to talk
Speaker 1: about before, which is the synthesis of insulince and how
Speaker 1: that was developed um, which is like, it's definitely on
Speaker 1: the very long topic idealist um and also connects to
Speaker 1: some of those questions about the ethics of of animals
Speaker 1: in medicine. Yeah. I have a fun postcard from Barcelona. Nice.
Speaker 1: It is from our listener Alex uh, and I believe
Speaker 1: the other name on here is Tari, although I'm not positive. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's written very very tiny and it has been through
Speaker 1: international mail. But Alex writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, Hello
Speaker 1: from Barcelona. My wife and I are traveling Europe to
Speaker 1: celebrate her finishing her master's degree in graphic design. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: I have been meaning to come here since first learning
Speaker 1: about Lisata familia in seventh grade, so this is something
Speaker 1: of a lifelong dream being fulfilled by the way. I
Speaker 1: know you two love to shout out educators, so I
Speaker 1: would like to thank my middle school Spanish teacher. I
Speaker 1: believe that's Senora Savera for inspiring this trip and for
Speaker 1: being an incredible teacher. So yes, of course, always always
Speaker 1: my it is off to educators. It was fortuitous timing
Speaker 1: for me to get to listen to your episode on
Speaker 1: Francisco Franco a few days before I left. I have
Speaker 1: always found the Spanish Civil War very interesting, but have
Speaker 1: only learned about it through fictional works such as Pans
Speaker 1: Labyrinth and for Whom the Bell Tolls. I actually got
Speaker 1: to discuss Franco a little bit with a tour guide
Speaker 1: at a winery, and as a Catalan he had an
Speaker 1: interesting perspective as well about how the Franco regime banned
Speaker 1: the Catalan language and suppressed the culture. Anyway, thank you
Speaker 1: for the great show. So it's a beautiful it's one
Speaker 1: of those um a sort of wide postcards, and it's
Speaker 1: a really beautiful perspective on the Sagarada Familia uh from
Speaker 1: inside and it's just absolutely lovely, So thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you again. I'm always wold that people want to stop
Speaker 1: while they're traveling beautiful places and write his postcard. It's
Speaker 1: quite flattering. Yeah. Uh, if you would like to direct
Speaker 1: to us. You can do so at History Podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. You can also find us
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere on social media as missed in History,
Speaker 1: and you can go to missed in History dot com,
Speaker 1: which is our website where you will find every episode
Speaker 1: of the show that has ever existed, as well as
Speaker 1: show notes for the ones that Tracy and I have
Speaker 1: worked on. If you would like to subscribe to this podcast,
Speaker 1: I highly encourage it. That would be great. You could
Speaker 1: do that on the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: M