Artificial insemination was the first conceptive technology to be widely used in agriculture. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century all cows in England and Wales were mated to bulls, by the end of the 1950s 60% conceived through artificial insemination. By then a national network of ‘cattle breeding centres’ brought AI within the reach of every farmer. In this paper I explore how artificial insemination, which had few supporters in the 1920s and 1930s, was transformed into an ‘indispensable’ (...) method for reproducing cattle. I discuss the factors that made organised AI possible , including changes in cultures of cattle breeding, novel State involvement in bovine reproduction, the rise of new ‘animal breeding research’ centres at Cambridge, Edinburgh and Reading universities, war preparations and central planning by the Milk Marketing Board . I go on to show that the unprecedented focus on bovine reproduction set in motion by the AI centres effectively generated new networks of reproductive research, through these the ‘biopower’ of the farm was incorporated into the clinic. The example of AI shows that by combining the history of reproductive technology in agriculture and medicine we can give a richer account of modern reproduction. (shrink)

While cloning, stem cells, and regenerative medicine are often imagined in a futurial idiom—as expectations, hype, hope and promises—this article approaches the remaking of genealogy in such contexts from a historical route. Through a series of somewhat disparate historical connections linking Australian sheep to the development of clinical IVF and the cloning of Dolly at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1996, this article explores the linkages through which agriculture, embryology, and reproductive biomedicine are thickly intertwined. Key to this examination (...) is not only the history of experimental sheep breeding, and its somewhat unexpectedly genealogical connections to national identity , but also the re-emergence of a distinctive frontier ethos in the context of assisted conception, and later human embryonic stem cell derivation. I have set this scene of genealogical interconnection against the criss-crossing traffic between Britain and Australia, and the wool trade, to emphasise the importance of global, as well as local, connections in the bloodlines of animals such as Dolly. In sum, this article examines the idea of the ‘biological frontier’ by exploring its histories as a means to offset the assumption that this frequently encountered idiom describes a future that is, or must be, by definition, unknown and unknowable. (shrink)

Three scientific societies devoted to the study of reproduction were established in Britain, France and USA in the middle of the twentieth century by clinical, veterinary and agricultural scientists. The principal motivation for their establishment had been the study of sterility and fertility of people and livestock. There was also a wider perspective embracing other biologists interested in reproduction more generally. Knowledge disseminated through the societies’ scientific meetings and publications would bear upon human and animal population problems as well as (...) basic reproductive physiology and its applications. New journals dealing with reproductive physiology, having worldwide appeal, were established in Britain and USA. The financial resources of at least one of the societies and its journal are directed towards charitable functions, including financial support for travel to scientific meetings, for visits to particular laboratories, and for research in the short term, including that of undergraduates. Perhaps the example of the British society has given rise to others having a more specialised focus, as well as to the formation of the European Society for the Study of Human Reproduction and Embryology. (shrink)