BAR HARBOR, MAINE—When fire swept through part of a mouse-breeding building at the Jackson Laboratory on May 10, there wasn't enough time for fear. There was only time to react, says Philip Standel, who oversees Jackson's famous program for breeding laboratory mice in large numbers and shipping them to researchers all over the world.
Trapped in each of the 15 rooms of the building's two wings, in cages stacked in multitiered shelves, were at least 8,000 breeding pairs of mice and their infant offspring. Their genetic profiles made them vital to experiments conducted by scientists around the world (The Scientist, July 11, 1988, page 1).
As firefighters battled the blaze, Standel and other lab employees formed a human chain, passing cages hand to hand out of the building. "After about an hour, the fire marshal told us, 'That's it, no more,' because it was no longer safe," recalls Standel.
Geneticist ...
