Famous Philip H. Abelson Quote
It has been conventional practice to test potential carcinogens using highly inbred strains of rodents. The rationale was the supposed superior reproducibility of results compared with those obtained from wild-type animals. However, that assumption can be questioned. At least three examples of genetic drift of inbred strains can be cited... Lifetime expectation [in an inbred strain of mice] of developing one or another form of neoplasm ['spontaneous tumour'] had risen from 10 to 80 percent.
By Philip H. Abelson
