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. 136 The threat posed to the patient by the bacterialloads of medical professionals could not compare to the fear engenderedin those same professionals by the new hemorrhagic diseases harbored bypatients.When hemorrhagic diseases were found not to be as infectious asfirst feared, the Trexler isolator quickly fell into disuse.Within the NHS,at the time of writing, isolators are a peripheral technology maintainedat two designated High-Security Infectious Diseases Units (the Royal FreeHospital, Hampstead, which was previously Coppetts Wood Hospital, andNewcastle upon Tyne Hospital).Yet, germ-free life and medical isolators,continue to wield a strong presence in the cultural imagination.Withinfiction, germ-free isolation technologies have become an instantly rec-ognizable backdrop of imagined future worlds, where deadly and highlyinfectious diseases necessitate their existence.In the absence of highly infectious diseases, and whilst antibiotics con-tinue to be a viable treatment of choice, it would seem that, outside thelaboratory, germ-free technology will remain more prominent in sciencefiction than medical fact.At least, that is, for now.137135.For the role of risk perception in medical innovation, see Thomas Schlich andUlrich Tröhler, eds., The Risks of Medical Innovation Risk Perception and Assessment in HistoricalContext (London: Routledge, 2006).136. Evaluation of the Trexler Containment Isolator, Report of the Central SteeringGroup, June 1977, NA MH148/362.137.Concerns regarding a return of infectious diseases, catalyzed by the fear of bioter-rorism and potential flu pandemics, have refocused attention on microbial isolation as ameans of containment; see Clin.Microbiol.Infect.15 (2009): 8.274 robert g.w.kirkFigure 9.The Trexler isolator has frequently featured in the imagined medicalfuture of Judge Dredd, a fictional lawman combining the roles of judge, jury, andexecutioner to keep order in the violent and overpopulated twenty-second-century Mega City One (1977 to date).Dredd is among the best known of British comiccharacters whose chief writers in the 1980s, Wagner and Grant, drew inspirationfor their work by extrapolating from contemporary scientific and medical jour-nals.Source: John Wagner and Alan Grant,  Otto Sump s Ugly Clinic, 2000 AD187 (1980): 7.© 2012 Rebellion A/S.All rights reserved.Used with permission.www.2000ADonline.comLife in a Germ-Free World 275robert g.w.kirk is a Wellcome Research Fellow at the Centre for the Historyof Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester.Hisresearch addresses nonhuman animal roles in science and medicine, as wellas the place of nonhuman animals in history and historical writing, a subjecthe has explored through the history of the medicinal leech.He is currentlyworking on the history of twentieth-century animal experimentation, focusingon the growing importance of laboratory animal welfare and the emergenceof the  3Rs (being the reduction, refinement, and replacement of animalsin biomedical research) [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]