Hi guys and gals,
Just thought you might be interested in knowing that the guy, who introduced the flexible film isolator to lab animal science AND founded the Association for Gnotobiotics, is turning 96 today [July 30, 2007] and is in good health...ever since he got his pacemaker he's been like the energizer bunny!!!!
He has macular degeneration, so he doesn't have an email account any more and can only read books with the aid of a TV monitor, but he's quite happy living with his stepson and family in Vancouver, BC which includes his 3 great grandsons, aged 4, 12 and 14...so life is NOT dull for Trex, to say the LEAST.
For you young whippersnappers who don't know whom I am talking about, read Dr. Trexler's chapter in AALAS' publication, "50 Years of Laboratory Animal Science", chapter 16, pp:121-128.
Trex is also the guy who ran the ILAR workshop in June 1960 at the LOBUND Institute at Notre Dame for 10 commercial breeders and one governmental breeder (listed in the publication above) to show them how to derive their nucleus stocks into the germfree state, thereby ridding them of everything from ectoparasites (fleas, ticks, lice, and mites) to endoparasites (pinworms, tapeworms, etc) to bacterial pathogens (Salmonella, Mycoplasma, etc) to adventitious (not endogenous) viral pathogens (MHV, Sendai, MVM, etc).
He was a tough cookie, making the attendees of that workshop keep mice germfree for a full year before awarding them a certificate of accomplishment...all but one commercial supplier (Blue Spruce, which was bought out long ago) stuck it out and won that certificate. Trex gave a report on all this in the Proc. Anim. Care Panel (subsequently Laboratory Animal Science and subsequent to that, Comparative Medicine)..a most interesting reading and very historic event in the history of our field. (Proc. Anim. Care Panel, 11: 249-253.
That workshop was the moment in the history of LAS when the health status of laboratory animals went from one end of the spectrum to the other, making it possible to conduct studies free of these numerous interfering disease agents. No longer did one have to monitor a polio vaccine with the fear that the mice utilized might have mouse polio, thereby invalidating the study, etc, etc, etc. ad nauseum.
It was most appropriate for the ACLAM to make Trex an honorary member, for Notre Dame to give him an honorary Doctorate degree, and for the AALAS to give him it's highest award, the Griffin Award. WHAT a guy!
HAPPY BOITDAY to TREX,
roger
Roger P. Orcutt, Ph.D.
Biomedical Research Associates
