JEANNE WILSON-RAWLS

I think, initially, I would have said I was a technical consultant and organism gatherer. I think that Eduardo's lack of understanding of the necessities involved in maintaining an environment for animals was required to do the kinds of things that he wanted to do…it ended up being… I think all of the production crew, myself included, ended up being collaborators in this particular piece of art. Eduardo certainly had the initial vision but it really required the team of us to interpret that into what's going to be the final exhibit.
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For me there are two ways to look at this. I really think for a lot of the images of genetically modified organisms that we make are beautiful. If you look around our lab, you'll see a lot of them. And certainly, we've always felt that this was some sort of an art, our own scientifically nouveau art, I guess. But I do understand people's issues with this. You don't want to minimize the importance of these organisms to research. You don't want people to…who aren't aware of the necessity for this type of work to move research forward to think that we are thinking of these animals in a frivolous manner.
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I've always thought that the images that we generate are beautiful and I've always thought that the general public misses out on seeing a lot of these images because there published in scientific journals and nobody reads them except for us. I thought it was interesting way to let people see some of the things that we see in a way that they didn't have to necessarily spend a lot of time thinking about the science behind it.
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Well, I think you have to first accept that that's what you're going to deal with. For us in science and the type of work and the type of questions that we're interested in require the use of mice. If I could do it another way, I would but there just isn't another way to do it. I think you have to be cognizant of how they're dealt with, you have to understand your responsibilities as a researcher, you have to attend all…attend to all of their needs; food, water, safe housing, protection from the elements
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