Quarreling geneticists and a diplomat.

Abstract

I N the 1950s the hydrogen bomb was new; it was also fearsome.Some of the test explosions produced debris that was dispersed by high-altitude winds, dropping radioactive fallout over an entire hemisphere.Some geneticists feared that mutations induced by the radiation would constitute a significant genetic hazard to future generations.Other people argued that the tests were a necessary part of the Cold War.Above-ground testing became a divisive political issue and played a large role in the presidential campaign between DWIGHT EISENHOWER and ADW STEVENSON, STEVENSON calling for cessation.Responding to calls for a scientific evaluation, the President of the National Academy of Sciences, D. W. BRONK, appointed six committees to study the question. Collectively they were called the Committee on Biological Effects of AtomicRadiations (BEAR).Because of the very low individual doses, most effects of the fallout were thought to be unimportant.Cancer risks were not regarded as significant, because at that time it was generally assumed that somatic effects, cancer in particular, occurred only above a threshold dose much higher than any individual would receive from peacetime nuclear applications.In contrast, geneticists believed that each dose, however small, carried a correspondingly small but nevertheless real risk of mutation induction.And a tiny dose to billions of people added up to an enormous number of ionizations.The genetics committee included some of the best known geneticists of the classical period: MULLER,

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