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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There are already many mutations stored away in the human species. They were caused by natural agents, such as cosmic rays striking through the sex organs. But man-made agents can cause mutations faster. Last year, Professor Muller won a Nobel prize for proving that X rays beamed through fruit flies can breed a crop of monstrosities (TIME, Nov.11...
Delayed Peril. Dr. Muller has often said that physicians should go easy with X rays, to avoid "genetic deaths." Far more dangerous, obviously, is the use of atomic energy, which gives off floods of X rays (gamma rays). "When an atomic bomb . . . kills 100,000 people directly," Dr. Muller says, "enough mutations may have been implanted in the survivors . . . to cause at least as many genetic deaths . . . dispersed throughout the population over . . . thousands of years...
...coming, if civilization survives at all. But . . . due precautions must be taken against possible mutational effects. . . . With [greater] use of atomic power . . . the problem of disposing of the radioactive byproducts . . . becomes more and more general. . . . The simple lead screens which suffice to protect people's reproductive organs from X rays are quite inadequate. . . . The immediate effects of small exposures may be quite invisible, and the mutational effects are so remote that there will be a strong temptation ... to disregard them. Yet these tiny effects, as regards mutation, are cumulative over an indefinite period. . . . Exposure to the radiation . . . repeated generation...
...operation or by X-ray or radium treatment...
Last week things were looking up. Francis X. Bushman was a hit playing a gregarious ham actor called Major Carson (reminiscent of the comic strip's Major Hoople) on The Rexall Summer (Theater. In a sudsy serial, Bob and Victoria, he oozed kindly wisdom persuasively enough to insure himself a berth on that show for some years to come. "My radio family," he explained cheerfully, "is so longevious that at this rate I should be in soap opera for 30 years...