In 1953 I joined
the laboratory of H. J. Muller at Indiana University in Bloomington. Muller received a Nobel Prize in Medicine in
1946 for his work inducing mutations in fruit flies with x-rays. He is considered the founding father of
radiation genetics. He had considerable
fame before his discovery of radiation mutagenesis and with T. H. Morgan, C. B.
Bridges, and A. H. Sturtevant was a member of the “fly lab” that helped launch
classical genetics in the United States.
Working with
Muller was intense because he worked seven days a week and expected his
students to do so also. He was committed
to genetics as his life’s work and communicated that energy and enthusiasm by
his example. He taught three courses
each year and brought to them the latest knowledge in genetics and the history
of each topic we explored. He liked to
think on his feet and rarely had more than a 3 inch square piece of paper with
notes for his lectures. Muller told us
that genetics was not like a game. He said it was the most subversive science
because it dealt with the most controversial implications for society. He took a leading role in defending the
public from radiation abuse. There was
plenty of that in medicine -- excess radiation used when not needed such as
straightening out a child’s bow legs, using radiation at very high doses (100
roentgens) to induce ovulation in infertile women, routine x-raying in the
pelvic (gonadal) area by chiropractors.
There was also abuse in commercial applications (shoe fitting in shoe
stores using fluoroscopes). Manufacturing
usage often involved x-raying welding for ship building with inadequate or no shielding
for workers. After WW II he spoke out against abuses by the military with
excessive atmospheric testing and poor protection for soldiers and sailors
during those military exercises. Muller
felt risks should be understood and doses kept as low as possible and abuses
regulated by law.
Muller’s life
was filled with contradictions and controversies. He believed in freedom but he naively believed
that freedom existed in the USSR. When
he went there in 1933-1937 he learned he was wrong and two of his students were
arrested and executed as Trotskyites.
Muller had the courage to debate T. D. Lysenko who advocated western
genetics was a bourgeois fascistic invention and that Lysenko could alter
heredity by shattering it and retraining it.
Muller called Lysenko on stage a charlatan no different from those
practicing shamanism and quackery.
Muller’s conscience resonated with my own and I have tried to
communicate to my students in my non-majors biology classes that scientific
knowledge has to be applied in an ethical context because there are unintended
consequences to the uses of new knowledge.
I later wrote Muller’s biography and over the years I have had to
respond to attacks on his integrity as a scientist by those that Muller would
accuse of living by wishful thinking or denial.
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