Appendix C: 

 "The Alta Summit, 

 December 1984"* 



Robert Miillan 

 Cook-Deegan 



Alta is a ski area nestled among the Saguache Mountains in Utah, a winding 40- 

 niinute drive southeast from Salt Lake City. From December 9 to 13, 1984, 

 visitors were isolated by repeated blizzards. The slopes were covered most 

 mornings with Utah's renowned fine light powder, which beckoned skiers to cut its 

 virgin surface. 



For those 3 days. Alta was also a capital of human genetics. Many historical threads in 

 the fabric that later became the Human Genome Project wind through that meeting, 

 although it was not a meeting on mapping or sequencing the human genome. Through 

 happenstance and historical accident, Alta links human genome projects to research on 

 the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 40 years earlier. If 

 genome projects prove important to biology, then historians will note the Alta meeting. 



The Alta meeting was sponsored by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the 

 International Commission for Protection Against Environmental Mutagens and 

 Carcinogens. It was initiated by David Smith of DOE and Mortimer Mendelsohn of the 

 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, who turned over final organization to 

 Raymond White of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Utah. 



The purpose was to ask those working on the front lines of DNA analytical methods to 

 address a specific technical question: could new methods permit direct detection of 

 mutations, and more specifically could any increase in the mutation rate among 

 survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings be detected (in them or in their 

 children)? The idea behind the Alta meeting came from another meeting on March 4 



*Reprinted with permission from 

 Academic Press. Inc.. Genomics 5. 

 661-663 (October 1989), 



140 



