MUTAGENS CURRENTLY OF POTENTIAL 

 SIGNIFICANCE TO MAN AND OTHER SPECIES 



AVRAM GOLDSTEIN 



Department of Pharmacology 



Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 



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The title of this presentation refers to "man and other species." 

 However, I shall confine myself to man, and to the question whether 

 substances which have been shown to be mutagenic in'other organisms 

 and about which we have heard a great deal here yesterday may have 

 any significance at all as mutagens in man. As you will see, there is 

 very little concrete information, so that what I might be able to 

 accomplish today, with your help, is to indicate some areas where 

 it would be useful to have more data and to suggest what kinds of 

 investigation in man might be initiated to clarify the situation further. 



First, I shall make some general remarks related to potential muta- 

 gens in man, that is, to drugs in man and to the exposure of man to a 

 chemical environment. Second, I shall present a brief survey of drugs 

 and other substances to which man is exposed. Third, I shall indulge 

 in a rather detailed discussion of caffeine, which, as I shall try to show, 

 is a contender of first importance among possibly significant chemical 

 mutagens in man. Finally, I would like to initiate a discussion of 

 what specific steps should be taken to gain more information about 

 this problem and to minimize any genetic hazards that may be shown 

 to exist or to be likely in consequence of man's exposure to chemical 

 agents. 



In recent years there has been, I believe, some overemphasis on 

 the genetic hazards of radiation, accompanied by an underemphasis 

 on the possible genetic hazards of chemical mutagens. I can illustrate 

 this by two quotations indicative of a belief that man is in some way 

 protected against chemical insults. 



Haldane (30) wrote in 1954, for example, ''radiation and high-speed 

 particles are efficient because they can generate such mutagenic 

 substances inside the nucleus, whereas, if they (mutagenic substances) 



