186 MUTATIONS 



logical use of these drugs, but just the total amount produced in the 

 world, divided by the world population, for every drug? 



Goldstein: Actually, Dr. Magni, some drugs would have to appear 

 in more than one category. Morphine would be in Category I, referring 

 to its casual use — all of us have been exposed to it at one time or an- 

 other in connection with a surgical procedure or something like that. 

 However, for the special group of addicts it falls into Category II. 

 Likewise, aspirin would appear in Category I because most people have 

 taken an occasional one but it is not a long-term, continuous exposure. 

 On the other hand, if you consider the world production, there's an 

 awful lot of exposure to aspirin in the world population. So you do have 

 to look at it in both ways. The risk to the individual and the risk to 

 the germ plasm of the human race in many cases may be quite different 

 matters. In a sense, therefore, the classifications are very arbitrary. 



If there are drugs to which a large part of the world population is 

 exposed occasionally, as in the case of aspirin, or drugs that some 

 people are exposed to for long periods of time, such as atropine, to 

 which people with peptic ulcer may be exposed for many years, are 

 we obliged, or is it useful, to test them all to make sure they are not 

 mutagens? This is something that may some day be raised as a prac- 

 tical matter as more interest develops in this area, and I think it is 

 worth some discussion. 



I am going to ask Dr. Novick if he would consider for us some of the 

 problems that would arise in devising any kind of standard test of 

 mutagenesis which could be run routinely, much as all drugs are tested 

 for toxicity before they are released upon the population or put into 

 the physician's hands. 



Novick: I think that the moral is an obvious one — there is no such 

 tiling as a standard test that one could contrive for mutagenesis. Any 

 evidence of mutagenesis in any organism is prima facie evidence for 

 concern, and it would then depend upon the clinicians to discover if 

 there is any cause for concern in man. If you find that caffeine is 

 mutagenic in bacteria, then one ought to consider it a hazard for 

 humans, a priori, until found otherwise. 



Lederberg: From the somatic standpoint? 



Novick: Both the somatic and germinal standpoints. 



Atwood: Two things can now be done in man. If you want to see 

 whether human chromosomes are broken by these agents, you could 

 use the in vitro phytohemagglutinin-induced mitosis in the white blood 

 cells, which occurs within 24 hours after drawing the blood. For some 

 reason yet unknown, if phytohemagglutinin is added, the cells 



