138 F. DEVIK 



BACQ: I wish to point out to Dr. Devik that Tabashnik from the U.S.A. has recently- 

 published a paper showing the liberation of RNase in the skin very early after irradiation 

 of guinea-pigs with /3-rays of ®"Sr. He points out that liis test is very good because he has 

 no changing population, he has no dead cells and no reproduction, so that he is constantly 

 deaUng with the same population of cells. 



UPTON: May I ask, how sharply locaUzed the change was? Did you find any diffusion of 

 activity along the margin of the irradiated area? 



DEVIK: The hradiation was very sharply locahzed. We only sampled the epidermis well 

 within the irradiated field, we did not examine the margin, 



UPTON: Due to the findhig that tumour formation tends to occur at the edges, it would be 

 be interesting to find out how sharply locaUzed this change might be in relation to the 

 margin of the irradiated area. 



devik: We have excluded so far the periphery of the field. 



koller: I would like to mention our experiments with skin autografts after total-body 

 ii-radiation. In a control experiment we also transferred skin from an irradiated animal 

 to these mice. And we were very impressed that within twenty-four hours we had such a 

 tliickening of the skua after irradiation. The eifect is very dramatic and very quick. 

 DEVIK: What dose did you use? 

 koller: The LD99. 



