274 A]snsrQAL report Smithsonian institution, 1953 



way are very considerable. Even in so inexpensive an animal as the 

 chicken the recent discovery of a particular lethal gene has bared 

 losses, now avoidable, which in a single hatchery amounted to more 

 than $180,000 over the last 10 years. 



The most significant applications of genetics concern ourselves. 

 Men are born genetically unequal. This is a fact of nature, and quite 

 independent of the conclusions which may result from its political 

 and sociological interpretations. Man is therefore a subject of genetic 

 investigation, and much has been learned about him in our time. The 

 produce of this knowledge extends both to the individual and to the 

 community. How much personal worry is relieved when the human 

 geneticist can advise a healthy questioner that his or her chances of 

 having normal children are as good as anyone else's in spite of the 

 fact that perhaps the father, his mother, and several brothers and 

 sisters have been afflicted with some serious abnormality. How much 

 further suffering has been avoided when the genetic counselor had to 

 predict the high probability of a sad affliction reappearing in a 

 family, should a new pregnancy be attempted. Human heredity 

 clinics fulfill a great need, and are still all too few. 



Yet more important than such advice from case to case are the 

 applications to policy. The urgent warnings of geneticists against 

 careless use of X-rays and other ionizing radiations may well have 

 prevented the production of thousands of human mutations bad in 

 effect, as most of them are. In today's world of atomic-energy use, 

 the need of shielding workers from radiation has taken on greater 

 significance than ever. 



The case against careless irradiation transcends the interest in 

 the immediate offspring of exposed persons. Many induced mutant 

 genes will not show their effect in the first generation but at any time, 

 far into the future. This aspect widens the responsibility of a 

 world today beyond its usual care. The well- or ill-being of our 

 distant descendants is, to some extent, in our power. This power 

 is not restricted to the yet minor aspect of radiation genetics. If 

 men are unequal genetically, then our actions and inactions are 

 bound to influence the genetic composition of the future human 

 populations. 



The applications of genetic knowledge to this great problem are 

 largely negative at present in that they serve to expose misconceptions. 

 It is important, for instance, to debunk authoritatively distributed 

 pamphlets which endeavor to encourage large families by the mis- 

 statement: "Heredity favors the third, fourth, fifth and subsequent 

 children rather than the first two, who are apt to inherit some of 

 the commonest physical and mental defects 1" It is important to 

 rectify the opinion that political and moral equalitarianism has any 

 bearing on the biological facts of man's genetic diversity. It is 



