James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War debates and the genetic effects of low-dose radiation.
نویسندگان
چکیده
This article traces disagreements about the genetic effects of low-dose radiation exposure as waged by James Neel (1915-2000), a central figure in radiation studies of Japanese populations after World War II, and Yuri Dubrova (1955-), who analyzed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. In a 1996 article in Nature, Dubrova reported a statistically significant increase in the minisatellite (junk) DNA mutation rate in the children of parents who received a high dose of radiation from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting studies that found no significant inherited genetic effects among offspring of Japanese A-bomb survivors. Neel's subsequent defense of his large-scale longitudinal studies of the genetic effects of ionizing radiation consolidated current scientific understandings of low-dose ionizing radiation. The article seeks to explain how the Hiroshima/Nagasaki data remain hegemonic in radiation studies, contextualizing the debate with attention to the perceived inferiority of Soviet genetic science during the Cold War.
منابع مشابه
Genetic studies at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission– Radiation Effects Research Foundation: 1946–1997 (genetic effects of atomic bombsyradiation geneticsygenetic epidemiologyycritique of Dubrova reportyHiroshima and Nagasaki)
It is difficult, some 52 years later, to recreate the intensity of the concern about the delayed effects of exposure to the atomic bombs, as well as other radiation exposures, that surfaced in the first few months after the bombings. It is not generally appreciated that the survival in Japan of so many persons receiving exposures to ionizing radiation up to the amount compatible with survival w...
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Journal of the history of biology
دوره 48 1 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2015