Muller misled the Pugwash Conference on radiation risks

Abstract

The Pugwash Conferences have been a highly visible attempt to create profoundly important discussions on matters related to global safety and security at the highest levels, starting in 1957 at the height of the Cold War. This paper assesses, for the first time, the formal comments offered at this first Pugwash Conference by the Nobel Prize-winning radiation geneticist, Hermann J. Muller, on the effects of ionizing radiation on the human genome. This analysis shows that the presentation by Muller was highly biased and contained scientific errors and misrepresentations of the scientific record that resulted in seriously misleading the attendees. The presentation of Muller at Pugwash served to promote, on a very visible global scale, continued misrepresentations of the state of the science and had a significant impact on policies and practices internationally and both scientific and personal belief systems concerning the effects of low dose radiation on human health. These misrepresentations would come to affect the adoption and use of nuclear technologies and the science of radiological and chemical carcinogen health risk assessment, ultimately having a profound effect on global environmental health.

Keywords:

• Atomic bombs
• cancer
• dose response
• ionizing radiation
• mutation
• scientific misconduct

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data statement

Data sharing is not applicable—no new data generated.

Disclaimer

The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute for governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing policies or endorsement, either expressed or implied. Sponsors were not involved in study design, collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to and where to submit for publication consideration.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Muller had a unique perspective as he had lived in the Soviet Union from 1933 to 1937, having then lost his infatuation with the Soviet Union while living under Stalin (Carlson 1981). As Muller would later write: “The problem of living peacefully with them [i.e., Soviet Union] while maintaining our own freedoms is not as simple as he [Cyrus Eaton, organizer and host of the meeting] seems to think” (Carlson 1981, 378, letter from Muller to Randall Hilton October 8, 1959).

2 Even though Muller was perhaps the leading radiation geneticist of his era, he displayed some limitations when it came to predicting the future of his field, something that the Pugwash attendees might have expected or hoped for. For example, in his 1938 letter to Stalin, Muller wrote: “….for it is not possible artificially to change the genes themselves in any particular, specified directions. The idea that this can be done is an idle fantasy, probably not realizable for thousands of years at least” (Glad 2003). In far less than 100 years, society is on the threshold of such developments with CRISPR “gene editing” techniques. This statement is not a criticism that Muller could not predict the future but rather suggests that Muller was not open to other possibilities.

Additional information

Funding

EJC acknowledges longtime support from the US Air Force (AFOSR FA9550-19-1-0413) and ExxonMobil Foundation (S18200000000256). The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute for governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing policies or endorsement, either expressed or implied. Sponsors had no involvement in study design, collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to and where to submit for publication consideration.