FOOES e Evening Stat The WITH SUNDAY MORNING EDITION & WASHINGTON, D. C., WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1954—THIRTY-SIX PAGES. Home De Evenings —_—_—- — OL = Shadow of the Atom Lies Over Human Race Strikes at Chain of Life. Scientists Use Fruit Flies to See if Radiation Will Affect Generations to Be Born in the Future Editor’s Note: Is it nossible that an invisible, slow- acting, largely undetectable poison is acting on the human race? The question of the cffect of atomic radiation ts one of those paramount today in the scientific world. The Star's science editor. Thomas R. Henry, has erplored the subiect exhaustively in recent weeks, His findings will appear ina series of six stories, of which this is the first. By Thomas R. Henry Science Editor of The Star A somber shadowlies over the promised atomic age. It is a threat to the continued existence of man on earth, implied from results of experiments with lower animals. It is not the frequently voiced threat of slaughter and destruction in war on an unprecedented scale. but of the effects of a hidden, insidious, largely undetectable and un- controilable poison which perhaps is capabie of destroying the humun race as a biological penus. According to this The poison is the effect on germ plasm—the stream of life which binds cenerations—of the slowly increasing background radiation of the earth itself. including the atmosphere and the seas, which maybe the aftermath of both American and Russian experimental explosions of atomic bombs, and possibly from effur:s to develop atomic energy for peacetime uses. Horrors of an atomic war often have been pictured— preat cities laid waste, millions killed, even civilization itself destroved. But such calamities do not cqual in magnitude the long-range threat which might not begin to become evident for several generations. according to these geneticists. Their thesis is based largely on theoretical considerations. without thoroughly convincing or precise cata. Such data will be extremely difficull. costly and perhaps impossible to obtein, Possibiv never before has science been taced with such an elusive tasK as the one involved in obtaining convineing evidence to prove or disprove the assumptions in question. The postulated effects are quite sécurely hidden. No microsc@ge will reveal them. Few, if any. now ahve wil Wt SS (hers in human beings. It probably will be necessary (Continued on Pare ed. Col 23 thesis. which admutted!y is far from satisfactorily established, it is met members of the present Tt js their unkern degeneration who are being iniured scendants for generations ta come. This is the recent warning of some of the world’s furemost They have been discussing it. largely an highly geneticists technical payers before spechuteed wudiences for 200 years, Now men hke Prof. A. TH. Sturtesant of Calitorima Tnstitite of Technoleey: Dr. E. D. Adrian, ne dent of the Royal Society of London; Dr. Herman J. Muder ot the University of Indiana. BEST COPY AVAILABLE and Piince Louis de Broslie, a ieeding French phy must. teel that mankind at large should be made aware of its peri They have been moved to expres + thar own feats tw what they consider quite unintormed they have dn mind Gores bac exp! ora cmencs that che per DOSARCHIVES