Genetic mutations are an unimportant, though very interesting, side aspect of any energy production, not necessarily nuclear, but since genetics is not a widely known subject among the public, they have a quite undeserved air of the mysterious about them, which makes them perfect for the fear mongers.
The same, incidentally, is true of warfare. What man fears most is not the terrible, but the unknown, and though the heat and blast of nuclear weapons cause the overwhelming part of the casualties, Caldicott's cohorts have correctly discerned that this is not what frightens people most, and they have taken to scaring them with what they understand least: radiation (which killed under 400 out of some 100,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and genetic mutations (which, if there were any at all, have so far eluded a long and lavish program of searching for them.)
The salient facts are these: genetic mutations are a natural phenomenon that man has always lived with. Some 2% of all children are born with a serious genetic defect, and another 8% are born with a predisposition to hereditary diseases in which genes play a role, but other factors are also important (diabetes, for example). This adds up to no less than 10 1/8 of "genetic effects" among all liveborn children. Such defects, in the very rare cases when they are caused by man-made radiation, breed themselves out of the species by the laws of natural selection
¾if they survive another generation at all.Less than 10% of all genetic mutations is due to radiation, and of that, only a minuscule fraction derives from nuclear power: The biggest exposure is due to the natural background, which is followed by the man-made contributions. The biggest of those used to come from the sources used in medicine, but this may now be surpassed by the radon daughters trapped in homes due to over-zealous energy conversation.
GRAPHIC: A01_8301.TIF
(Caption: "The dangers of nuclear power are forever. Forever." [pregnant woman silhouette] This type of fear mongering increases the rate of genetic mutations: 90% are due to chemical mutagens, including those in fossils; and among man-made radiation, over-zealous energy conservation gives by far the largest dose.)
As always, the figures used by safety committees err on the safe side. It is, for example, assumed that the measurements made on other mammals are (generation for generation) transferable to man; yet recent research strongly suggests that mice (usually used because of their fast reproduction) are four times as susceptible to genetic mutations by radiation as man. It is also assumed that a genetic mutation (i.e., change) must be for the worse, although if it were not for genetic mutations, the scaremongers would still be amoebas floating in the primordial soup.
Now for the basics: The male sperm and female egg each carry 23 chromosomes, long strings of thousands of genes (chemicals like beads on the string), the latter determining the traits of the offspring. When the two unite, the number of chromosomes remains the same (half of double), but all the traits of all the ancestors remain coded in the genes. Of course, only some of the traits of some of the ancestors appear in a particular individual growing out of the union. Which those traits will be is impossible to predict for a given single individual, but can be predicted quite accurately as a probability
¾ that is, as a fraction of a very large number of offspring.If these probability and other laws were simple, textbooks of genetics would not have 800 pages; but there are some simple basics. For example, if the gene is "dominant," it will win over an alternative "recessive" gene of the other parent in determining, say, the color of the eyes. Traits of recessive genes are carried over with high probability only if both of the two genes (coding, say, the same eye color) are recessive.
The great majority of all abnormalities and hereditary diseases is carried by recessive genes, so that they appear in offspring with high probability only if both parents are so encumbered. (An interesting sidelight: Most cultures on the globe must somehow have sensed or observed this result thousands of years before Mendel, for most of them prohibited incest.) The exceptions, such as certain types of anaemia, where the disease is inherited via a dominant gene are rare and occur only in about 1% of the population.
Inherited diseases or abnormalities are often originally caused by mutations
¾for example, by the ionizing effects of radiation changing a gene or breaking a chromosome. The reason why the vast majority of such mutations is recessive is the law of natural selection: what makes a species more viable is bred in, what makes it less so is bred out. Nature does not tolerate deviations from the normal for long, and it does not tolerate large deviations at all: they are aborted before they are born (about 20% of all spontaneous abortions are in this class).[The same consistency of nature in "abhorring the abnormal" can also often be observed in the inanimate world: for example, nature does not tolerate large energy differences in adjacent systems for long, and it does not tolerate violations of their energy balance at all.]
But instead of "curing" genetic mutations, nature usually prevents them. The reason why there are so few radiation-induced genetic mutations in the first place is that if radiation does ionize an atom of a molecule in a cell (and mostly it passes through the cell harmlessly), it will not modify the cell, but it will kill it.
These two fundamental ways of natures self-protection
¾prevention by killing rather than modifying the cell, and healing by the law of natural selection¾do not, of course, depend on the strength of the radiation or the damage inflicted, and the principle (though not the numerical values) remains valid for the case of war. It is not accidental that no radiation-induced genetic mutations can be found in Japan. Nor is it accidental that the Physicians "for" Social Responsibility do not find nuclear war horrible enough as it is and concoct additional bogeys to justify their drive for preemptive surrender.|
Vol. 10, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 10, No. 5 Date: November 23, 2004 04:26 PM Title: No apologies
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