Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Morrill I, N344, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA.
Chem Biol Interact. 2023 Sep 1;382:110614. doi: 10.1016/j.cbi.2023.110614. Epub 2023 Jun 23.
In 1949 Robley Evans [1] published a paper in Science supporting a threshold dose response for ionizing radiation-induced mutation, contradicting comments of Hermann Muller during his 1946 Nobel Prize Lecture [2] and subsequent presentations. Evans sent a final draft [3] prior to publication to over 50 leading geneticists/radiologists, including Muller, with this correspondence being generally extremely supportive, including letters from the radiation geneticists Curt Stern, James Neel and Donald Charles. Of interest is that Muller engaged in a dispute with Evans, with Evans dismissing Muller's comments as containing "a few points of scientific interest, and many matters pertaining to personalities and prejudices." A foundation of the Evans threshold position was the study by Ernst Caspari, which was done under the direction of Curt Stern, at the University of Rochester/Manhattan Project, and for which Muller was a paid consultant, thereby having insider knowledge of the research team, results and internal debates. Muller published a series of articles after the Evans Science publication that marginalized the Caspari findings, claiming that his control group was aberrantly high, which caused his threshold conclusion to be incorrect. Internal correspondence in 1947 between Muller and Stern reveals that Muller supported the use of the Caspari control group based on consistency with his own laboratory data. This correspondence shows that Muller reversed his position three years later, soon after the Evans publication. In that same 1947 correspondence with Stern, Muller also claimed that the mutational findings of Delta Uphoff, who was replicating the Caspari study, could not be supported because of aberrantly low control group values only to reverse himself to support the LNT model. The present paper links Muller's threshold rejection/LNT supporting actions to the timing of the debate with Evans concerning Evans' use of the Caspari data to support the threshold model. It is of historical significance that the duplicitous actions of Muller were rewarded, with his newly expressed reversed views becoming generally accepted (while his previously documented contrary views were hidden/remained private). At the same time, the marginalizing of the Caspari findings greatly impacted recommendations to support LNT by major advisory committees.
1949 年，罗利·埃文斯（Robley Evans）[1]在《科学》杂志上发表了一篇论文，支持电离辐射诱导突变的阈剂量反应，这与赫尔曼·穆勒（Hermann Muller）在 1946 年诺贝尔奖演讲[2]和随后的演讲中的评论相矛盾。埃文斯在发表前将最终草案[3]寄给了 50 多位领先的遗传学家/放射学家，包括穆勒，这些信件普遍非常支持，包括辐射遗传学家 Curt Stern、James Neel 和 Donald Charles 的来信。有趣的是，穆勒与埃文斯发生了争执，埃文斯认为穆勒的评论“有几点科学意义，但也有很多涉及个人和偏见的问题”。埃文斯阈值立场的基础是恩斯特·卡斯帕里（Ernst Caspari）的研究，该研究是由 Curt Stern 在罗切斯特大学/曼哈顿计划的指导下进行的，而穆勒是该研究团队的付费顾问，因此他对研究团队、结果和内部争论有内幕了解。埃文斯在《科学》杂志发表后，穆勒发表了一系列文章，淡化了卡斯帕里的发现，声称他的对照组异常高，导致他的阈值结论不正确。1947 年，穆勒和斯特恩之间的内部通信显示，穆勒支持使用卡斯帕里的对照组，因为这与他自己的实验室数据一致。这封信表明，穆勒在三年后，也就是埃文斯发表后不久，改变了立场。在与斯特恩的同一份 1947 年的通信中，穆勒还声称，德尔塔·乌普霍夫（Delta Uphoff）的突变发现不能得到支持，因为对照组的值异常低，而他自己之前的研究结果则相反，转而支持 LNT 模型。本文将穆勒对阈剂量的反对和对 LNT 的支持与他与埃文斯就埃文斯使用卡斯帕里数据支持阈剂量模型的争论时间联系起来。具有历史意义的是，穆勒的两面派行为得到了回报，他新表达的观点被普遍接受（而他以前记录的相反观点则被隐藏/保密）。与此同时，卡斯帕里研究结果的边缘化对支持 LNT 的主要咨询委员会的建议产生了重大影响。
