Making Room for Environmental Mutagens

It is tempting to consider the possibility that one of the means by which evolution adapts mutability to environmental requirements is the achievement of a balance between the production of mutagens and sensitivity to them. 

So again, given these conditions, why did genetic toxicology arrive so late  

Geneticists Early Resistance to the Environmental Mutagenesis Thesis 

Lederberg urged that more extensive studies are needed to establish, for example, whether the germ cells of man are physiologically insulated against such chemical insults from the environment. 3 

These scientists position on the topic of chemical mutagens framed a distinctly minority opinion within the postwar genetics community. Despite Muller s and Lederberg s authority as Nobel laureates and the tendency of both to use their awards as bully pulpits, early attempts to raise public and scientific awareness must have been too distant from the practical and theoretical interests of mainstream genetics to elicit much response, vocal or otherwise.4 Viewed within the context of the radiation fallout controversy, these were modest and sporadic efforts by concerned individuals and not, as would later become the case, collective organizational responses. 

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