Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley].
- Julian Huxley
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Must readers accept Muller's statement that the findings of geneticists such as Scheinfeld and Altenburg are so recondite that even exemplification is out of the question? Is their curiosity about genetic research never to be even partially satisfied unless the sacred text of the geneticists' actual words is perused reveren tially ? This correspondent has made the mistake— alas, all too common !—of ascribing statements to his adversary which he never made. What Muller wrote was that neither public platforms nor non-technical periodicals are suitable for the exposition of these facts [the detailed facts gained by genetic research], for the public has not the patience to be bothered with the intricacies. However, there are a few sound lay treatment, such as Scheinfeld's You and Heredity or Altenburg's How we inherit, and there are good brief presentation in several modern high school and college texts. As any teacher of biology knows, it takes weeks or months of lectures and demonstrations and exercises to give an averagely intelligent student a reasonable under standing of the facts and theories of genetics. In printed form, a small book is the minimum requirement. How can the necessary mass of facts and background ideas be conveyed in the course of a short popular article ? I open a textbook of genetics at random and find the following statement : When a fly with the three sex-linked genes rè (ruby eye-color), ct (cut wings), and V (vermilion eye-color) is crossed with a wild-type fly with the dominant allelomorphs of these genes, and the F x heterozygous females are crossed with the triply recessive type, the following results are obtained . . . non-crossovers, 1,129 I single crossovers, 4.78 ; double](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022777_0231.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
