Unpleasant Individuals

The human race has never been more vulnerable to high-flying generalities. At Princeton last week, J. B. S. Haldane, 54, Britain's grand not-very-old man of biology and vicinity, let loose some scary ones before a learned symposium on genetics, paleontology and evolution. Some of them:

The atomic bomb was genetically bad, said he: "The tremendous amount of radiation generated in the explosion of an atomic bomb produces mutations in the genes, carriers of heredity. These mutations in the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will affect future generations (TIME, Nov. 11).

"The killing of 10% of humanity . . . with atomic bombs might not destroy civilization. But the production of abnormalities in 10% of the population by gene mutations induced by radioactivity may very easily destroy it." Destruction need not be immediate; mutated genes are insidious skulkers. They may lie in wait for centuries in the germ plasm, spreading by intermarriage through the population. Then, when they get their chance, they kill the child in the womb, or burden it with physical or mental defects.

Glimmers for Tomorrow. If the race dodges atomic hexing, said Haldane, it may proceed to higher things. In a thousand years or so, it might learn to control its own evolution. Future men would be better adapted to a civilized life.

"If I am right . . . [the man of the future] would probably have great muscular skill but little muscular strength, a large head, fewer teeth than ourselves, and so on. He would develop very slowly, perhaps not learning to speak till five years of age, but continuing to learn up to the age of 40, and then living several centuries. . . .

"He would be more rational and less instinctive, less subject to sexual and parental emotion, to rage on the one hand and to so-called herd instincts on the other. His motivation would depend far more than ours on education. . . . He would be of high general intelligence by our standards, and most individuals would have some special aptitude developed to the degree which we call genius. . . .

"From our point of view, he would be an unpleasant individual, just as we would be to the Peking man."

Professor Alfred S. Romer of Harvard was not so sure that Man would evolve so triumphantly. "If we were dinosaurs, back in the days of their greatness," he said, "we would probably have had similar thoughts (if we'd had brains to think them). The dinosaurs didn't go further, and became extinct."

What creature, then, might inherit the earth? "Rats," said Professor Romer.

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