Physician to the Gene Pool: Genetic Lessons and Other Stories

Neel's outspoken autobiographical account is bound to stir controversy. A geneticist and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan in 1946 to assess the genetic effects following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; his six-year study found minimal genetic damage in children born to radiation-exposed survivors. Neel's 1960s fieldwork among the Yanomama tribe of Brazil and Venezuela led to his finding that periodic outbreaks of highly abnormal white blood cells--perhaps due to viral infection--occur in people worldwide. He calls for a global program of population control, coordinated by the U.N., with the goal of limiting couples to two children. He also advocates the widespread availability of the birth-control drug RU-486, as well as prenatal diagnostic services with the option of abortion in cases of severe genetic disease in a fetus. And he supports nuclear power, lamenting ``public near-hysteria'' over what he claims to be the greatly exaggerated risks of radiation. Photos. (Mar.)