Professor Denounces Fears Of Freaks From Radiation

Recent charges that radioactivity from Atom and H-bombs may someday cause a race of freaks and monsters were sharply criticized yesterday by a Health School professor.

All evidence indicates that physical abnormalities like those in the children of Hiroshima A-bomb victims are not genetic mutations but rather the results of injuries to the mother during pregnancy, according to Theodore H. Ingalls, associate professor of Epidemiology.

Speaking to an American Medical Association meeting in Boston, Ingalls said that millions of dollars had been spent in a study of radiation effects on Hiroshima victims. "Yet there is still not substantial evidence that any mutations were the result of radiation," Ingalls said. He added, however, that the studies had not considered the direct physical injuries to mothers of malformed infants.

Studies of Mongoloids

Ingalls said he drew his conclusion in part from recent studies he had made with associates at the Health School on a group of mothers of mongoloid babies. In the past 15 years many scientists have also shown that certain infant deformities were the result of German measles, respiratory accidents, and other non-genetic physical injuries to pregnant mothers, Ingalls pointed out.

Conversely, the same facts indicate that it is unrealistic to talk of breeding humans resistant to sunburn, polio, smallpox, or any non-hereditary defects except in inconsequential numbers, Ingalls said. Although a tendency toward or immunity to certain defects is inherited, the genesis of the defect itself is open to question, he said.

At the international conference of atomic scientists in Geneva last summer, many charges were made that the age of nuclear fission might introduce an age of freaks and monsters. Ingalls replied yesterday that "Hydrogen bombs can cause such direct havoc to a whole population by their direct effects, that little is to be gained at this point by concentrating on the speculation that the impact is to be measured in mutations and inheritable monstrosities."