IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001421075

Mutations in Soviet Public Health Science: Post-Lysenko Medical Genetics, 1969--1991 (2014)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 47, Part A
Issue: Part A
Pages: 163-172
Publication date: 2014
Language: English

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section: “Heredity and The Study of Human Populations After 1945”

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Human genetics Public health Medical genetics Cold War Drosophila Mutation 20th century Soviet Union Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich

This paper traces the integration of human genetics with Soviet public health science after the Lysenko era. For nearly three decades, USSR biology pursued its own version of anti-bourgeois, Soviet `creative Darwinism', departing from western, post-WWII scientific developments. After Lysenko was suspended, research niches of immunology, biophysics and mutation research formed the basis of new departments at the Institute of Medical Genetics, which was founded in 1969 as part of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. Focussing on early research activities and collaborations at the institute, I show how the concept of mutagenesis, a pivotal issue during the Cold War, became mobilized from Drosophila genetics to human heredity and to society as a whole. This mode of scaling up and down through population studies shaped not only Soviet human biology and genetics; it also brought about changes in clinical practice and public health as well as in the monitoring and regulation of mutagenic agents in the environment.

...More

Included in

Article Bangham, Jenny; Chadarevian, Soraya de (2014) Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 45-49). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001421075

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Goldstein, Donna M.; Stawkowski, Magdalena E.; (2015)
James V. Neel and Yuri E. Dubrova: Cold War Debates and the Genetic Effects of Low-Dose Radiation

Article Bauer, Susanne; (2014)
Virtual Geographies of Belonging: The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research

Article Wolfe, Audra J.; (2010)
What Does It Mean to Go Public? The American Response to Lysenkoism, Reconsidered

Chapter Davis, Gregory K.; Dietrich, Michael R.; Jacobs, David K.; (2009)
Homeotic Mutants and the Assimilation of Developmental Genetics into the Evolutionary Synthesis, 1915--1952

Article Hagemann, Rudolf; (2006)
Curt Stern (1902--1981): Drosophila-Genetiker und Human-Genetiker in Deutschland und den USA

Article Bangham, Jenny; Chadarevian, Soraya de; (2014)
Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage

Article Nurit Kirsh; L. Joanne Green; (2021)
A Feeling for the Human Subject: Margaret Lasker and the Genetic Puzzle of Pentosuria

Chapter Lipphardt, Veronika; (2013)
From “Races” to “Isolates” and “Endogamous Communities”: Human Genetics and the Notion of Human Diversity in the 1950s

Article Leeming, William; (2005)
Ideas about Heredity, Genetics, and “Medical Genetics” in Britain, 1900--1982

Article Löwy, Ilana; (2014)
How Genetics Came to the Unborn: 1960--2000

Article Chadarevian, Soraya de; (2014)
Chromosome Surveys of Human Populations: Between Epidemiology and Anthropology

Book Leroi, Armand Marie; (2003)
Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

Book Daniel Navon; (2019)
Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy

Article Kouprianov, Alexei V.; (2011)
The “Soviet Creative Darwinism” (1930s--1950s): From the Selective Reading of Darwin's Works to the Transmutation of Species

Article Margaret Peacock; (2015)
Mendel Lives: The Survival of Mendelian Genetics in the Lysenkoist Classroom, 1937–1964

Article Michael D. Gordin; (2018)
Lysenko Unemployed: Soviet Genetics after the Aftermath

Article Dejong-Lambert, William; (2009)
From Eugenics to Lysenkoism: The Evolution of Stanislaw Skowron

Article Roll-Hansen, Nils; (2005)
The Lysenko Effect: Undermining the Autonomy of Science

Article Vedran Duančić; (2020)
Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to De-Stalinize Stalinist Science

Article Alexandra Rizhinashvili; (2020)
Production Hydrobiology in the USSR Under the Pressure of Lysenkoism: Vladimir I. Zhadin’s Forgotten Theory of Biological Productivity (1940)