Author Description

Investigates the relationship between develop. in the science of genetics & the clinical practice of med. in the U.S. Shows how physicians first doubted, then slowly accepted, the relevance of Mendel¿s work for human heredity. The modern synthesis of cytology & genetics by 1910 was widely discussed in the medical community, & by 1915 physicians began to recognize that the transmission of various human disorders such as hemophilia fit the Mendelian model. Yet by the 1920s, progress had reached a standstill, due to greater interest in such bacteriological diseases as TB & to the fact that many physicians permitted their ethical objections to eugenics theories, embraced by genetics researchers, to color their judgment of the research itself. Illus.