Word: germ
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...human race may destroy itself just as effectively in a slower, subtler way. Last week, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nobel-Biologist Hermann J. Muller of Indiana University warned that even the peaceful use of atomic energy may kill off the human species by loading its germ plasm with too many "mutated" genes...
Usually it is "recessive." The altered recessive gene lurks in the germ plasm for generations, like an infinitesimal time bomb, waiting to combine with a similar gene in a cell of the opposite sex. Then, reinforced, it makes its influence felt. Theoretically, a mutation may be beneficial, but most of them are not. Some mutations kill the developing embryo. Some deform or otherwise handicap the young organism...
What they saw through the purple glare of the neon signs more than warranted Oakley's remark. In the yellow-floored, blue-walled shop were 20 barber chairs upholstered in pastel-blue leather. Behind them stretched long strips of mirror topped by germ-killing lamps. Above each chair, from the sound-proofed ceiling, shone a spotlight. On the small pink-&-blue mezzanine in the rear there were two more chairs for children, surrounded by giraffe-shaped palm pots...
...Germ-Killing Possible...
Another medical implication of the process is that it may permit lengthening the chains of harmful virus proteins, thus transforming them into neutral or beneficial materials. Actual germ killing methods may also develop from further investigation...