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CU Boulder researcher Donna Goldstein seeks to understand radiation risk through a butterfly’s wings and, yes, the humble fruit fly

In the 1940s, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky flew over a cluster of tropical islands off the coast of Brazil and saw not nature but a laboratory. Trained in the famous “” of Columbia �Թ���, he released irradiated fruit flies onto those islands and tracked what happened as they reproduced across generations.��

What he and his colleagues discovered has shaped the way scientists and regulators view radiation’s genetic effects for nearly eight decades.

Whether that work should still be considered the gold standard is the question CU Boulder anthropologist Donna Goldstein and �Թ��� of South Carolina anthropologist Magdalena Stawkowski are now asking.��

Donna Goldstein, CU Boulder professor and department chair of anthropology, partnered with colleague Magdalena Stawkowski to trace how the assumptions handed down through decades of fruit fly research have shaped understanding of radiation risk.

Unsettling settled science��

Goldstein’s career has taken her from the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro to politically charged pharmaceutical battlegrounds in Argentina. Much of her work stems from a long-standing drive to explore Cold War–era science around radiation and its effects on humans.��

Her latest paper, “,” co-authored with Magdalena Stawkowski, was published this spring in the Journal of the History of Biology.��

“We are basically trying to read into what’s considered settled science and maybe do a little bit of unsettling,” Goldstein says.��

“I’m on a charge to understand what we know about the nuclear age, and also to understand the science of that era and what we might have missed in terms of the kinds of studies we were doing around radiation risk and harm to humans.”��

Drosophila all the way down

The fruit fly is the go-to organism in genetic research for practical reasons. It is small, breeds fast and shares some 75% of the genes that cause disease in humans.��

By the time nuclear weapons became a reality, Drosophila was already the lens through which geneticists saw the world.��

“It was Drosophila all the way down,” she says. “All of these scientists, whatever they wound up doing, including human genetics, wound up traveling through the Drosophila �������ǰ����ٴǰ������.”��

Indeed, researchers trained in Columbia’s fly rooms fanned out across the world. Many sat on committees that wrote the first human radiation safety standards after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.��

Goldstein and Stawkowski’s paper traces how the assumptions handed down through decades of fruit fly research traveled with those scientists.��

Thanks to this shared foundation, geneticists have held on to a core assumption through the years. Conventional fruit fly research suggests that populations of organisms exposed to radiation eventually recover and return to equilibrium. It also claims genetic damage is not heritable over generations.��

“When we’re saying that Drosophila resilience may have been a little bit exaggerated, we’re not just talking about what we know about Drosophila, but about the scientists who passed through those laboratories and absorbed what it was they were learning about Drosophila,” Goldstein says.��

She and Stawkowski call this the “Drosophila ��������.”��

“That idea of resilience and of recovery and that damage should not be considered genetic really has maybe been a calming mechanism for all of us,” Goldstein says. “That’s what we want to hear.”��

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Research conducted on pale grass blue butterflies collected near the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan showed genetic abnormalities in the first generation that were significantly higher than the control group. Subsequent generations not only bore those same abnormalities but experienced them at increasingly higher rates.��(Photo: Milind Bhakare/Wikimedia Commons)

The butterfly effect

Goldstein and Stawkowski’s research challenges the assumption that fruit fly research on radiation safety and the risks it poses accurately carries over to humans.��

In 2012, Japanese researchers collected near Fukushima’s damaged nuclear power plant. The first generation showed genetic abnormalities significantly higher than the control group. Subsequent generations not only bore those same abnormalities but experienced them at increasingly higher rates.����

The mutations defy the logic held as gospel by Drosophila-trained scientists.��

“The butterfly findings that are so recent really gave us pause to kind of look back and think about ‘when did this idea that there could be no genetic damage among insects evolve?’” Goldstein says.��

The answer, her paper argues, goes back to the humble fruit fly.��

“Maybe we’re kind of drowsy from the Drosophila bias,” Goldstein says.��

Still, she’s careful not to overstate the claim, citing her background as an anthropologist and historian of science, not a radiobiologist.

“We can’t really say definitively that we know there is genetic damage because we’re not those kinds of scientists. But what we can say is that maybe the certainty we’ve been using as our groundwork and our foundation is possibly less certain than we think,” she adds.��

Yet, following the Fukushima butterfly study, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation dismissed the findings as “not consistent with conventional understanding” of radiation biology.��

A nice story to tell

The Drosophila bias masks a more complex dilemma. It may explain why we are willing to put our faith in dated science that, as new findings emerge, might not paint an accurate picture.��

“Perhaps most of us believe in our hearts in a human exceptionalism, that, in fact, we’re even more resilient than the most resilient organism,” Goldstein says. “Yeah, it’s a nice story to tell.”��

Goldstein argues the bias allows us to believe that humans are uniquely resilient, insulated from radiation’s worst effects by our very biology.��

But is the story Drosophila tells true?��

Goldstein urges scientists to take another honest look at the data being published in recent years.��

The stakes of finding the right conclusion are high. Nuclear energy is back on the global agenda, and much of the case for it rests in part on the consensus that low-dose radiation causes no heritable genetic damage. Goldstein doesn’t claim that consensus is wrong, but she thinks it does deserve more intense scrutiny.��

“The pro-nuclear establishment really relies on the finding that there’s no genetic damage. I’m interested in seeing if that’s really true. We may have, through the Drosophila bias and through the exaggeration of our interest in resilience, exaggerated our calmness about this.”��

Taking another look

Goldstein and Stawkowski mean for their paper to be provocative. As for any argument that goes against long-held precedent, there will surely be detractors. Yet, as Goldstein says, feedback is welcome.��

“If people out there want to respond or say something about it, they should,” she says.��

The butterflies near Fukushima tell a story spanning generations, offering a living record of what radiation did and continues to do. Goldstein says similar studies of other organisms are being carried out in Brazil, Ukraine and several other parts of the world.��

Whether the scientific community is prepared to interpret the results on their own terms, rather than through the assumptions of a lab from the 1940s, may be one of the most consequential questions in radiation biology today.��

Goldstein’s hope is that more researchers will challenge the allure of accepting supreme human resilience to radiation and examine the evidence against it at face value.��

“We have to remember that not just one organism can tell us the full story.”��

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