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The Genetics Of Morality: Policing Science In Dudintsev’S White Robes, Yvonne Howell
The Genetics Of Morality: Policing Science In Dudintsev’S White Robes, Yvonne Howell
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications
The Men and women in White Robes (Belye odezhdv), Vladimir Dudinstev's fictional account of the banning of genetics in the Soviet Union, are acutely aware that in the 20th century, the study of the fruit fly is the study of man. The key to unraveling the mystery of human nature lies in the easily observed chromosomes of the forbidden fly (drosophila melanogaster). Under Stalin, the banned geneticists were branded “Morganists” after their hero Thomas Hunt Morgan, the Columbia University researcher who pioneered the technique of mapping locations on drosophila chromosomes to specific traits in the flies. To …