The objection may be raised that the fallout, while not yet dangerous, may become so as more nations develop and test atomic weapons. On this point we can only say that the future is not easy to predict. Some factors, however, justify optimism. We are learning how to regulate the fallout by exploding bombs under proper surroundings. Development of clean bombs will greatly reduce the radioactivity produced. Deep underground tests will eliminate fallout altogether. The activity put into the atmosphere in 1954 was considerably greater than the activity released in any other year. It is highly probable that the activity produced by United States tests will continue to decline. Finally, we may remark that radiation is unspecific in its effects. Chemicals are specific. About the effects of a new ingredient in our diet, in our medicine, or in the air we breathe, we know much less than we know about radiation. If we should worry about our ignorance concerning our chemical surroundings as we worry about the possible effects of radiation, we would be condemned to a conservatism that would stop all change and stifle all progress. Such conservatism would be more immobile than the empire of the Pharaohs. It has been claimed that it is wrong to endanger any human life. Is it not more realistic and in fact more in keeping with the ideals of humanitarianism to strive toward a better life for all mankind? CHAPTER XIII Danger to the Race Radiation may hurt the individual. It may also be harmful for our children and hurt the race. We have seen that the danger from the radiation due to testing is small compared to many risks which we habitually take and almost always ignore, which in fact we have to ignore to continue to live in this civilized world. In addition we are not even quite sure that the danger to the individual is real. There can be little doubt, however, that radiation does produce some harmful changes in our children. What seems even more frightening, is that these changes may not show up in our children but only in their children or further progeny. A danger which may lie hidden for generations might seem more terrifying, especially as it has often been repeated that all such radiation effects are harmful. We transmit our properties to coming generations in a most curious and concentrated fashion. From the mother and the father a child inherits a number of chromosomes, twenty-four from each.[14] These are structures along which the actual carriers of the properties—the genes—are strung up. We are beginning to understand something about the nature of the genes. They seem to be very big spiral molecules. They carry the master plan of our body and even of our character in a strange chemical code.