This is made to sound sinister, especially in connection with Neel's eugenic interests, but the evidence that we present here shows that while the connection was there, it was hardly sinister. Among the greatest threats posed by the atomic age and cold war was the possibility of significantly increased mutation rates due to radiation exposure from nuclear weapons tests and even nuclear war. As the government agency primarily responsible for radiation-related health and safety issues, the AEC established a number of biomedical research programs, including an extensive genetics program. Another important joint interest was in determining the influence of natural selection on the evolutionary fate of mutations in humans. At the time, a common view among geneticists was that most species are extremely well-adapted to their environments, due to the fact that the optimal genes for most traits have already arisen and have been accumulated by natural selection.
Selection now acts mainly to eliminate new, relatively suboptimal mutations.
Neel consistently warned that we did not know enough to intervene in human breeding. He warned that any effort to control breeding could easily fall prey to racial and class bias. But claims that Neel s eugenic ideal was the Yanomami breeding structure are wrong. Neel believed that primitive populations such as Yanomami consisted of small tribes in which highly intelligent headmen have much greater reproductive success than other males. Indeed, by the standards of the 1960s, Neel was unusually supportive of the principle of respect for procreative liberty, arguing not only against coercion, but against any form of directedness in genetic counseling.