On December 9 to 13, 1984 at the the Alta Summit, a ski resort in Utah, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the International Commission for Protection Against Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens sponsored a meeting which begins the threads of the human genome project. [1, 2, 3, 4]
“Alta links human genome projects to research on the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 40 years earlier. If genome projects prove important to biology, then historians will note the Alta meeting.”…”The purpose was to ask those working on the front lines of DNA analytical methods to address a specific technical question: could new methods permit direct detection of mutations, and more specifically could any increase in the mutation rate among survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings be detected (in them or in their children)?”
“The idea behind the Alta meeting came from another meeting on March 4 and 5, 1984, in Hiroshima, at which new DNA analytical tools were deemed second highest priority for human mutations research, just behind establishing cell lines from atomic bomb survivors, their progeny, and controls.”
In time it will morph into association with “climate change“, noting the Dept of Energy sponsored in the first place!