RE: Beware the Laptop! (danger of wearing pants)

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>]

>Somewhere or other I saw an analysis on the effect on fertility and 

>mutagenesis of the practice of wearing pants.



The ref. is Ehrenberg L et al., Gonad temperature and spontaneous 

mutation-rate in man.

Nature. Vol. 180, Dec. 21, 1957:1433-4.



I have an original reprint of the article somewhere. Lars Ehrenberg (LE) 

told me (around 1975 - I worked with him at that time for more than a year) 

that he had been invited to a nudist camp after this article was published 

("the only time in my life I have spoken to a completely nude group of 

people" or something like that is what he said - he is prof. em. at the 

Univ. of Stockholm if anyone wants more exact and correct details).



The basis of the paper, if I recall it correctly, is about transition energy 

levels - it may have been some Arrhenius (plot type) of mutational events on 

a DNA level (thus only 3.5 yrs after Watson and Crick with the structure of 

DNA etc). They may have compared the risk of wearing pants with some level 

given by UNSCEAR - I am not sure - it was thus very serious 

considerations... There is a suggestion that men should wear Scottish kilts 

or something like that.



This publication also made tabloids and first page of our sensational 

newspaper Expressen (focuses on scandals, celebrities, sex etc) - a picture 

of a man from behind getting his long underwear on - and suggestive text 

that it was Ehrenberg on the picture + that he had said that this one brand 

of underwear was particularly dangerous (Expressen had called LE way too 

early in the morning and LE had asked them if they weren't an evening paper 

which they were at that time). Anyway, that underwear producing company sued 

LE and he had a hard time proving that the statement about the danger of 

that particular brand was the fantasy of Expressen. A bottom line was that 

he got free supply of that brand of underwear.



This is how I remember what LE told me about the fragments of that episode - 

if anything is wrong it is only due to decay of my brain cells over the past 

30 years and I am willing to correct any details relating to the story. It 

is perhaps becoming a classical paper so it may be interesting for a broader 

audience to get this glimpse of the past.



My personal reflections and memory only,



Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.om/bjorn_cedervall/



PS. Where the H..l do I have that reprint BTW?





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