For a certain period of time, the normal academic debates between two schools of thought were artificially colored by politics; in the Soviet Union in the 1930's, Lysenko and others, in the name of supporting Michurin, put up a show of being a schoolmaster, and imposed the charges of "bourgeoisie", "idealism", and "reaction" on the Morgan School. The Morgans were labeled as "bourgeois", "idealistic" and "reactionary", and they were brutally persecuted politically. This serious violation of scientific principles spread to China in the mid-1950s. Morgan's genetics was criticized as an idealistic theory, and human eugenics became a forbidden zone within a forbidden zone. Lu Huilin was implicated because he was a student of Morgan. But he was determined to use his scientific practice to confirm the correctness of Morgan's theory.
Lu adopted the "asexual crossbreeding" experiment of the Michurin school to test the acquisition of sexual inheritance. He used eggs laid by different breeds of chickens, extracted the proteins from them, and injected them into eggs of known breeds of chickens to be hatched. Hundreds of chicks were hatched, and except for the appearance of a piece of heterochromatic hair in the trunk of one chick, the other chicks did not see any special mutation. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to obtain purebred chickens at that time, and it was impossible to ascertain further the origin of the piece of stray hair. While he was designing new experiments, the "Criticism of Academic Thought Campaign" began in 1958. Lu Huilin became a "living target". Especially in the "Criticism of Academic Thought" in 1960, he, as the fourth Chinese disciple of Morgan, refused to be criticized, so he naturally became the focus of criticism. His translation of The Theory of Genetics became an enlightening textbook for the critics. Hundreds of students, who knew nothing about genetics, forced him to admit that his ideas were bourgeois academic ideas. He was urged to admit his mistakes, but he refused.In April 1961, the Central Cultural and Educational Investigation Group headed by Xu Yunbei, secretary of the Party Group of the Ministry of Health, and Shahong, director of the Physical Education and Health Division of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the C***, came to find out about the situation of the academic criticism of the Hunan Medical College. They listened to Lu Huilin's complaint and participated in a debate among the teachers of the Basic Department, and clearly pointed out that the academic criticism "seriously violated the Party's 'Double Hundred' policy of 'letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend for attention'" and that it was a principle-based criticism. "It was a mistake of principle and should be stopped immediately. Soon afterward, Mao Zedong met with Tan Jiazhen, a biogeneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai and another Chinese student of Morgan's, and encouraged scientists to stick to the truth. Lu Huilin was delighted with the news. in 1962, the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the C*** and the Ministry of Health jointly came to Hunan Medical College to investigate and screen him.
So Lu Huilin set about building a genetics laboratory, and the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Commission gave him enthusiastic support and staffing. Lu Huilin brought together a group of young teachers for systematic and rigorous training, and opened two courses in cytology and genetics. In the same year, Lu Huilin also organized young teachers to carry out plant asexual hybridization experiments, using Mantua as the rootstock and Horsetail eggplant as the scion, and grafting between the two plants. As a result, the hybrid plant produced a lot of pigmentation on the eggplant that year, and the seeds also contained scopolamine, which is unique to the rootstock Mantua, and even the flower tips also developed spines similar to those of Mantua. However, these traits were lost in the progeny grown from the seeds of the "hybrid" Horsetail. In 1962-1965, they repeated the experiment for three consecutive times, and the results proved that the rootstock could only affect the scion hybrids in the process of grafting, but could not pass on its own traits to the offspring.
In order to meet the needs of preventing and controlling the epidemic encephalitis B at that time, Lu Huilin and Zhang Baosian, a technician, used the aluminum hydroxide antigen serum precipitation method to carry out a survey on the hemophilicity of mosquitoes in Changsha, and obtained reliable scientific data.
Under the leadership of Mr. Yi Jianlong, vice president of Hunan Medical College, Lu Huilin initiated the establishment of a medical genetics research group in 1963 and formulated a 10-year scientific research plan from 1963 to 1972, determining the establishment of a cytogenetics research laboratory and a biochemical genetics research laboratory. As soon as the research group was established, they carried out extensive investigation and research, especially a color blindness census of 10,091 adolescents in some primary and secondary schools in Changsha. It was found that the prevalence of color blindness among male adolescents was 7.5%, and the prevalence among females was 0.92%. A family lineage survey of 48 color-blind girls found that their fathers were all color-blind. This is entirely consistent with the pattern of sex-linked inheritance discovered by Morgan.
Just when Lu Huilin was ambitious to fully deploy his genetics research, the Cultural Revolution began. Although he was removed from his post and criticized as a target of the "revolution" and a "reactionary academic authority", he was fortunate to be a delegate to the National People's Congress and a target of protection compared with other intellectuals of his generation. ～In 1970-1971, he was authorized to go to Yueyang to investigate and control schistosomiasis. "At the beginning of the revolution, he returned to Hunan Medical College and resumed his position as the director of the biology teaching and research department, and gained the right to edit the biology lectures. He personally wrote a chapter on "Genetics" and reappeared on the university platform. With the support of Li Tingshi, the dean of the medical school, they decided to combine genetic research with family planning. The elderly man resumed his leadership in the study of medical genetics. They quickly learned the chromosome technology developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, especially the banding technology that appeared in the early 1970s, and made full use of the foreign literature available at the Hunan Science and Technology Information Station to achieve one research result after another.
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the C***, genetic research in China was greatly developed. They organized a national experience exchange meeting on chromosome technology to promote chromosome technology. Lu Huilin, Xia Jiahui, and Zhang Sizhong set up a three-member team for the identification standard of chromosomes with dominant bands.In June 1981, the Medical Genetics Research Office of the Hunan Medical College held a training course on cytogenetics in China, which was sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and China's Ministry of Health, and the cytogeneticist Poon Sze-fen of the School of Medicine of the University of Pittsburgh, the United States of America, who was dispatched by the WHO and invited by China's Ministry of Health, came to give lectures. There were 101 trainees from 25 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions receiving training, of which 25 performed experimental techniques. In July 1937, Lu Huilin published an article entitled "Our Nation" in the Changsha-based newspaper Li Bao (力报), in which he compared the physique of the Chinese people with that of foreigners and said: "The Chinese nation's physique, in terms of its innate strength, is of moderate size and strong resistance. If the people of China can focus on increasing the quantity of the spirit, to work on the qualification of the improvement, enrich the livelihood, promote health, physical exercise, it is not difficult to develop a strong body to bear the burden of salvation and strive for strength."
Human cytogenetics is a fringe discipline created in 1956. At that time, Chinese-American scientists such as Xu Juedao discovered and determined that there are 46 human chromosomes.In 1959, the world's first case of human chromosomal disease was reported abroad.In 1962, a genetics group was set up within the Department of Pathology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. Subsequently, a genetics research laboratory was established at Fudan University in Shanghai. However, during the Cultural Revolution, all of these were denounced as "heresy" and criticized for no reason. Lu Huilin was forced to submit an "application for retirement" at an advanced age. His only request was to keep the qualification of reading books and searching information in the library. 1972, he often went to the Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Intelligence Station to check the information, translated the information about the chromosome banding technology into Chinese, and was the first one in China to master the human chromosome's G banding technology. 1977, the Medical College of Hunan established the Medical Genetics Laboratory with him as the director. He and his colleagues took samples from human peripheral blood, skin, and amniotic fluid for research, and established another set of cytogenetic techniques representing the level of the 1970s. In July 1981, Xia Jiahui and Li Luyun established human high-resolution G-banding chromosome techniques that could represent the level of the 1980s, and applied them to clinical practice.
As soon as he began to engage in cytogenetic research, Lu Huilin established the direction of clinical service, family planning, and especially human eugenics. in the early 1970s, they collaborated with Hu Xinde, director of obstetrics and gynecology at the First Hospital attached to the Hunan Medical College, and Wu Hanwen, director of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Second Hospital attached to the Hunan Medical College (Hu Xinde successfully performed amniocentesis for the first time in China for prenatal diagnosis in 1963). In April 1973, he collaborated with Wu Hanwen to open a chromosomal specialty clinic to diagnose male and female sex malformations, and in April 1979, he collaborated with Professor Hu Xinde and Lecturer Li Lu Yun of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the First Affiliated Hospital of the University to firstly open a regular chromosomal consultation clinic in China, where pregnant women could undergo prenatal and intrauterine examinations to predict the health of the fetus.
In addition, Huilin has supervised graduate students, such as Guanghui Xiao, Invention Xu, Jia Xu, and Xiaoxuan He, to carry out research on special chromosomal disorders, and conducted some theoretical discussions. For example, they proposed the new concept of "familial breakage and reattachment hotspot"; studied the position of testicular determinant on the Y chromosome and the genetic effect of the short arm of the Y chromosome; and explored the classical Lyon's hypothesis. Over the years, they have discovered 75 abnormal karyotypes, all of which are listed in the International Registry of Abnormal Human Chromosome Karyotypes.
In 1976, while studying the karyotypes of lymphoblastoid cells in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, they discovered an EA chromosome. After repeated pursuits, especially due to the efforts of Xia Jiahui, they finally found the origin of this chromosome and determined that it was formed by the translocation of the short arm of chromosome three to the end of the long arm of chromosome one. The Institute of Tumor Research of Sun Yat-sen Medical College and the Institute of Tumor Research of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences have successively confirmed their discovery. It is reported that this is the world's first discovery of a clearly grouped marker chromosome associated with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. This provides important clues for the etiological study of nasopharyngeal cancer, and has also attracted the attention of foreign scholars.
In 1975, they published the valuable information on chromosome grouping, serum and fingerprint analysis of a pair of monozygotic twins suffering from nasopharyngeal carcinoma. These were also reported for the first time in the world literature at that time. Subsequently, Lu Huilin and Xia Jiahui, together with Zhang Sizhong of Sichuan, studied and published the "Chinese Chromosome G-Style Banding Patterns" for the first time in China.
After the reform and opening up of China, the genetic research in China was greatly developed. He served as vice president of the Genetics Society of China.
In 1990, the National Congress of Medical Genetics was held in Shenyang. He was 90 years old and still traveled to attend in person. The World Health Organization (WHO) in 1981 published information that the load of genetic diseases in humans has reached 10.8%, that is, every 10 people have 1.08 people with genetic disease factors. There are 2,811 genetic diseases and more than 300 chromosomal diseases that have been recognized in human beings, and their incidence accounts for 0.5% to 1.0% of newborn babies.
Lu Huilin and the Medical Genetics Laboratory under his leadership have long been publicizing eugenics and euthanasia to patients and their families who come to the clinic, conducting family lineage surveys for certain genetic disorders to find out the source of abnormal chromosomes, and confirming the health of the fetus through amniotic fluid or chorionic villus examinations. Pregnant women are mobilized to terminate their pregnancies once a child with a chromosomal disorder is found.
The incidence of chromosomal disorders in the population is influenced by many factors. There have been many reports on the incidence of chromosomal abnormalities in newborns abroad, but such information is not yet available in China. The Medical Genetics Research Laboratory of Hunan Medical College under the leadership of Lu Huilin spent three years from May 1979 to May 1982 to conduct chromosome G-banding examinations on 3,415 newborns born consecutively in three hospitals in the northern part of Changsha City, and found that there were 26 cases of chromosome abnormalities, with an incidence rate of 7.6 per thousand, and 55 cases of chromosome mutations, with an incidence rate of 1.61%. This work has provided valuable group information for the formulation of eugenics policies and chromosomal disease prevention programs in China.
At the same time, he also directed the establishment of the Biochemical Genetics Research Laboratory, which was headed by Zhang Shaoying. The laboratory was able to examine and measure more than ten kinds of metabolic defective diseases (later this work was taken care of by the Biochemistry Teaching and Research Laboratory). In the population genetics investigation, Zou Liangxiu and others found typical cases of familial polydactyly and syndactyly, familial lipomas and so on.
In November 1979, China's first paper presentation on human and medical genetics was held in Changsha. Lu Huilin presided over the meeting, he worked meticulously and the conference was very successful. More than 300 people requested to attend. At the meeting, he reported on the achievements of medical genetics in China and proposed that China should emphasize the development of eugenics, which was a very courageous initiative in those days. Mr. Tan Jiazhen made a report entitled "Practice is the Only Standard for Testing Truth from Genetics". Lu Huilin invited Wu Min to give a report entitled "On Eugenics". At that time, eugenics was still a forbidden area, and Wu Min's report caused a sensation. The news was first published in the internal report of Xinhua News Agency, and later published by various newspapers. The forbidden zone, which had been confined for 30 years, was finally opened. At the meeting, Lu Huilin was also elected as the chairman of the Human Medical Genetics Committee of the Genetics Society of China.
By 1981, two affiliated hospitals of Hunan Medical College, the obstetrics and gynecology department and the basic department of the medical college of the relevant professionals to form a reproductive engineering research group. Lu Huilin's youngest daughter, Connie Lu, was a medical student at the Hunan Medical College in the class of '58, and originally worked as a surgeon at the Hengyang Regional People's Hospital in Hunan Province. After being transferred back to the University as a lecturer in local anatomy and surgery to take care of her mother, she volunteered to take up the burden of reproductive engineering research instead. When the research group was founded, there was no house and no equipment. Except for Candy Lu and Fan Li-Qing, other staff members came and went as if they were on horseback. Some people joked that it was a "father-daughter store" run by the Lu family, and in 1985, the Reproductive Engineering Research Group was expanded to become the Reproductive Engineering Research Laboratory.
In 1981, they put the first batch of healthy human sperm into liquid nitrogen at -196 degrees Celsius, establishing China's first human frozen sperm bank. 1982, this technique was used in the clinic for artificial insemination, and in January 1983, China's first artificially inseminated baby boy was born in collaboration with Dr. Zhu Jingzhang of the First Hospital affiliated with the university. More than 100 artificially inseminated babies followed. Next, Lu Huilin directed research on IVF (in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer). At that time, there were already more than 3,000 cases of IVF abroad, but there was still no such thing in China. The Hunan Provincial Government allocated US$10 from its already tight foreign exchange to fund the reproductive engineering research of Lu Huilin and Connie Lu, and they were able to buy back much-needed instruments and equipment. The provincial government also subsidized an additional US$20,000 to send Candy Lu and Xu Lili abroad to learn key technologies. Obstetricians and gynecologists from the two affiliated hospitals worked closely together to formulate a three-year research plan and set up a first-rate reproductive engineering research laboratory in China. This project was included in the national "Seventh Five-Year Plan", and on June 5 and 7, 1988, two test-tube babies were born in the two hospitals of Hunan Medical University. One of them was China's first test-tube baby with donor embryo transfer.
Lu Huilin and Prof. Niu Manjiang, a developmental biologist at Temple University in the U.S.
Signed the "Ten-Year Scientific Research Planning Collaboration Letter". Huilin Lu and Manjiang Niu, as the academic leaders, negotiated the research direction and research topics. They planned to establish a mammalian model, start from the germ cells, and use molecular biology technology as a means to improve the genes of mammals, so as to improve the genetic quality of the new generation.
In 1988, the National Symposium on Reproductive Technology and its Social, Ethical, and Legal Issues was held in Yueyang City, Hunan Province. In October 1989, Huilin Lu attended the "Advanced Seminar on Biotechnology" sponsored by the Ministry of Personnel of the People's Republic of China and the Personnel Department of Hunan Province, and presented a paper entitled "The National Professional Force on Reproductive Technology and its Social, Ethical and Legal Issues". In October 1989, Lu Huilin participated in the "Advanced Seminar on Biotechnology" organized by the Ministry of Personnel and the Hunan Provincial Department of Personnel, and published the article "National Professional Forces (Reproductive, Developmental, and Genetic Engineering Workers) Unite and Collaborate to Improve the Gifted Qualities of New Generation of Children. Over the decades, Lu Huilin went from being an elementary and middle school teacher to a university professor and graduate school instructor.
In medical school, he has taught general biology, parasitology, invertebrate zoology, comparative anatomy, human embryology, genetics and other courses. His lectures were very popular. Before lecturing, he always prepared his lessons carefully and consulted the literature to keep his teaching content up to date with the frontiers of scientific development.
He wrote many textbooks, both publicly available and internally applicable, such as Protoplasm, Development (biology textbook for central China colleges and medical schools, 1953), Outline of Embryology (textbook for Xiangya School of Medicine, 1953), General Biology (co-edited with Zhang Dunhou and He Honghong, 1953), and General Biology (textbook for medical schools of the central and southern regions, 1956). 1956).
He attached great importance to teaching methods, and in 1940, when he was teaching in Yuanling Yali Middle School, he organized a biology exhibition in the school, which was a sensation in the county, and the public came to visit. Some elementary school students saw tiny organisms through microscopes, which aroused their interest in science. Lu Huilin was also a pioneer in the popularization of science; in the 1950s, he proposed the "three-stage, five-step" teaching method and took the lead in implementing the pre-talk system in Hunan Medical College. In order to visualize the content, he used rubber clay to pinch out the development process of the embryo in the classroom during his lectures on human embryology, which was very vivid and easy to understand.
Hunan Medical College held a training course on cytogenetics in China in 1981, and after 1980, it held five national cytogenetic training courses on intrauterine diagnosis, and the college has trained more than 100 clinical cytogenetic technicians for attending obstetricians and gynecologists of provincial hospitals and medical colleges.
In 1978, he began to recruit graduate students for the master's degree, to the time of his death *** training master's degree students 24. November 3, 1981, the State Council Degrees Committee approved him to recruit graduate students for doctoral degree, he a *** training doctoral degree students 6 people.
He was a tireless teacher, but extremely demanding. The students who have been trained by him will never forget the kindness of their teachers.