Feel Better Now?

Washington had come to the conclusion that the public is far too jittery about the atom bomb. Said Colonel James P. Cooney of the Army Medical Corps : "If a bomb were dropped on one of our cities tomorrow, mass hysteria would probably cause the unnecessary loss of many lives." In soothing vein, the Surgeon General's office this week issued a statement with a cheery title: "Army Doctors Say Hysteria Need Not Follow Atom-Bomb Explosion." Some of its reassuring points:

"Sensational prophecies" have insisted that the effects of radiation (on the heredity carriers called genes) would produce a race of monsters. Nothing to worry about there, said the Surgeon General's office. The Army Medical Corps is confident that since irradiation is usually fatal to developing embryos, "the result . . . would probably be a higher rate of abortion and miscarriage. . . ."

Loss of hair is the "most alarming" of the superficial effects of radiation, the Army doctors reported. But, assuming that there is a head left for it to grow on, the hair will grow back: "The hair will return if the patient has not received a lethal dose of radiation. . . ."

The immediate effects of atomic bombs, the Army doctors conceded, are serious: "There is not much even a medical man can do." People who seem uninjured may die--quickly or slowly. But there is a consolation: "The threat of the atom bomb is, at least, now recognized, and we have assembled a growing store of knowledge which can ultimately be mastered."

Other developments in medical preparedness last week:

P: Since civilians will be the chief victims in any future war, they should have the most doctors. This was agreed on by medicos both in mufti and in uniform, at a Chicago meeting of the American Medical Association's Council on National Emergency Medical Service. What most worried Rear Admiral Morton D. Willcutts: Where to stack the radioactive corpses? Said he: "The question of disposal of civil ian dead will be formidable."

P: If blood banks and other emergency medical services had been available at Hiroshima, 20,000 lives might have been saved, according to the Veterans Administration's Dr. George M. Lyon. He and other experts urged setting up a medical program for civilian defense.

P: Doctors in Philadelphia were told by visiting medical brass that their big job would be to decide which atomic victims were worth treating with scarce blood serum, etc., and which were not. Best Army opinion: anybody caught within a mile of the blast would probably die.

P: The Atomic Energy Commission continued experiments with rutin, a complex chemical compound obtained from green buckwheat. In experiments with dogs at the University of Rochester, it reduced the death rate from radiation from 64% to 12% by checking internal bleeding, one of the effects of radiation.

P: Rooms protected from all atomic radiation were being built at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory at Bar Harbor, Me. Future tenants: rats, mice, guinea pigs.

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