A Matter of Opinion

The atomic scientists were scattering opinions as fast and freely as a cyclotron shoots out particles. Each pronouncement, analyzed separately in an emotional vacuum, might be sound. But it seemed to the public last week that the experts were talking in discordant tongues and at cross purposes.

Nobel Prizeman Hermann J. Muller, a geneticist who has been experimenting with fruit flies, told the U.S. Conference of Mayors that the sins of the fathers may be visited upon the children, unto the nth generation, by radiation-induced changes in the reproductive cells (TIME, Sept. 22, 1947). Also, said he, atomic substances, scattered by planes or rockets, might make vast regions of the earth "hopelessly denied."

Physicist Robley D. Evans, another fruit-fly expert, concluded that hereditary abnormalities are unlikely if a small fraction of the population suffers moderate radiation exposure. Acting as an informal referee, Dr. Shields Warren, the A.E.C.'s top radiation expert, sided with Evans but called it "a matter of opinion . . ."

As for atomic defilement, the A.E.C.'s John Z. Bowers was skeptical: "It's not impossible, but it's not as simple as it sounds. It's very difficult to get sufficient concentration into any considerable area to make it an effective weapon."

There were also some tall guesses as to how the Russians are getting on with their bombmaking. David (No Place to Hide) Bradley, a doctor of medicine who is a tyro in atomic science, declared: "The Russians have the secret of the bomb .. . They may have the bomb." Said Nobel-Prize Physicist Arthur Compton: "Russia does not have the bomb. The Russians will not know they have it until they succeed in exploding one." Compton also said that as soon as the Russians set off a bomb, scientists the world over will know it, from radioactivity in the upper atmosphere (TIME, Aug. 19, 1946).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.