The Scientific & Moral Problem That Perplexes the World

Fear of atomic radiation--especially from the fallout from nuclear weapons tests--has touched nearly all "mankind. Neither scientists, statesmen nor churchmen agree about it.

Some aspects of the radiation problem are fairly clear; others are a disquieting mystery. Last week TIME asked U.S. and foreign scientists to give their views on the danger of radiation.

SCIENTISTS everywhere believe that the outcome of a major war employing nuclear weapons to maximum effect would be a planetary disaster. People all over the earth would die or be sickened or crippled by radioactive dust sifting down from the stratosphere.

Natural "background" radiation from cosmic rays and radioactive materials in the earth does some damage to the human body. In the pre-atomic past the human species kept ahead of this damage, but many scientists are worried about new ' sources of radiation, such as medical and dental X rays, "hot labs" and nuclear reactors. They fear that a point may come when the human species will lose its struggle with radiation and begin to deteriorate.

This problem is discussed at length in a new book, Radiation: What It Is and How It Affects You, by Physicist Ralph E. Lapp and Biochemist Jack Schubert. The authors' conclusion: all kinds of radiation should be more strictly controlled by some authority concerned with public health, not by the Atomic Energy Commission.

The Fallout

The public might never have got excited about peaceful radiation, but radioactive fallout from nuclear test explosions is more dramatic. On March 1, 1954 came Test Bravo, the gigantic U.S. thermonuclear explosion in the Pacific that sifted "death ash" on Japanese fishermen 71 miles away. Public anxiety increased when it became known that Bravo had made the whole of the earth's atmosphere detectably more radioactive.

Even before the Bravo explosion, the AEC had begun to check worldwide radioactivity and is still at it. In the gardens of U.S. employees abroad, pans exposed to the sky collect rain and dust. Their catch is sent periodically to the AEC along with foreign cheese and other, foodstuffs. Another AEC importation: foreign human cadavers for radioanalysis.

On this flow of information is based the official AEC position, recently expressed by Scientist-Commissioner Willard F. Libby. In general. Chemist Libby's view is calm. As a scientist, he knows that fission products from megaton* explosions rise into the stratosphere and circulate round the earth for years. Most threatening of them is strontium 90, whose long half-life (28 years) keeps it potent during its stratospheric circling, and whose habit of lodging for keeps in human bone makes it a probable cause of leukemia and bone cancer.

All's Reasonably Well

Dr. Libby is not alarmed by strontium 90. In his widely publicized letter to Missionary-Physician Albert Schweitzer (TIME, May 6), he said that its threat to growing children is at present about the same as from "the additional dosage that a resident at sea level would receive from cosmic rays if he moved from a beach to the top of a hill a few hundred feet high."

Danger of genetic damage from fallout radiation that affects the reproductive organs does not alarm Libby either. The amount is too small, he says, "from 0.7% to about 3% of the natural radiation exposure." Another Libby example: a person moving into a concrete-block house in certain countries may get up to 100 times as much additional radiation from naturally radioactive elements in the concrete as he is getting from present fallout. He recognizes that fission products from past tests are still stored in the stratosphere and that they will soon be joined by the products of new tests. This is not worrisome either, he says: "If tests were to continue until 1983 at the rate of the past five years, [fallout radiation] levels in the U.S. would be expected to reach about four times their present [negligible] values."

One Million Deaths

A few non-AEC scientists agree with Dr. Libby. Most vocal is Physicist Ernest O. Lawrence of the University of California, Nobel Prizewinner (1939) and inventor of the cyclotron, who finds it "beyond my comprehension" that any reputable scientist should worry about fallout from weapons tests. He thinks the tests could continue forever without damage.

Just as vehement on the other side is Physical Chemist Linus Pauling of Caltech, who is also a Nobel Prizewinner (1954). "I estimate," says Pauling, "that the bomb tests that have been made so far will ultimately have caused the death of about 1,000,000 people in the world.

These 1,000,000 people will have died ten or 20 or 30 years earlier than their normal life span because the radiation has produced bone cancer, leukemia or some other disease. I estimate also that these bomb tests will cause the birth of 200,000 seriously defective children in the next generation."

Geneticist E. B. Lewis, also of Caltech, proves in Science that leukemia (a cancer-like blood disease) is indeed caused by radiation. He uses statistics covering Japanese atom-bomb victims and three types of Americans exposed to large amounts of X rays. Strontium 90, he believes, will have the same effect. He figures that if its concentration in U.S. bones ever rises to one-tenth of what the AEC considers the "maximum permissible concentration," leukemia in the U.S. will increase by 5% to 10%.

180,000

The scientists who disagree most sharply with Commissioner Libby are the geneticists. At the University of California, Geneticist Curt Stern, onetime member of the ABC's biological advisory commit tee, says of his colleagues: "Every one of them thinks that damage is being done." Dr. Stern thinks that Libby should stick to his own field (physics and chemis try). About the statements by physicists that bomb tests are safe, Dr. Stern says: "These statements are not based on scientific principle." Starting with Dr. Libby's own statement that fallout has increased back ground radiation by only 0.7% to 3%, Dr. Stern estimates that even this slight increase will cause a minimum of 180,000 genetic mutations in a 30-year generation of 200 million Americans. His colleague, Physiologist Hardin Jones, backs him up.

He suspects also that increased radiation may cause increased bone cancer.

Mysteries & Surprises

In general, the physicists are less alarmed than the biologists are. Says Director Samuel K. Allison of the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute: "Unless the rate of [bomb] testing is greatly stepped up, there is little or no danger to the general public. But if every nation gets into testing, the situation could be extremely serious." He favors an international limit on the power of bombs that may be tested.

Both physicists and biologists emphasize that too little is known to support hard-and-fast judgments. Dr. Harold A. Thomas Jr., Harvard professor of civil and sanitary engineering, who has worked for eight years with the AEC on safe disposal of radioactive wastes, says the field is full of mysteries and surprises. "We are concerned about strontium 90," he says, "but there are many other [fallout] materials whose effects are almost totally unknown." He suggests being more careful.

The experts worry a lot about "concentrating mechanisms" that may keep fallout materials from being distributed evenly over the earth's surface. The U.S. Weather Bureau insists that winds and rainfalls give some areas (including the northern U.S.) a great deal more than their share of the global fallout. Biological concentration is even more disturbing. Grazing animals skim the fallout from large areas of grass, and it concentrates in their flesh and milk. Sea animals do the equivalent. Biologists fear that many such concentrating mechanisms may exist unsuspected. This is one reason why the U.S. Public Health Service is starting to inspect U.S. milk for undue radioactivity. West Germany is doing the same, and the Japanese are old hands at detecting radioactive fish.

Hysterical People

Britain is just starting the tests that will make it the third member (with the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) of the Big Bomb League. Perhaps for this reason few British scientists have joined the widespread popular clamor against the tests. Viscount Cherwell, Churchill's wartime scientific adviser, is vehement against "hysterical people" who would sacrifice "a deterrent which would probably save us from a war costing millions of lives" on the ground "that our tests might harm the health of a completely negligible part of the human race." British medical authorities are not so sure. The authoritative medical journal Lancet urges "immediate abandonment of all further nuclear explosions."

Scientists of nations without atomic weapons are almost unanimously opposed to large-scale testing. Italian scientists, from Roman Catholics to Communists, agree that too little is known to justify taking risks with the world's health. Most German scientists feel the same way. The Japanese, who get fallout from both east and west, are especially emphatic. They believe that fission products now in the stratosphere may be dangerous already and will surely become so unless the testing is stopped. Says Physicist Mitsuo Taketani of Rikkyo University: "The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are not testing now. They are conducting nuclear bomb and weapons maneuvers. The whole population of the world is being used as guinea pigs. When the effects of radiation show up in statistics, it will be too late."

Dr. Libby is well aware of the adverse opinion swirling around him. He thinks the AEC does not get proper credit for the effort it is making to find out more about the effects of fallout on humans. The AEC has also markedly reduced the radioactive poisons released by its megaton bomb tests, and it promises to make future tests even "cleaner."

When asked how much it would hurt the U.S. to stop testing large bombs, Dr. Libby says: "In each test we have learned something." Asked whether he would favor stopping the tests if the Russians did too, he says: "All we ask is inspection," i.e., to make sure the Russians keep their promises. An authority with access to Libby's sources of information believes that the Russians would lose more by stopping tests than the U.S. would, which may explain why the Russians will not agree to suspension of tests, with inspection.

Clean Bomb

Both the U.S. and Britain are apparently keeping their large test bombs as clean as possible, presumably by increasing the proportion of energy that comes from nuclear fusion (hydrogen) reactions. This does not mean, however, that clean bombs will take the global threat out of nuclear war.

From the military point of view, clean megaton bombs have two strikes against them: 1) they are built at very high cost in explosive yield, presumably because they cannot use cheap and plentiful uranium 238; and 2) they may be good for special military uses, such as obliterating a city whose site must be occupied soon, but they lack the full punch of "dirty" megaton bombs. No one could be sure that a U.S. enemy, for instance, would use a clean bomb to obliterate Washington when the fallout of a dirty one might kill, in addition, most of the inhabitants of Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia and New York. "The fight for the clean bomb"--a phrase now current in atomic discussion--is not a product of hard-headed military thinking. It is likely that more effort is being invested in designing bombs that create a maximum amount of short-lived radioactivity. Such weapons might depopulate whole countries without keeping invaders from living in the silent houses after a month or two.

The debate about the fallout will continue for years, with scientists contributing a minor part of the wordage. Most of them realize that the major decisions are political and moral rather than scientific. Professors George W. Beadle and Alfred Henry Sturtevant of Caltech's biology division speak for this group. They believe that bomb testing is dangerous to the world at large and should be held to a minimum, but they do not know how to balance human danger against the military advantage that may be won by testing. "We don't know what is gained by the tests," says Dr. Beadle. "We don't know how valuable they are." Dr. Sturtevant adds: "It seems to me that the public is entitled to a more detailed explanation of the value of the tests."

*A megaton is an explosive energy of 1,800 ooo tons of TNT.

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