One Nation Underground by Rose Kenneth D

Author:Rose, Kenneth D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2001-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Doctors

Among the scientific community, no profession more clearly illustrated the shifting attitudes toward civil defense and nuclear war than American physicians. As Paul Boyer has noted, in the early years after Hiroshima, doctors expressed confidence that with proper preparation and training they would be able to cope with a nuclear emergency. Doctors participated in FCDA-sponsored courses on the medical aspects of atomic attack, and at medical gatherings listened to speakers who insisted that an effective civil defense could make a difference. Morton D. Willcutts of the Naval Medical Center told doctors in 1950 that misleading reports had “excited too much respect and fear of the radiation hazards in the wake of an atomic explosion,” and that “there is a defense. We do not need to hide or to become frightened out of our wits into hysteria.”113 As in the case of school professionals, doctors were told that one of their most important tasks would be to exude a calmness and competence that would soothe public fears. Dr. Harold C. Lueth claimed that the medical profession must “reassure the population that steps can be taken to minimize the effect of the atomic bomb.”114

For much of the decade after Hiroshima doctors followed the party line promulgated by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its chairman, Lewis Strauss. The AEC insisted that nuclear tests did not pose a health risk, and in a 1953 report claimed that “the radioactivity released by fallout has proved not to be hazardous.” When a nuclear researcher at the University of Utah discovered in the same year that his children had absorbed as much radiation from the air as he had in eighteen years of nuclear research, the AEC’s John Bugher replied that “atomic tests are conducted in the interests of national welfare, a circumstance which certainly warrants deviation from normal laboratory practices.”115 Strauss took the same line, first claiming that the health hazards of radiation had been “greatly exaggerated,” then observing, “in any event, it is a calculated risk that we must take in order that our freedom may be preserved.”116 In a 1955 U.S. News article, Strauss played down the radioactive fallout produced by the 1954 Bravo test, and claimed that taking shelter “in an old-fashioned cyclone cellar” after a nuclear attack would reduce radiation “to a level completely safe, in even the most heavily contaminated area.” Strauss further claimed that the radiation received by Americans from all nuclear testing was “about the same as the exposure received from one chest X ray.”117

U.S. News proved to be extremely obliging to the AEC. A month after it printed Strauss’s piece it published an article in response to what it called “scare stories of the most sensational type” concerning radioactive fallout. As the editor put it, “To get the facts of what really is going on, U.S. News & World Report went to official sources.”118 In other words, the AEC. U.S. News disputed Linus Pauling’s claim that the increasing number of nuclear materials in the atmosphere might lead

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