Abstract
Since I collaborated with the General Advisory Committee (GAC) to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on their statement concerning the dangers of radioactive fallout, which is the subject of Dr. Lapp’s criticism, I wish to answer this criticism. Clearly, the responsibility for the following statement rests on me alone.
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Notes
Hindmarsh, Owen, Vaughan, Lamerton, and Spiers, British Journal of Radiology, 31, (1958), 518. “It would seem more reasonable to take a value of between 50 and 100, rather than the value of 10 used up till now.”
C. L. Dunham, Radioactive Fallout—a Two-Year Summary Report, TID-5550 issued by the Technical Information Service of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, page 9.
The most pessimistic theory which became, as a result of the experiments of the Drs. Russell and their collaborators, quite unlikely. For somatic effects, see Robin H. Mole’s article, British Medical Bulletin, 14, 174 (1958). I am indebted to Drs. A. Upton and W. S. Snyder of Oak Ridge National Laboratories for this quotation.
This means that a 10 per cent reduction of the homicide rate would certainly save about twice more lives than are perhaps lost due to the effects of weapons testing. Other preventable causes of death cause even larger losses of life.
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Wigner, E.P. (1998). Fallout: Criticism of a Criticism. In: Mehra, J. (eds) Socio-Political Reflections and Civil Defense. The Collected Works of Eugene Paul Wigner, vol B / 8. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58862-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58862-4_2
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