Strange Glow
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44. Johnston B. R., and H. M. Barker. Consequential Damages of Nuclear War, 115–121.
45. In 1985, the surviving islanders on Rongelap were still concerned about their safety and requested to be relocated; they were moved to Kwajalein.
46. Weisgall J. M. Operation Crossroads, 315.
47. Watkins A., at al. Keeping the Promise.
48. Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal: Financial Statement and Independent Auditor’s Report, FY 2008 & 2009, Deloitte & Touche LLP (March 25, 2010). The tribunal was authorized to make prorated payments of awards based on the annual funds available and, if the trust fund were depleted by the end of its statutory 15-year term, awards were not required to be paid in full. See Compact of Free Association, Title II of Pub. L. No. 99–239, 99 Stat. 1770, January 14, 1986; and the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal Act of 1987 (42 MIRC Ch. 1), Marshall Islands Revised Code 2004, Title 42—Nuclear Claims.
49. Barker H. M. Bravo for the Marshallese, 165.
50. Weisgall J. M. Operation Crossroads, 266.
51. There never was a Fourth Punic War, but it is unlikely that the salting of Carthage had anything to do with it.
52. Leó Szilárd’s cobalt bomb idea is yet another example of his love-hate relationship with nuclear weapons. He was the first to fully recognize the potential for a fission bomb, and was actually the ghostwriter of Albert Einstein’s famous 1939 letter to Roosevelt urging that the United States develop an atomic bomb. Nevertheless, after the bomb was developed, he actively lobbied against using it on the grounds that if the Soviets thought the bomb effort had been a failure, then an arms race might be averted. Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project, found Szilárd’s vacillations a “continually disruptive force,” and Szilárd’s behavior no doubt contributed to the widespread view of many military officials, as well as President Truman, that nuclear scientists were naive to think that they could produce a bomb that would never be used (Weisgall J. M. Operation Crossroads, 82–85; Tibbets P. W. Return of the Enola Gay, 181–182).
53. The distinction between a tactical and a strategic nuclear weapon is that the former has smaller destructive yields and, therefore, can be used within a battle to gain a military advantage, while strategic weapons are too large to have a role within a battle and can only be delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles. Strategic nuclear weapons are instead used as part of a country’s overall war deterrence strategy. Initially, atomic (fission) bombs, such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were considered strategic weapons, but in the advent of hydrogen (fusion) bombs, such relatively low yield nuclear weapons are now considered to be of only tactical value.
CHAPTER 9: AFTER THE DUST SETTLES
1. Oe, K. Hiroshima Notes, 46.
2. Spokesman-Review. “Leukemia Claims A-Bomb Children.”
3. Figueroa R., and S. Hardig. Science and Other Cultures, 117.
4. Cullings H. M., et al. “Dose estimates.”
5. Statistical power can be defined as the probability that a study will produce a significant finding. The word significant, in statistics, means that the finding is not likely to be the result of mere chance. Significant should not be misconstrued as meaning “important.” Significant findings can be unimportant, while nonsignificant findings may reveal something new and extremely important. Statistical signiicance can be calculated, but importance is in the eye of the beholder.
6. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real, 5.
7. About 40% of the atomic bomb survivors were still alive as of 2013 (Cullings H. M. “Impact on the Japanese atomic bomb survivors”).
8. Douple E. B. et al. “Long-term radiation-related effects.”
9. Bernstein P. L. Against the Gods, 82.
10. Johnson S. The Ghost Map.
11. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real, 43.
12. Dr. Matasubayashi’s original report of his findings is currently on file in the Radiation Effects Research Foundation’s library in Hiroshima.
13. Dando-Collins S. Caesar’s Legion, 211–216.
14. If one cohort became severely depleted of soldiers, it might be merged with another similarly depleted cohort to produce a single cohort with full fighting strength.
15. These alleged associations are fictitious and serve only as examples to illustrate the point.
16. For technical description of study designs, see: Rothman K. J. Epidemiology.
17. For discussion of biases, see: Szklo M., and F. J. Nieto. Epidemiology.
18. There is another type of study that the public often sees reported in the media, but that epidemiologists have very little faith in. It’s called an ecological study, from the Greek-derived word ökologie (meaning “place of residence” or “community”) because this type of study compares rates of exposures with rates of disease between different communities and looks for correlations between exposure and disease rates as evidence for an association. Although they have their place, ecological studies suffer from a conceptual fallacy that severely curtails their value for inferring individual risk (Morgenstern H. “Ecologic studies in epidemiology”).
19. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real, 44.
20. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real.
21. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation, of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a private nonprofit foundation funded by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE).
22. It is important to account for age and gender when comparing two populations for cancer risk because they are major risk determinants. Differences in age and gender distribution between two populations would bias the comparison and result in erroneous conclusions. For example, a population with fewer elderly women would obviously have a much lower breast cancer rate, but brain tumor rates would also be expected to differ because gender and age are risk factors for brain tumors as well. Cullings H. M. “Impact on the Japanese Atomic Bomb Survivors.”
23. Non-melanoma skin cancers, which are very common and are typically not fatal, are not included in this risk estimate. These cancers are more closely associated with exposure to sunlight than to ionizing radiation. Thus, it is difficult to determine non-melanoma cancer risk from ionizing radiation without also having a reliable assessment of sunlight exposure. Also, these cancers are of less concern because they rarely kill people. For these reasons, non-melanoma skin cancers are not included in the risk estimate per mSv. Henceforth, when we speak about cancer risk in this book, it will be understood to exclude non-melanoma skin cancers.
24. NAS/NRC. Health Risks of Radon.
25. E. B. Lewis was among the first scientists to propose that simple multiplication of the risk per unit dose by the dose received produced a reliable estimate of cancer risk (Lewis E. B. “Leukemia and ionizing radiation”).
26. Whole-body spiral computed tomography (CT) scanning involves imaging all or most of the body with x-rays to produce many neighboring cross-sectional images that can be combined by computers to produce a three-dimensional image of the body’s internal organ structures. Such scans are sometimes suggested for healthy individuals who have no symptoms of illness as a screening tool to detect the early stages of disease (see chapter 13).
27. Mossman K. L. Radiation Risks in Perspective, 47–64.
28. Atomic bomb survivors also received their doses at an extremely high dose rate, which is known to be more damaging than lower dose rate exposures by at least twofold.
29. Kleinerman R. A., et al. “Self-reported electrical appliance use.”
30. Boice J. D. “A study of one million U.S. radiation workers and veterans.”
31. A close second would be cigarette smoking, for which a tremendous amount of data exists. Cigarette smoke, however, contains a variety of different chemical compounds; none of these, individually, has been as thoroughly characterized a carcinogen as radiation has been.
CHAPTER 10: BREEDING SEASON
1. Inheritable and heritable a
re synonyms. Both adjectives mean the ability to be inherited. Since most people are familiar with the verb “to inherit,” we will use the adjective “inheritable” in our discussion here. (In scientific writing, the adjective of choice is “heritable.”)
2. Henig R. M. The Monk in the Garden.
3. In genetics, the term hybrid can mean somewhat different things, depending upon the context. For the purposes of this chapter, hybrid cross means mating individuals with different traits to produce offspring with a mixture of the genes that govern those traits. A trait is a distinguishing physical characteristic of an organism.
4. Unfortunately, Mendel never saw his findings validated. He had already been dead six years when his ratios were rediscovered.
5. Genes normally exist in different forms, just as cars come in different models. Each of these different gene forms is called a variant, and each variant may be associated with a slightly different version of the same biological trait (e.g., different eye color, straight or curly hair, short or tall stature, etc.). Without variant genes, all people would look the same.
6. Shine I., and S. Wrobel. Thomas Hunt Morgan.
7. Sturtevant A. H. A History of Genetics, 45–50.
8. Shine I., and S. Wrobel. Thomas Hunt Morgan, 16–30.
9. Morgan T. H., et al. The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity.
10. True to his personality, Morgan remained as unmoved by his attainment of Nobel laureate status as he was about his family’s high social standing. He skipped the Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, saying that he wasn’t much on giving speeches and couldn’t afford the time away from his laboratory.
11. Kohler R. E. Lords of the Fly.
12. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 40–50.
13. Muller was very conscious of the many parallels between Rutherford’s discovery of artificial transmutation (Rutherford’s terminology) of atomic nuclei by particulate irradiation (see chapter 4) and his own work mutating cell nuclei with x-irradiation. He even published an article establishing the precedence of his x-ray mutation findings entitled “Artificial transmutation of the gene,” to craftily place his achievement in biology on par with Rutherford’s in physics (Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 147).
14. Between 1910, the first year that fruit flies were used for genetic research, and 1926, the year that Muller decided he needed a model with higher mutation rates, there had only been 200 different fruit fly mutations discovered by genetics researchers worldwide.
15. In fruit flies, the Y chromosome carries only the genes necessary for sperm production. Mutant fruit flies that entirely lack their Y chromosome (i.e., X0 genotype, rather than XY) look like normal males, but are sterile due to lack of sperm. In contrast, mutant mammals missing their Y chromosome lack all male sex characteristics, and display the physical traits of a female.
16. To say that it increased logarithmically with dose means that the mutation rate increased faster than the rate of the temperature change. Mathematically speaking, it increased by some constant ratio.
17. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 142.
18. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 143.
19. Actually, in his first experiment, Muller did not have enough mutations to demonstrate linearity at low doses. He established the linear relationship later with the help of an associate, Frank Blair Hanson, who was working in Muller’s laboratory while on sabbatical leave from Washington University in St. Louis. It was Hanson who upsized the experiment to achieve sufficient statistical power to measure mutation rates at lower doses. And it was Hanson who also showed that similar results could be obtained when radium, rather than x-rays, was used to irradiate the flies, suggesting that the same effect could be caused by different types of ionizing radiation, and was not specific to x-rays. (Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 154.) Geneticist Nikolai Timofeef-Ressovsky (1900–1981) independently produced similar findings supporting the linearity of inheritable mutations in the 1930s.
20. Glad J. “Hermann J. Muller’s 1936 letter to Stalin.”
21. Muller H. M. Out of the Night.
22. Stanchevici D. Stalinist Genetics.
23. The idea that characteristics an individual acquired during its lifetime can be inherited by its offspring was described much earlier by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). In 1936, the concept had long since been discredited by mainstream geneticists, but the Soviets, nevertheless, made Lamarckism the cornerstone of their agricultural genetics program, and instituted reforms based on it; these would ultimately precipitate famine.
24. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 320.
25. In the post-Stalin era, Vavilov’s reputation was rehabilitated and he was honored on a Soviet postage stamp issued in 1977. A minor planet has been named after him, and his name has been given to a crater on the moon, an honor he shares with Roentgen (see chapter 2) and Becquerel (see chapter 3).
26. The aspect of Darwin’s theory that some found most objectionable was his view that humans were just another type of animal under the same selective pressures as all others, as well as his conclusion that humans and the modern great apes must have descended from a common apelike (“monkey”) ancestor. Hence, the trial of John Scopes, who allegedly violated school board policy and legal statutes by teaching Darwin’s theory in school, was euphemistically called the “Monkey Trial.” Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 in a ruling that was later set aside on appeal due to a legal technicality.
27. A gene pool is the stock of various genes, in all their variations, that are distributed among the individuals within an interbreeding population.
28. Graham L. R. “The eugenics movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s.”
29. The Nazi SS physician Horst Schumann experimented with radiation sterilization on male concentration camp prisoners, employing techniques similar to the sterilization of rams with radiation (see chapter 6). In April 1944, he sent a report to Heinrich Himmler entitled, The Effect of X-Ray Radiation on the Human Reproductive Glands. The report concluded that surgical castration was superior to radiation in that it was faster and had a more certain outcome.
30. Because of the well-known atrocities committed by the Nazis in the name of eugenics, some think eugenics was a Nazi idea, but that is far from the case. The eugenics movement had strong roots in America, and many prominent people had originally supported the movement, including luminaries such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Alexander Graham Bell (Black E. War Against the Weak).
31. Graves J. L. The Emperor’s New Clothes.
32. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 336.
33. Grobman A. B. Our Atomic Heritage, 7.
34. Muller’s quotes in this paragraph come from: Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 255 (emphasis is Muller’s).
35. This project was kept secret during the war because it was believed, if people knew the military was heavily investing in such a radiation biology research project during wartime, they would suspect that an atomic bomb project was in the works. After the war ended, however, the project was declassified and its findings made public.
36. Most radiation workers in the Manhattan Project were men.
37. Charles D. R., et al. “Genetic effects of chronic x-irradiation.”
38. It should be noted that the mSv is a dose equivalent unit intended exclusively for human radiation protection purposes. It really isn’t proper to use it in the context of mouse irradiation experiments, where mGy would be the appropriate unit for dose to a mouse (or a fruit fly). However, under the irradiation circumstances of these experiments, the mGy doses delivered to the mice would correspond to the stated dose equivalents in mSv for humans. So, for the sake of simplicity and consistency of our narrative, we will state all mGy doses delivered to mice in terms of the comparable human mSv doses.
39. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real, 74.
40. Lindee M. S. Suffering Made Real,
74.
41. Hall E. J., and A. J. Giaccia. Radiobiology for the Radiologist, 162–164.
42. This might be one of the reasons that fruit flies had a much higher inheritable mutation rate than the mice. Muller found that lowering the dose rate did not lower the mutation rate in fruit flies, though it did in mice, for reasons that are still not clear (Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 254).
43. Mossman K. L., and W. A. Mills. The Biological Basis of Radiation Protection Practice, 177–178.
44. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 128–129.
45. Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 388.
46. Remarkably, Muller would be one of the last scientists in the world to learn of Watson’s discovery. By 1953, Muller was in secluded retirement in Hawaii and was having some difficulty receiving his scientific journals. So it wasn’t until fellow Nobel Laureate and friend Linus Pauling visited and told him, in late 1954, that Muller learned of the one-year-old discovery.
CHAPTER 11: CRYSTAL CLEAR
1. Dahm R. “Discovering DNA.”
2. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 83 and 125.
3. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 164.
4. William Lawrence Bragg’s collection of over 500 shell specimens currently resides at the Manchester Museum of the University of Manchester, UK.
5. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 246.
6. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 147–148.
7. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 146.
8. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 153.
9. Reeves R. A Force of Nature, 23.
10. Reeves R. A Force of Nature, 30.
11. Berger H. The Mystery of a New Kind of Rays, 34.
12. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 155.
13. A prior experiment by Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty in 1944, showing that purified DNA is sufficient to genetically transform bacteria, had suggested the same conclusion, but Hershey and Chase were the first to demonstrate, in 1952, that DNA was actually entering the host cells.
14. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 301.