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American Friends Service Committee — Part 32
Page 90
90 / 169
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In those hearings Mr. Holifield called attention
to such obvious propaganda as using the term
“sunshine units” for strontium-90, a substance
which actually has not existed on this planet with-
in the lifetime of the human race but which has
been created and blasted into the atmosphere by
our bomb explosions, and which causes bone-
cancer and leukemia. (However, the way in which
Mr. Holificld conducted the hurried radiation
bearings in May of this year seemed to indicate
that he had become an uncritical AEC supporter.)
Aside from the propaganda and ignorance just
noted, the charge is made by such exceptionally
well informed persons as Dr, Edward U. Condon
that the true facts are being obscured; and Scnator
Clinton P. Anderson, chairman of the Joint Con-
gressional Committee on Atomic Energy, com-
plains that his committee has been gagged. (N. Y.
Times, March 22, 1959},
Nuclear Weapon Testing Is Injurious
Cancer specialists predict that many thousands
of persons will suffer agonizing deaths from
leukemia and other forms of cancer as a result
of A and H-bomb tests elready made.
The genetic threat is even worse, and involves
not just risk, but certain damage. Congressman
Holifield reported that the scientists who testified
before his committee—although they differed on
whether there was a threshold for non-genetic dam-
age—agreed that there was no threshold for this
genetic threat to the human race. They agreed
that natural radiation causes some defective chil-
dren to be born, and that any increase of radia-
tion increases the number of them,
Not only will more obviously deformed and
feeble-minded individuals be born, but others—
apparently normal—will have greater tendencies
than we to colds, headaches, allergies, arthritis,
cancer, and also lowered mental capacity.
Dr. Herman J. Muller, Nobel Prize winning
geneticist, believes that this impairment of the ap-
parently normal will be a much greater tots! bur-
den on the hutnan race than the increased number
of obvious defectives. He warns: “Our genetic
heritage is the most precious thing we have. If it
deteriorates, we deteriorate. The human race must
become genetic conscious ... [Aside from this
genetic dumage] the tesis are doing more harm
than good because they raise war feclings between
nations.”
Dr. Edward Teller insists that we receive less
radiation from fallout then from X-rays, wrist
watches, and natural radiation — just as if one
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