INQUIRY INTO ATOM RADIATION

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27629, 9 April 1955, Page 7

INQUIRY INTO ATOM RADIATION

(Rec. 11 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 7. National Academy of Sciences announced tonight that it will try to clear up some of the confusion about the dancers ot atomic radiation. ®

Dr. Detlev Bronk, president of the academy, said that with the co-opera-tion of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the financial backing of the Rockefeller Foundation, the academy would undertake a broad appraisal of present knowledge about the effects of atomic radiation on living organisms.

In addition, he said, the academy would seek to identify questions upon which further intensive research was urgently needed.

The announcement of the project noted that wide differences of opinion about the nature and degree of human hazards involved in the use of atomic energy had been revealed by the public statements of prominent scientists and laymen. Some scientists have contended that radiation from atomic and hydrogen bomb experiments could damage future generations by altering the genes which determine human heredity.

The Federation of American Scientists called on March 6 for a United Nations study of the problem, with a view possibly to imposing a worldwide limit on the number of test explosions that could be set off in any one year. The Atomic Energy Commission has

expressed the view that the amount of radioactivity released so far has posed no significant threat.

The National Academy of Sciences, an independent ctf«?enisation of 500 scientists, which advises the Government on scientific problems, said it would appoint a committee of eminent scientists to study the situation. Effects in Japan In Los Angeles today, a Japanese surgeon branded as untrue reports circulating m the United States that one in every seven babies born in Hiroshima and Nagasaki since. World War II bombings was abnormal. Dr. Raisuke Shirabe, professor of surgery at the Nagasaki medical school, said he was within 750 yards of the point directly below the atom bomb exploding over. Nagasaki, and since had treated thousands of the bomb victims and investigated medical results.

1 heard of absolutely no abnormal babies being born in Nagasaki, he said. “There have been rumours of a few malformed births in Hiroshima. But even without bomb radiation, some babies are born aonormal and these may have been counted erroneously in the bomb statistics.

“Our figures do show that between 1945 and 1953, there was a 30 per centincrease in leukemia (blood cancer) among bomb survivors, and also a 50 per cent, increase in a form of eye cataract, which fortunately is not blinding. “Many survivors still complain of feeling tired and sick, but the tving o* these complaints to the bombings is mostly psychological.” Dr. Shirabe added that there was no adequate treatment for victims of large atomic radiation doses. He said that he was inside a laboratory in a reinforced concrete structure when the Nagasaki bomb was dropped.