RADIATION SICKNESS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27636, 18 April 1955, Page 11

RADIATION SICKNESS

U.S. Search For Cure

(Rec. 10 p.m.) SAN FRANCISCO, April 16. United States Government scientists today reported on experiments which, they said, might lead to the prevention of sickness and death caused by atom bomb radiation. A meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology was told:

Research workers at the United States Navy radiological defence laboratory at San Francisco had found a complex chemical substance that prevented the death of mice exposed to otherwise lethal doses of radioactivity.

The Atomic Energy Commission’s Brookhaven National Laboratory had announced the discovery of a serum that could result in the development of an anti-toxin for radiation poisoning.

Mr Leonard Cole and Miss Marie Elhs, of the Navy laboratory, reported that they had isolated a protein chemical that caused blood-forming tissues to recover health after radiation, from the spleen of normal mice. Dr. Abraham Edeman. of Brookhaven, said that the discovery of a radiation toxic serum, involving blood serum from mice subjected to massive X-rays, was the first step in the development of anti-toxin for radiation.