Effect Of Hiroshima Blast On Children

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28658, 7 August 1958, Page 11

Effect Of Hiroshima Blast On Children

(Rec. 7 p.m.) HIROSHIMA, August 6. Japanese and American doctors have agreed that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs did not create dwarfs or freaks, the United Press International reported.

The doctors agreed that so far there was no evidence that the bombs had affected the growth ol children, either physically or mentally, the news agency said.

Tomorrow is the thirteenth anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. The doctors’ observations were based on independent and joint scientific studies into one of the most widely feared effects of nuclear warfare today—-the nightmare birth of a race of freaks. The studies were still in progress. The result of one of the most extensive studies along this line—-the biochemical assay of the hormones of 1700 children exposed to atom bomb radiation in their mothers’ wombs—by the United States-directed Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and an unnamed Japanese university was to be made late next year. But the scholars believed their

tentative conclusions were based on sound foundations. The timing of these investigations was especially significant because the then-unborn children were now entering puberty, the agency said. This was the period when any evidence of any change should be measured.

Dr. Nariyuai Izumi, director of the Nagasaki University Hospital, and a leading authority on children's diseases, said: ‘‘Our studies of children in Nagasaki show almost no difference among children exposed to the atom bomb and those who were not, in weight, height, resistance to illness and immunity.” Dr. Ichiro Hayashi, professor of pathological anatomy at the same university, said: “There may be some individual cases of feebleminded children and other freaks. But I found no extreme effects attributable to the atom bomb.”

Dr. George Darling, director of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, said: “Our studies so far agree with those of the Japanese doctors in Nagasaki. We don’t expect any real difference one way or another.”

According to the agency. Dr. Izumi said that primary schoolteachers reported a large percentage of nervousness and inability to concentrate among bombexposed children. In drawing, they showed a slower rate of progress and they found it harder to grasp subjects requiring reasoning power such as mathematics. “We can’t tell whether these differences are the direct results of atom bomb radiation or due to emotional or environmental disturbances caused indirectly by the A-bomb." he said.

But generally, he said, even these differences had been erased until “today we can say that exposed children have recovered physically and mentally and there is no appreciable difference from those who were not affected.” STOP NIGHT COUGHING That Irritating night cough robs you and others of precious sleep. Keep a bottle of Baxters Lung Preserver by your bedside for soothing relief. “Baxters" dears congestion, lifts that cough off the chest. Baxters, Ltd., Cbch. —Advt.