Linus Pauling Tells Result Of H-Tests

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28699, 24 September 1958, Page 13

Linus Pauling Tells Result Of H-Tests

(Rec. 7 p.in.) LONDON, September 23.

The American scientist and Nobel Prize winner. Dr. Linu.s Pauling, said last night that H-bomb tests held so far would eventually result in the birth of 150,000 seriously defective children.

These children, he told a meeting organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, would lead lives of suffering. Dr. Pauling, who returned specially from an international gathering of scientists in Vienna for the meeting, answered questions put by an audience of 1500 to him and two other scientists.

Explaining the term “seriously defective,” he described a genetic complaint which produced 1 per

cent, of the occupants of American mental institutions.

They suffered from eczema and other diseases, had an average I.Q. of 20, and “just enough mentality to appreciate their misery.” he said. Asked about a limited nuclear war. Dr Pauling said: “What national leader is there who would allow his nation to go down to defeat, while he has in his arsenal great weapons which might win him victory?” Professor Marcus Oliphant, of th Australian National University, said that no government could promise its citizens they would survive in a nuclear war. “This disaster of nuclear war which will undoubtedly overtake the human race and particularly

Britain, is one you cannot prevent except by doing away with nuclear war,” he said.

Dr. Pauling said he was not a pessimist, and did not believe there was going to be a war. He suggested a world institute for research on world problems. “One dollars a year, one-tenth of 1 per cent, of what is spent on armaments, should be put into an attempt to solve the world’s problems." he said.