SESSION IV
189
DUNHAM: Did you decide these died from desiccation or from
thermal burns? I wasn't clear what your conclusion was.
DONALDSON:
Desiccation, because the burns weren't serious
enough to cause death.
UPTON:
,
But the burns prevented them from feeding.
DONALDSON:
Yes, it's the cause and effect relationship.
UPTON: They couldn't eat and therefore they couldn't maintain
their food balance.
ROOT:
This was obvious in the autopsy, too?
CONARD:
Could this have been anorexia fromradiation, loss of
appetite, so that they didn't want te eat any fish?
BRUES: This is the old problem that plagues the pathologists and
the epidemiologists. What is the cause of death?
DONALDSON:
That's right.
FREMONT-SMITH:
Multiple causality enters into it.
DONALDSON: Surely, Multiple causes that complicate this, Of
course, the real differences that we have to come to grips with now
involve the...
AYRES: May Linterrupt for a second? Did you see auy signs of
birds whose tail feathers or wing feathers were lost later on because
of beta burns?
DONALDSON:
CONARD:
No, we did not.
The feathers would protect the skin from beta burns.
AYRES: I'm just wondering whether the feachers themselves might
have been burnt?
DONALDSON: The dead birds in the previors illustration had received thermal burns to the feathers extensive enough to prevent
their flying and obtaining food and water,