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the majority of people and the fact that they could be produced by
something as intemgible as radioactive atoms lends the subject a weird
ness that is hard to dispel,
We have a situation quite the reverse of what has pertained in
the past with respest te the great epidemio diseases.
‘Smallpox, oholera,
and typheid fever epidentes were very real and terrible events that in
devestating fashion decimated whole populations.
The problem was te
seek the cause and elixizate 1¢ by sanitation or by immuniaing the population te the specific causative organign, With radiation hasards
whether fron fallout, fron weapons testa or from the medical uses of
x~pays it is otherwise.
There are no formidable pressing measurable
effects for which to seck a cause. Onecan with varying degrees of
eonfidemss predict effects fren the present rate of nuclear weapons
testing that can never be measured or clearly identified with the specific cause.
Tet each predicted effect 1s deseribed in the fom of
same well-know tragic event ~— a deformed or weakened child, leukemia,
bone cancer or the vague but seemingly faniliar "presature death.®
The problen here 1s to find some msans of comparing the radiation
hazards inherent in fallout and in the medical and industrial uses of
atomic energy with some more familiar natural or man-made hasard which
is presently accepted for one reason or another.
There is a natural
tendency to reject comparisons with the hagards from such a familiar
thing as fire.
Yire exacts 10,000 lives a year in this country and at
the present rate 300,000 per generation,
It scars and maims many
OER,