ARE WE
ENDANGERING
OUR
CHILDREN'S
CHILDREN?
(Continued from page 7)
Dr. Puck believes these observations explain
many of the heretofore baffling effects of radia
tion on human tissue. Dr. Puck thinks that ex
posure to a dangerous dose of radiation from
any source causes invisible damage in cells in
all parts of our bodies but that the damage
shows up first in the tissues that multiply the
most rapidly. Body functions that require con
stant cell reproduction during a human lifetime
are affected first and so cause damage to the
entire system.
This may explain the extreme vulnerability of
human blood cells to radiation and also why
children ai'e much more sensitive to radia
tion damage than adults. It may also ex
plain why unborn babies, in the fastest-growing
stage of human life, are the most terribly
vulnerable of all. Moreover, according to this
theory, if radiation's effects don't show up until
the cells divide, damage done in less than a tril
lionth of a second today may cause crippling
illness or death many years later or, through
defective genes, create "inborn errors" to be
passed along to future generations.
How Does This Damage Menace
Future Children?
In human beings mutations caused by defec
tive genes may bring about the development
of a defective baby which is miscarried or still
born; or they may result in the birth of a child
with any one of a number of deformities, such
as harelip, cleft palate, clubfoot, mongolism,
malformations of the heart, brain, or other or
gans, or congenital diseases such as diabetes.
Or they may result in a child who appears to
be normal but who carries the damaging mu
tations jn his reproductive cells so that the de
formities may show up in still later generations.
It is estimated that there are now about 80,000
children born with genetic defects in the U.S.
each year. As a result of a rise in birth rate and
drop in infant mortality, the mounting number
of children with congenital malformations of the
heart and extremities, or with mental deficien
cies is creating a problem for U.S. medicine.
There has been a steady national rise in the
number of children admitted to hospital wards
for the treatment of these conditions, and there
is a grave risk of a further rise because of ex
cessive and unnecessary radiation.
Geneticists, who have made a specialty of the
study of cells, are convinced that there probably
is no "safe threshold" below which radiation
does not produce mutations in human repro
ductive cells. Each dose, no matter how small,
carries some risk to future generations.
Some doctors and scientists, including myself,
believe that this fact presents the greatest
threat to our society as a whole because, in
addition to outright abnormalities, radiation-
induced defects might create much more subtle
damage in the earth's populations in the form
of increased susceptibility to disease or general
premature aing. It is not possible to notice
these effects in one individual or perhaps not
even in one generation. Instead, the change
could be more insidious, affecting human society
by eventually producing a more sickly race of
people, or perhaps lowering human intelligence
and increasing mental disease.
How Does Radiation Affect the
Human Body?
In large total-body doses, radiation kills a
human being in a matter of hours. In smaller
localized doses, it can burn the skin, ulcerate
the digestive tract, cause hair to fall out, and
damage-the bones, eyes, blood, and reproductive
organs, and bring about temporary sterility,
nausea, and weakness. So subtle are its injuri
ous effects on human tissues that it may take
not just months, but years and even decades,
before the individual subjected to an overdose
is stricken with a crippling or fatal illness.
Doctors and scientists who work with X rays
and radioactive materials have lost fingers, toes,
and arms. Some have died from excessive doses
of X rays to which they carelessly or unwit
tingly exposed themselves. One survey sug
gested that the total incidence of miscarriages,
stillbirths, and birth deformities was higher in
the families of radiologists than in another
group of doctors who did not use radiation in
their medical practice.
There is not the slightest doubt that radiation
can cause cancer. The earliest cases were noted
among scientists who first handled X rays at
the turn of the century. Later, miners working
in a radium-ore mine succumbed to lung cancer.
Since then, many people have developed cancer
-in various forms after being treated for all sorts
of diseases with heavy doses of X rays. Large
amounts of radioactive materials that concen
trate in the human skeleton, for example, may
cause anemia, leukemia, and bone cancer as late
as 20 years after exposure. More recently, ex
periments have shown that bone cancer can be
produced in animals by subjecting them to X
rays or injecting them with radioactive sub
stances including strontium-90. Among Hiro
shima survival's exposed to heavy radiation,
the incidence of malignant tumors has been
found to be twice as high as in the rest of the
population, including cancers of the lung, stom
ach, breast, ovary, and uterus.
Proof of radiation's role in causing leukemia
is now overwhelming. In Japan, the increase in
deaths from leukemia among persons subjected
to atom bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
began to occur within two years after the war
and is still increasing. The degree of risk, ac
cording to scientific reports, appears to be clear
ly related to the amount of radiation received.
In England, scientists studying children who
died of leukemia and other cancers checked the
radiation records of their mothers and found
that there was a strong correlation between
mothers whose abdomens had been X-rayed
during pregnancy and the children who devel
oped fatal leukemia. Similar studies in this
country and New Zealand have shown the same
increase among children whose mothers were
subjected to X-ray examinations of the pelvis
during pregnancy.
What is most disturbing is that the over
all incidence of leukemia in this country and
elsewhere is rising. In a comprehensive study in
England and Wales, British scientists found a
steady increase in the fatal disease between 1945
and 1957. And they pointed out that radiation
appears to be the only known leukemia-causing
agent to which most of the population of the
world is exposed.
Getting closer to home, it has become increas
ingly evident that exposure of American chil
dren to excessive X-ray treatments may be a
major factor in producing cancer in young peo
ple. Within the past few months. Dr. Milton
Edgerton of Johns Hopkins University pre
sented evidence that in eight out of every ten
cases of thyroid cancer in children under 17
years of age, the child had previously received
substantial X-ray treatment to the head, neck,
or chest region for some nonmalignant condition
such as acne or sinusitis.
The interval between the X-ray treatments
and the development of the thyroid cancer,
ranged from three to 12 years. The study sug
gested that the thyroid gland of children and
infants is much more susceptible to cancer-producing
effects of radiation than that of adults,
and it raised this question: is the radioactive
iodine in the fallout from bomb tests, which is
absorbed into the milk supply drunk by many
children, also increasing this kind of cancer?
There Are Many Questions
to Be Answered
It is because no one really knows the answer
to such questions that the National Academy of
Sciences recently stated: "In some respects the
estimation of human radiation hazards is more
difficult than it appeared to be in 1956."
We have been thoroughly warned about the
hazai'ds of radiation by biologists, radiologists,
geneticists, and surgeons. Dr. Lauriston Taylor,
chairman of the National Committee for Radio
logical Protection, has said:
"We have a deep moral responsibility to make
certain that the (radiation) problem does not
become a critical one for those who follow us.
We are thus inescapably compelled to consider,
and consider carefully, the question of the long
range use of all radiation sources to be certain
that any level we set is not seriously exceeded
and, secondly, to be certain that no one source
causes us to use up our (radiation) exposure
allowance at the expense of other uses, which
may in fact be more essential to over-all health
and well-being."
As we face the mounting peril from radiation,
as it comes to play an increasingly critical role
in the lives of all men and the children of gen
erations to come, it is important to remember
that ever since the human race sought to under
take to harness man-made radiation, we have
always gravely underestimated its injurious ef
fects and thus have brought tragedy to an indi
vidual, a family, or even huge groups of people.
Now we can no longer continue believing in
"safe" levels of radioactivity. We must face this
danger squarely but how?
(In the next issue of Family Weekly, Dr. Senn
will present a frank examination of the sources of
mankind's greatest menace and tell how medi
cine, science, government, and you yourself can
help curb the growing danger of radiation.)
Family Weekly. February It, mi