358 SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF FALLOUT
DISCUSSION
xlii. GovrscIIALK: The average citizeml is
often (listurhed by disagreements among
scientists. He somehow believes that scien-tists are above disagreememit and that such authorities should speak the truth with one
voice. The more sophisticated layman
un-derstamids tllat imidividual scientists, or even
scientific committees, make some mistakes
or overlook certain features of a problem.
lIe expects that such errors or omissions
will be corrected by fellow scientists. He
kmiows that the process of open publication
amid criticism is the way in whichi science
gradually improves its knowledge and in
time develops a body of information which
is accepted by all scientists.
Disagreememits are to he expected with
especially high frequemicy whenever the
problems are complex and rather new to
sciemice. The problem of estimating tue
haz-ard to ciiildremis ilealtil from fallout
ra-dioactivity was omie that pediatricians had
never faced before. Disagreements and
dis-sentimig Opinions occur at a furious rate in
the relatively new field of environmemital
health. The pages of the publication of the
Greater St. Louis Citizens’ Committee for
Nuclear Information-Scientist and Citizen
-are filled with scientific disagreement on
the facts comicernimig issues in nuclear emier-gy amid environmemital health. Do certain air
pollutants cause camicer? How much of any
01’ all of those pollutants must he present in
the air to make it hazardous for humans? Is
au effective civil defense program
techni-cally feasible? What are tile effects of
ra-dioactive fallout on human genetics? How
(10 the risks and advantages of ntmclear
plants balance out?
All of these sciemitific qtmestions of fact
re-late to major issues of public policy. The
issues of how the government should
con-trol air pollution-whether to undertake a
massive civil (lefelise program and what
peacetime uses of nuclear energy are
ap-propriate-must be decided by the public in
a democracy. To make informed decisions
the public needs to be fully informed of all
of the knowii facts as revealed by
govern-ment sciemitists, non-government scientists, the majority groups, and the minority. Only
when full imiformation is given to the
pub-lie, can the benefits and hazards of a given
policy he weighed.
Some scientists react violently to the
suggestion that scientific dissent be
pub-lished in the mass media. They charge that
ill-advised, possibly harmful, public
reac-tion may result, especially from incomplete
informatiomi about environmental hazards.
The answer is not suppression of facts but a
full account of all the facts. The facts
should also be coimpled with further
educa-tiomi Oil related problems in the form of
newspaper amid magazine articles and radio and television programs. \Vhen Americans
know all the facts and background on an
issue, their udgnients have been
remark-ably sound.#{176}
The American Associatiomi for the
Ad-vancement of Sciemice’s special committee
on Science in Promotion of Human Welfare
summed up the situation extremely well in
1960 with these words:
The scientific community should, on its own initiative, assume an obligation to call to public attention those issues of public policy which re-late to science . . . [scientists should} proile for
the general 1xiblic the facts and estimates of
alternative policies which the citizen must have if he is to participate intelligently in the solution
of these prol)lems. A citizenry thus informed is,
we believe, the chief assurance that science will be devoted to the promotion of human welfare.
Scientist and Citizen, the publication of the lay science movement, had a statement
in a recent issue that I would recommend
as the motto for the science page of any
newspaper or other instrument of the mass
media:
Public affairs seems to grow more
baffling as they become more enmeshed
with science and technology, but you don’t
* The issue of the Conference is basically not the facts, but the interpretation of their
SUPPLEMENT 359
need a Ph.D. in physics or chemistry to
un-derstand them. . . . [this newspaper or
tele-vision] puts you in possession of the
scien-tific facts you need for an intelligent grasp
of such public issues as air pollution and its
control, waste and water, nuclear
explo-sii’es for excavation, radioactive fallout, pesticides and public health, electric power
from nuclear energy, civil defense and
nu-clear war.
Once you have the facts, you are the
ex-pert on tue moral and political decisions
re-quired by these issues. Don’t leave it to the
“experts”; it’s your world.
Du. LEROY : I should like to ask Dr.
Bengelsdorf one question. How long do you
think it will be until as much information is
accumulated about atmospheric pollution
and other things as we now have at tile
present time about radioactivity and
fail-out?
Dii. BENGELSDORF: All the facts are
known about this new type of pollution we
are experiencing. We knew the pertinent
facts about petrochemical air pollution in
Los Angeles as long ago as 1951. The
prob-1cm with air pollution in Southern
Cahifor-nia has little to do with technology. Most of
the technology has been explained and we
understand the chemical reactions in the
atmosphere. To solve the problem requires
both social and economic action.
DR. BmiuEs: I have heard a lot in the last
few minutes aboimt the soimnd judgement of
the public if properly informed. I question
how far we should go in saying tiiis-that an
informed public can be counted on for
sound judgement. The public has been
fair-ly well informed about the consequences of
heavy cigarette smoking and yet the
con-sumption has gone up.
DR. WEHBLE: Dr. Brues’ comments are
well taken.
DR. BENGELSDORF: Dr. Brues put his
tion released about the Cutter incidemit is
the basis of lawsuits that are still going on
involving many millions of dollars. The
de-cisions about the Sabin incidemit took 2
years and clearly involved something like
400 million doses of Sabin vaccine; at 25 a
dose this is a large amount of money. The
decision to release the information was a
large one amd not easy. Should we give
ev-erything to
tue
press the day we learn it?DR. THOMPSON: Just to add to that.
Every participant has a view to make in the press release. We try to secure this kind of accuracy in the report.
DR. BUSTAD: Dr. Bengelsdorf, you
re-ferred extensively to the Tukey Report on
Restoring the Quality of our Emivironment.
Do you believe the relative amotmnt of
space allotted to radioactive contamination,
which was very limited in proportion to the
space allotted to other comitaminamits,
prop-erly reflects the relative importance of
each? Also, on the matter of responsibility
of the news media, I wonder how you feel
news media is meetimig the respomisihulity? DR. BENGELSDO1IF: Imi response to your
first question, I feel very strongly that there
is a bad mistake in judgement imi the Timkey
Report by the omission of a discussion of
radioactive fallout.
\Vith respect to the secomid point, being a
scientist, I must admit there are problems
in dealing \Vitil the press. However, I feel
that not all of it is the fault of the
newspa-perman. If one really has a message to get
across to the public, sit down, really give
some time to the newspaperman, tell him
what you really have in mind. The chances
are the sense of the interview will really get
in the newspaper.
DR. HICINBOTHAM: I feel it important at
this point to come to the defense of the
press. It is omily fair that we should realize
360 SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF FALLOUT
facts, hut he honest about what is fact and
what is opiniomi.
Dn. BENCELSDORF: I would like to ask Dr.
Langmuir two questions:
(
1)
Do you thinktue law suits over the polio vaccine resulted
from the news media information that was
released or the faulty operations of Cutter
Laboratories? (2) If you have information
about a possible epidemic situation, aremi’t
you withholding the information
concern-ing the health of the p#{128}’oplewho might
comi-tract some disease?
Dn. LANc’sIumn: The 1)uhliC niust comiie
first. The records are clear on that. The law
suits depemided basically upon individuals
who felt they had a grievance, but the
liti-gation deeply involved the public
state-ments that were issued. In fact, the 1)OhiO
surveillamice reports that were issued daily
were read nito
tue
record at great length. Ibelieve thlat nothing was suppressed. The
probk’mii is of verification; at what stage is
the imiformation released amid how much
consideratiomi to give to the possible public
or ifl(lustrial damage. The problem is one of
dozens that show we haven’t proved our
poiiit yet. \Vt’ are going to hold tight until
we have a much clearer idea of exactly
what it is.
Dii.SEEDS: My category ilere is
reportori-al, in a sense. I am a vendor of rads in
or-ders of magnitude that would shock the
sensibilities of most of tile investigators here-a radiologist, a therapeutic radiolo-gist.
The comimiotations of my title, however,
submit me, imi my community, to routine
daily inquiry regarding the significance of
“fallout” whenever
tue
matter is promimientin
tue
miews media. Therefore, I am atech-nologist interested in this scientific meeting.
I would like to submit a simple concept;
namely, that one of our largest fallout prob-lems is closely tied to the detail of
meteor-ology and the detailed imiformation
neces-sary to cope with it requires a monitoring
system not unlike our weather station
sys-tem. It 5110111(1 not he prohibitively more
expensive and could use civil defense
per-sound aiid equipmemit budgets in
consider-able portion to iielp defray expense.
May I make a “grass roots” suggestiomi
regar(hirig levels of govermiment responsibil-ity? Major policies and principles are nec-essarily federal in this era of instant com-munication, imistant transportatioii, mass so-cial thinking and imiternational operational
character of our country today. However, it
does not seem to he imisurmountable to map
an ilitegrate(l plan of federal and state
con-trol. Federal I)rimicil)les amid local
interpre-tation with logical “imi the field”
adjust-ments, niutual cooperation and integrity
are all that is required; and, they are
re-quire(l for success in ally group operation.
J
ust a w’ord about public information.Obviously, inimiiature, incomplete, or
tin-confirmed information camimiot he released
wisely wiiemi it has serious potential.
Hovever, the ptmhlic, for whom we all
vork, has ami inherent right to all the
infor-mation about its environment that it is in-tellectually equipped to use with wisdom.
After school age the principal source of
such information for the general ptmbhic is
the news media system. This places a heavy
responsibility upon the news profession and
they should, iii good citizenship, hold
