Linus Pauling Quotes
We should know how many defective children are being born because of the [nuclear] bomb tests.
Linus Pauling, 1901-1994, Double Nobel Laureate in Chemistry & Peace, Nobel Lecture, Auditorium of the University of Oslo, Norway, December 11, 1963
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Within a few months 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries also signed the appeal.
During the meltdown of the Japanerse nuclear reactors at Fukashima, American sailors were deployed to provide critical assistance fram an American aircraft carrier in the area. They played a significant role in getting the reactors under control. Many of the Japanese at the emergency area had suffered serious illness from the radiation exposure abd a number died. The crew of the aircraft carrier had developed a highly unusual prevelance of serious illness assocated with radiation exposure. The U. S. Defense Department was "styding the matter" but had not decided that the unusual illness patern was related to their assignment assisting in th emergency. A number of the sailors had come to japan and asked for damages from the Raactor company which like most American Corporations would not do or say anything. The Japanese government also was silent on the issue when the sailors came to Japan, However, this former prime minister felt so strongly that he visited the Sailors and took up their cause in letting the Japanese public know what had happened and how the government and the electic company were acting. This was Koizumi's tearful response to the press covering the saolors and their request.
What makes this quote important historically is to realize the assurances that he had to give the press and the public. This shows the level of anxiety about nuclear science that existed at the time and some of the absurd claims that critics and skeptics made. While it was true that there were same dangers in the nuclear testing, some of which the authorities were ignorant of, they were not of the expansive catastrophic magnitude that the critics claimed. Almost all new science and technology develops a Luddite community of opponents who want the technology stopped or at least slowed much. These opponents almost always exaggerate dangers in order to alarm public opinion via fear. At the same time, almost all the new scientific arenas eventually display and disclose problems and potential dangers of which the scientists and policy makers originally unaware. But they are almost always different from those the original critics claim. For example instead of environmental concern for radiation caused mutations in the animal life or the problem of what to do with radioactive byproducts of making atomic weapons, the warnings were that the water would flow out of the oceans and that gravity would be nullified.
While this sounds like an idiotic statement, at the time very little was known by anyone about the effects of large doses of radiation. Groves had not then the benefit of the medical reports or interviews about the Japanese who had received high doses of radiation from the 2 atomic bomb attacks.
Breslin was criticized in a Federal report for his alarmist news coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear mishap:
This was a political use of sarcasm and irony. Oak Ridge was the site of the largest facility for producing fissionable material in the world as the result of the Manhattan Project. And yet the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste has never been resolved. So Oak Ridge was producing more and more radioactive uranium in the area without a resolution in sight. The “joke” was that the people in the area were immune, so production could continue without a solution to radioactive waste.
The article showed how a nuclear bomb worked. The Government attempted to suppress the publication by getting a Federal court injunction. Day and others claimed the article was based on public sources. It was. The U. S. Court of Appeals lifted the injunction and the article was published.
The Iranian religious theocrat of Iran sees the issue as one where the United States is trying to keep nuclear technology from Iran and other Islamic countries. He seems to discount his own often uttered calls for “death to America” and the statements of intended war with the United States by the leading military officer of Iran. See {624408}.
Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time, and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of four individuals to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger). Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie. He was married to the American human rights activist Ava Helen Pauling.
