Helen Caldicott and Sig Hecker

Point/Counterpoint

Point

Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, sketched out a very dark picture of plutonium and nuclear weapons in a speech that opened the "Actinides in the Environment and Life Sciences" portion of the conference.

She told her audience of plutonium scientists-many of them from the nuclear weapons laboratories-that, "Plutonium is incredibly carcinogenic." Sufficient exposure, she said, kills cells, and the cells that survive are "likely to have mutations." The resulting genomic progression of instability can continue for more than 30 generations.

Caldicott, an Australian pediatrician with a specialty in cystic fibrosis, said, "We find out what radiation does by doing decent epidemiological studies," but not enough epidemiological studies are being done at autopsy, partly because of their expense.

She mentioned new work being done by Alexander Miller at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, John Little at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Eric Wright at the University of Dundee in Scotland on "the bystander effect"-the development of genetic mutations by cells on the periphery of tissue exposed to radiation.

She said that plutonium in the particulate form that is less than five microns in diameter and can be inhaled. It can settle into the lower part of the lungs, where it can cause mutations. About five tons of plutonium was released into the atmosphere during weapons testing, she said, and one result is that, "We are increasing genetic disease by the contamination of the atmosphere with plutonium," and contamination lives on in the genes.

Plutonium, which has a 24,000-year half-life, was first made for nuclear weapons. Caldicott said she knew some of the early scientists who worked on the bomb, but, "I became terribly alarmed about what they did."

And she concluded, "I'm talking to you as a physician, as a pediatrician...You must stop building nuclear weapons!...I don't know if you've got 10 more years."

Counterpoint

Dr. Helen Caldicott's views on nuclear weapons did not go unchallenged. Sig Hecker, former Laboratory director and now a Senior Los Alamos Fellow, rose from the audience to present "another point of view."

Hecker, a plutonium metallurgist, said, "You brought us back to reality because the last few days, we were having great fun... I appreciate your point of view. I happen not to agree with it." And, he said, the viewpoint of plutonium scientists is "not less noble in terms of service to humanity" than Caldicott's.

He said that if one looks at the statistics, about a million people died as a result of wars in the 1500s and 1600s. In the first half of the 20th century, 87 million people died in wars. "Soon," Hecker said, "we would have found a way to wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth." However, in the last half of the 20th century there was a dramatic drop in the number of deaths. "In science, we call that a discontinuity . . . a discontinuity in the death of mankind," said Hecker. This was an obvious reference to Caldicott's lack of scientific data in her discussion.

"Nuclear weapons got mankind to think differently," Hecker said. "I view it as a good thing that occurred during the buildup of nuclear weapons." The question now, he said, is, "How does one manage significantly reducing the number of nuclear weapons without the number of deaths sneaking up once again?"

Caldicott said, "I know you say you developed nuclear power to maintain the peace, and it was a good idea, but you don't know" whether those weapons will eventually be used. She said she believes that unless mankind abolishes nuclear weapons, "there will be a nuclear war" somewhere, someday because of the "fallibility of human minds."

Jon Schwantes of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory asked Caldicott whether she had developed any figures on the transport of plutonium particles and their resulting danger as compared to the transport and resulting danger of smoke particles.

She said the risk of plutonium to workers is "quite high," and, "The amount of plutonium in the world is huge." She asked, "How can you quantify something that lasts half a million years?" Schwantes said, "You can do risk assessment." The exchange continued, and Schwantes concluded, "If there's no chance of the plutonium coming to your lungs, then there's no risk..."

-Reported by Charmian Schaller

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