A New Pathway To Extinction

Article #4: A New Pathway to Extinction by Virginia Vetrano

The only way to stop the threat of an atomic war is to ban the use of all nuclear weapons and cease manufacturing fission products by the use of atomic power plants. Power plants are contributing heavily to the pollution of our streams, rivers, seas, and our atmosphere. If this rate of pollution continues, soon there will be no food, no water, or air which is safe to eat, drink, and breathe respectively. We are destroying our planet and working for the extinction of mankind. We must stop all nuclear explosions and all atomic power plants. There is no need to be cowards and let ourselves be pushed around from now to eternity, which won’t be far off if this testing of nuclear weapons is not stopped and atomic power plants abolished.

With increased bomb testing, we have nothing to look forward to but showers of invisible radioactive dust pouring down upon us and penetrating out bodies by means of our air, food, and water for the next five to seven years or more. The most ominous threat, however, is to our children. They are the ones who will reap most of the harvest of this madness called “preparedness for peace,” and the younger the child the more sensitive and more easily damaged are his cells from radiation.

Dr. Linus Pauling most forcibly says, “The only safe amount of strontium 90 in the bones of children is zero.” Unfortunately atom and hydrogen bombs never yield this safe amount. He further emphasizes that if testing of atomic bombs continues, about 100,000 children of the next generation in the United States will die. He also stated, and this was before the French tests in the Sahara, that “these bomb tests will also cause the birth of 200,000 seriously defective children in the next generation of human beings, children with serious mental deficiency or serious physical defects.”

Can we afford to “relax and enjoy life” when the very essence of life is being destroyed? The pool of human germ plasm is being greatly damaged, our mental capacities are diminishing, our physical capacities deteriorating and yet we do nothing. A national revolt is no longer adequate; what we need is a world revolt. Billions of yet unborn children will come into this world with diminished mental capacities and serious physical defects because we, the thinking portion of the population, have not made ourselves heard. It is we who are to blame for this gross crime committed against the future human race. In the history of the United States, no unwanted thing continued to exist when the whole population stood together and rebelled. Unfortunately, rebellion and singularity seems to have been knocked out of all Americans.

We must unite to fight every profession using X rays for diagnosis and therapy, we must fight the Atomic Energy Commission and every other nation which desires to enter in the atomic race. Every source of damage to our children and future children must be abolished less we perish from this earth. We must expect much strong opposition from all these sources because not only are their bread and butter in jeopardy but also their diamonds, fur coats, and Cadillacs.

Furthermore, this class of people won’t stop their damaging practices unless they are forced to do so, as is evidenced by the cumulated facts before us. Despite the fact that scientists have predicted the strontium 90 content in Japan would be beyond the AEC safety limit by 1962, and that in 1959 stillborn babies of Southern Japan were being found with the Sr 90 content already exceeding the so-called “safe limit,” nations continue to clamor for more testing of atomic and hydrogen bombs. Other evidence that force is necessary to stop these damaging influences is the fact that the x-raying of pregnant women has been continued well into the present time, although for years it has been known that exposing a fetus or an embryo, even momentarily, to X rays could cause cancer in early childhood.

Even authorities, such as Schubert and Lapp are disturbed over what they call “our irradiated children.” They say “thousands of infants and children in the United States are needlessly exposed to more radiation in one year than would be allowed atomic energy workers in a lifetime.” They were speaking of medical and dental sources of X rays, which is another thing the AEC overlooks when planning on contaminating the air with more fallout; the fact that our population as a whole is already over irradiated from medical and dental uses of X rays only more aggravates the hurt. Our responsibility is to protect our children from these unnecessary and inimical sources of radiation. Fortunately, it is still within our power to refuse medical and dental X rays, although we are still helpless under the blanket of fallout blasted into the air by our “mad scientists.”

Rapidly dividing cells, as seen in embryos, infants, and young children, are more sensitive to all kinds of radiation, i.e., they are more easily damaged. The younger the child, the more likely will he suffer from delayed effects such as cancer and leukemia. A person of advanced age, receiving a dose of radiation, will probably die before cancer has a chance to develop, but if an American boy, with an average life span of 66 years, or a girl with an average life span of 72 years, has been irradiated in the embryonic state or in early infancy, there is more than ample time for him or her to develop cancer or leukemia in early life.

The fact that the young are more sensitive to radiation and that they have many more years to live is reason enough to exclude all sources of radiation from them, but there is another very important reason which we should not overlook. These children will grow up to reproduce their kind and if no more effort on the part of hospitals, physicians, and radiologists is made to shield the germinal elements of these children than has been made in the past, the human race will be mutated out of existence. Through surveys made by prominent men, it has been shown over and over again that physicians fail to
protect the gonads while x-raying and that even in the best and well-equipped hospitals no effort is made to protect the gonads of children while treating them. The many thousands of articles written to warn physicians of the dangers engendered by failing to protect the gonads of the young are written to no avail as the advice seems not to be heeded. It is still up to the people themselves to stop the practice of irradiating the young altogether.

During the early embyronic stages, from the moment of fertilization to approximately the end of the third month, human cells are most sensitive to radiation. Investigations have shown that even small doses of radiation during this period may lead to malformations and sterility. Just as there are certain stages in cell division (mitosis), in which the cell is more sensitive to radiation, there are also certain stages in embryonic development when organs and organ-systems have an augmented sensitivity to radiation.

Reprinted from Dr. Shelton ‘s Hygienic Review, July, 1960