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Rachel's Environment & Health News #200
(9/26/90)
"Sacrificing Citizens" (Review by Peter Montague
of "Multiple Exposures" by Catherine Caufield)
In a sense, this is the story of a long trial-and-error process
that extended over a 70-year period as industrialized nations,
led by the U.S., experimented with ionizing radiation and its
associated machines such as X-ray devices, atomic and H-bombs,
medical isotopes for diagnostic and therapeutic use, and nuclear
power plants to generate electricity.
X-ray Therapy
All across the U.S. in the '20s and '30s, entrepreneurs started
installing X-ray machines and irradiating the public. Beauty
shops started using Xrays to remove unwanted facial and body
hair: hit with enough ionizing radiation, hair falls out. The
biggest operation was the Tricho Institute, founded by Albert
Geyser, a New York physician. Geyser leased X-ray machines to
beauty parlors and offered two-week training courses. Two physicians
gave this summary of Tricho's results in 1947:
"As the years passed, cases of radiodermatitis [skin ailments
due to radiation], horrible burns, painful ulcerations, and
cancer resulting from the Tricho system of treatment were observed
by dermatologists in all sections of the country... the number
of cases of x-ray burns, cancer and death resulting from the
treatments administered by the Tricho Institute must have run
into the thousands. It is impossible to obtain or estimate the
actual number because the cases were not recorded." (pg.
16)
1: The medical community has been slow to catch on to the dangers
of ionizing radiation. Suggestions of danger have been met with
skepticism, indifference, hostility and ridicule by medical
scientists and practitioners.
2: Publicity by newspapers, not action by government officials,
has been the usual means for curbing excessive and dangerous
exposures to radiation. For example, the Tricho Institute's
operation was shut down by adverse publicity, not by government
action.
3: The regulatory system has lagged behind the problems by
years, and there is substantial evidence that the system is
lagging behind the available evidence today. People who want
to protect themselves and their children cannot rely solely
on regulatory officials to do their thinking for them.
4: A lot of people have to be hurt before regulators begin
to regulate. The rule has been consistent: Until there are a
large number of victims, every new technology is assumed safe.
In fact, Lauriston Taylor, the head of the National Council
on Radiation Protection (NCRP) [the agency then responsible
for setting radiation standards within the U.S.] in 1948 said
it explicitly: "I see no alternative but to assume that
the operation is safe until it is proven to be unsafe. It is
recognized that in order to demonstrate an unsafe condition
you may have to sacrifice someone. This does not seem fair on
the one hand, yet I see no alternative. You certainly cannot
penalize research and industry merely on the suspicion of someone
who doesn't know, by assuming that all installations are unsafe
until proven safe." (pg. 67)
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