A MORAL PERIODIC TABLE

of chemical elements was asked for in a beautiful tongue-in-cheek letter to Science by D.H. Douglas-Hamilton of Boston, on the report that the National Council of Churches had condemned plutonium as immoral. "We should be grateful to the Council for originating the concept of a moral periodic table," he writes, "to which some further additions suggest themselves. Gold. . . has been accused of being the root of all evil. Sulfur, while good when compounded in sulfa drugs, is clearly evil as a component of of pollutants . . . and historical tradition gives good reason for supposing elemental sulfur to be the main component of Hell. . . The difficulty is even greater when one considers [oxygen's] allotropic modification, ozone, which is simultaneously a main component of smog and also our sole protection from the carcinogenic effects of solar ultraviolet. Perhaps the Council will issue a ruling on this question."