IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS

It is my understanding that the U. of Pittsburgh, embarrassed by the quackery of its faculty member Ernest Sternglass, made him an offer he could not refuse, and some years ago induced him to retire. Similarly, Khelen Keldicott (spelled as in her frequent outlets Prav-da and Izvestiya), no longer brings much mirth to these pages, for it dawned on the Physicians for Social Responsibility that she was damaging their cause with her hysterical exaggerations, and somehow they got her to resign.

That still leaves a third charlatan, Sister Rosalie Bertell, to follow in their footsteps. Readers may remember that she suggested the abundance of uranium in Zaire as a possible cause of AIDS. She also writes about "the 16 million casualties already produced by our nuclear industry" and her science fiction is so crude that even an environmental researcher for the notorious Council on Economic Priorities, writing in MIT's ever antinuclear Technology Review (Apr. 87), is aghast at her ludicrous exaggerations.

But returning to this issue's editorial, picocuries per liter can much more easily be used to frighten people than to reassure them; and perhaps more important, the media will only bring her picocuries, not yours. Would it not make more sense to go on the offensive by pointing out that this gentle religious lady's propaganda is helping to kill tens of thousands of Americans every year by needlessly prolonging the life of fossil-fired power sources?

[For a substantiation of the "tens of thousands" (about 74 per year per coal-fired gigawatt capacity), see The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear, $7.95, Golem Press, Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306.]