THE PROGRESSIVES

"Nuclear" is all too often associated with either electric power or weapons, but there are many other fields where nuclear science has beneficial applications (yes, I count weapons in the defense of freedom as beneficial). The only one of the others to which this publication has paid consistent attention is food irradiation, and I am glad the AtE Cumulative Index through 1987 will be out in a few days, for some readers keep asking me about it, and I am afraid to bore most others to death by repetition. So only the salient points again: Irradiated food cannot itself become radioactive; the radiation kills rot-causing bacteria and is therefore safer than chemical preservatives which may be carcinogenic; and perhaps most important of all, if you don't trust it, you don't have to buy it, for unlike nuclear power, where a ruling minority (the media) deprives everybody of safer and more healthful source, food ir-radiation gives a freedom of choice: you can eat irradiated food while The Progressives eat chemicals and maggots.

And I do mean The Progressives. They publish in a journal where Ralph Nader writes that "this thin layer [of life near the sur-face of the earth] belongs to all of us;" where Paul Ehrlich writes about riots of the hungry in front of the "Department of Popula-tion" by 1995 as the US is decimated by overpopulation; where Prof. George Wald writes that 19^th century science bloomed because scientists had the chance "to walk through green fields, along quiet rivers;" and where Prof. Barry Commoner claims that "environmental pollution is an intrinsic feature of the technology which we have developed to enhance productivity."

The journal is The Progressive, one of the most reactionary publications in the country. They have just published a piece called "Zap, Crackle, Pop" against food irradiation, which is so endear-ingly stupid I am adding it to my collection of what may one day acquire historical value. It contains little that has not been explained in previous issues: for example, the scaremongering with the rads to which Indian wheat was exposed ("less than the 100,000 rads cur-rently legal for wheat in the US") is like frightening people with the high temperature at which bread is baked. This concerns the same stale old study of Indian children who ate irradiated wheat and were struck by some disease; the study was rejected by the World Health Organization and even by the super-careful FDA as irrelevant, and shortly before this collection of Progressive superstitions appeared, the Indian government "unconditionally" approved irradiation of wheat for disinfestation purposes, adding wheat to onions, potatoes, spices and seafood on its list of foods approved for irra-diation.

But while The Progressives goose-step forward to the society which prohibits everything that is not compulsory, let us take a look at some other applications of radioactivity. Probably the most important are tracer technology and insect control.