ECHOES AND UPDATES

Saul Bellow is a venerable and admirable writer; and only an old man whose thoughts are wandering could have typed his name [AtE Dec 89] instead of Saul Landau, a dutiful apologist for Stalinism and Senior Fellow of the Institute of Policy Studies.

Several readers wrote in about the inconsistency in plutonium toxicity [AtE Dec 89] in the two references (Cohen for death after 15 or more years, and Patterson-Myers for "acute" toxicity causing death within hours or days). Well I made no mistake in copying the data (except to overlook that they were inconsistent), and I have now taken them to the health physicists for an explanation. It seems the end figure may vary by as much as two or three orders depending on the rate of absorption from the intestine to the body. In the mid-seventies this was not known as well as today, and it turns out that Cohen's figures are the valid ones. The acute 50% lethal dose by intravenous injection is, per kg body weight, 0.3 mg for dogs, 1.5 mg for rats, and 1.3 mg for mice. "Standard man" weighs 70 kg, so one would expect the acute lethal IV dose to be around 70 mg, which is 35 times higher than Cohen's value leading to death delayed by 15 or more years, and thus con-sistent with it. The upshot is that the table given in last month's issue is valid, but the values in the text, quoted from the LLL study, strongly overestimate the acute toxicity of plutonium, making the New York Times' statements even more outrageous than at first sight.

As a devout animal lover, I would hate to give a plutonium injection to a dog; yet I do not think it is immoral and I am grateful that others are doing this necessary and useful work. The hypocritical "animal righters" are yet another group seeking to gain followers under false pretenses. The stoma that enables me to live after my bladder was removed five years ago was first tried out on pigs. If the Animal Righters had been willing to use their own bodies instead of the pigs', they would have my respect and support. In reality they use their humane mask for dismantling industry and technology, and to degrade man to something that is equal or inferior to animals.

It is unusually sad to have to announce the death of AtE sub-scriber Admiral Pete Aurand, former Commander of Anti-Submarine Warfare, Pacific Fleet. He was a frequent participant in Fort Freedom (see, for example, his "Misperceptions about Defense" in the War Room) and he untiringly wrote letters to the editors of the local press (Hawaii) on energy, defense, and other subjects to oppose the media brainwash. He has been sorely missed since he last visited Fort Freedom. See "Remembering Admiral Pete Aurand," Naval Inst. Proceedings, Dec. 1989.

"On Pearl Harbor Day, Pravda West did not carry a single mention of 12/7/41. So my friends tell me, for I quit buying that rag long ago." M.C., Pasadena, Calif.

I bet the L.A. Times did not miss Hiroshima Day. Next August all the hippy boutiques will again carry a sign "Closed for Hiroshima Day." If conservatives were as active as the Left, they would picket with a sign "But open for Pearl Harbor Day."

I have decided that I am still too young to publish only one journal, and this issue goes out simultaneously with the first issue of the bimonthly Galilean Electrodynamics, of which I am editor (only). It is a scientific journal devoted to the alternatives to Einstein's theory, and readers are warned not to subscribe to it unless they are well versed in higher mathematics and electromagnetism. But if you are a physicist, please subscribe and see whether you are not just parroting the reigning orthodoxy.

Happy Holidays!

"My son fell off his bike. We think the nuclear power plant is somehow to blame"

Health Physics Society Newsletter, A.J. Toos, 1989