ECHOES AND UPDATES

"I enjoyed your 'Church and State' [AtE Aug 92] article very much. I suggest that the Browns, Reds and Greens have something else in common, their killings of millions of people. I wonder if the victims of malaria and other diseases that could have been prevented by DDT which was banned by the Greens went happily to their graves knowing that they were sacrificed on a Green rather than a Red or Brown altar?

"Incidentally, I just returned from a vacation in Alaska . . . The 'catastrophic spill' occurred in 1989. In 1990 and 1991 the pink sal-mon harvests were the largest and second largest in history, and the 1991 seine herring harvest was the second largest in history."

Biodiversity has had its ups and downs last month. On the upside, the tuberculosis microbes are making a comeback in both Europe (Switzerland plus 33%, Denmark +31%, Italy +28%) and the US (+12%); they were the no. 1 killer in these countries some generations ago and remain the world's largest killer among infectious diseases (Nature, 8/13, pp. 538-9; Science, 8/21, pp.1055-64). Killer of merely humans, that is; it will no doubt be welcomed by the population controllers. On the down side, biodiversity suf-fered a setback when the HIV virus became a more endangered species with the appearance of AIDS without an HIV virus. This appears to be support for Berkeley molecular-cell-biology profes-sor Peter Duesberg, a rebel who is shocking the biological estab-lishment by his claim that HIV has nothing to do with AIDS. As a total layman, I cannot pass judgment on the matter, but interested readers should contact the newsletter Rethinking AIDS, published by respectable M.D.s and Ph.D.s, at 2040 Polk St./#321, San Fran-cisco, CA 94109, FAX 415-775-1984.

Scientists who wish to sign the (highly recommended!) "Heidelberg Appeal" to heads of states and governments [AtE Jul 92] should send for a copy and return it signed to Dr. M. Salomon, 10 ave. de Messines, 75008 Paris, France; FAX (33) 1 42 89 00 59.

D. Trichopulous and others, "The victims of Chernobyl in Greece: induced abortions after the accident" (British Medical Journal, vol. 295, p. 1100,1987) report that about 2,100 otherwise wanted pregnancies were ended in May 1986, and that births in January 1987 were 23% below normal, although the average effec-tive dose in Greece from the accident was only 1 mS (0.01 mrem or 0.0028 of the dose from the natural background in one week. That makes 2,100 babies killed by media sensationalism and Green brainwash (HPS Newsletter Sept. 92.)

On the other hand, I do not take the increase of thyroid can-cer among Byelorussian children (Nature, 9/3) lightly. Though run by the UN, the World Health Organization is a reliable and responsible organization and it makes sense that the rapidly reproducing cells of children (just like those of cancer) are more vulnerable to radiation. So far, 65 thyroid cancers have appeared among children instead of the expected 15. [Incidentally, thyroid "cancer" is a misnomer. Cancer is the random and uncontrolled reproduction of cells; thyroid "cancer" is the opposite, wiping out the cells of the thyroid gland.] Two comments: 1) The USSR's civil defense system, one of the most well equipped in the world, had large stocks of (stable) iodine pills to be given to children and others so as to saturate the thyroid and make it incapable of ab-sorbing further (radioactive) iodine. Neighboring Poland actually did so during the Chernobyl week; but it never seemed to occur to the ossified ogres of the Soviet CD system that their supplies might bc used in other emergencies than nuclear war. 2) Even if the number of thyroid cancer victims increases, it is still true that during its short life of 27 months, Chernobyl Unit 4, pig sty though it was, saved more lives from coal than it took by radiation.

Like all other isotopes, the isotopes of plutonium differ only in their nuclear properties; but they are chemically and biologically identical. They are all just as much of the "most poisonous sub-stance known to man" as the Pu 239 used in bombs. One of the isotopes, Pu 237, emits gamma rays, so its progress through the human body can easily be traced. It also has a halflife of only 45 days, so that after one year only a negligible amount remains in the body. The place in the world where it is produced (by accelerators and mass separators) in a purity unattained elsewhere is the Rus-sian high-energy-particle-physics lab in Dubna north of Moscow. After permission by the ethics committee at Harwell (the British equivalent of Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Hanford), two volun-teers had themselves injected with 20,000 Bq of plutonium citrate in aqueous solution, and they are now undergoing intense monitoring. So far the result is what you would expect from the "fuel toxic beyond human experience:" zilch. The article reporting this ("A taste of plutonium," New Scientist (London), 7/18/92, pp. 49-50), is written by one of the volunteers, Eric Voice. He bemoans the fact that a multitude of other experiments important to our understanding of the health effects of Pu cannot be per-formed for lack of funds. Where are those funds going (ask I, not he)? To "research" on global warming, ozone layer, ozone hole, biodiversity, exaggerated safety measures for nuclear waste dis-posal, the dangers of asbestos brakes, and the disruption of the ozone layer by adhesives used by stamp collectors.

Speaking of asbestos brake blocks, millions of dollars have been spent on finding a substitute, but none as good has yet been found. Non-asbestos organic materials (NOA) exhibit brake balance changes with weather, inconsistent performance, low cold effectiveness, increased break drum fractures, and above all over-heating, especially with heavy trucks and buses, resulting in tire failures, fires and loss of control. From 1980 to 1988 the use of NAOs (in Michigan) in trucks increased by 60%, and in all vehicles by 10%, during which time the number of fatal traffic acci-dents increased by 85%. Now I am not Stephen Schneider to tell you that this is a clean statistic: other causes, particularly motor vehicle increase, could well be a factor. However, EPA's studies on the point were so poor, and mostly absent altogether, that a federal court threw out its ban [AtE Jan 92]. (Good news: EPA will not contest the decision.) In particular, there are no serious studies on a crucial point: what NAOs do to a vehicle designed for asbes-tos brakes. [More: "Dangers of non-asbestos linings," The Asbes-tos Institute (1130 Sherbrooke St. W/#410, Montreal P.Q., Canada H3A 2M8), March/May 1992 (free)].

Some time ago [AtE Oct, Nov 90] I pointed out that with only two exceptions the great German physicists, including the non-Jewish ones, rejected Hitler and Naziism, while the US John-Holdren type of physicist went on Soviet TV and the American Physical Society kissed Soviet boots by massively opposing the SDI (which ultimately brought the USSR down). Now comes news of possible direct sabotage of the Nazi nuclear-bomb effort. The Manhattan Project workers were constantly haunted by one hor-rible thought: are the Germans further than we are? A US team of investigators went ashore a short time after D-Day to search for evidence, and were flabbergasted by the near total absence of any real result in German nuclear research. (Sorry, I have forgotten the name of the book written by the leader of the team, published a few years after the war. What stands out in my memory are the supercilious minor German scientists who looked down on their investigators with an attitude "How can you amateurs ask ques-tions about problems that even Germans can't solve?") It now turns out that Werner Heisenberg, one of the truly great physicists of the time, whose "Uncertainty Principle" has been distorted by moronic philosophers into total unrecognizability, derailed the entire effort by proclaiming the goal unachievable within 10 years and perhaps even actively sabotaging it. That he derailed it is not in doubt, though some diehards claim he did not do so on purpose. (NY Times 9/1/92, p.C1-2.)