WELCOME

by Helen Caldicott

This symposium could never have occurred without Carrie Clark, Scott Cullen, who's our counsel and Tina Guglielmo, and they've turned into very sophisticated people. This symposium is probably the first of many and we may take it on the road as a road show as we did in PSR [Physicians for Social Responsibility] with the nuclear weapons symposia (applause). And maybe we'll import it into Australia as well. Those of you who would like to come to Australia who are on the faculty, you can sign up today.

Now this symposium is dedicated to Karl Z. Morgan. He's been a hero of mine ever since I've been involved in this work which was in the early 70's, and I know that he's a hero to most people within the nuclear industry and he's called the father of health physics. And we're absolutely delighted to have Karl here today in our presence. (applause)

Dr. Morgan was born in [Canapolis?] North Carolina in September--on September the 27th, 19 hundred and seven. He received the A.B. and M.A. degrees from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in Physics from Duke. From 1934 to '43 he was chairman of the physics department of [Renoir Rhine?] College. And during this period did research in cooperation with Duke University in the field of cosmic ray showers and [m...lifetime ?]. But when the nuclear age began early in 1943 he was called to the University of Chicago by doctors Compton and R.F. Stone. Compton was the director of the metallurgical laboratory and Stone was his assistant. And the program was later referred to as the plutonium project, after the word plutonium was declassified.

They both received a security clearance and they worked with Compton and Stone in the first splitting of the atom. But Dr. Morgan became extremely concerned about the implications of radiation upon the biological system and early Dr. Hamilton, using a few micrograms of this new element plutonium, made in the [Berkton?] cyclo--cyclotron, exposed three rats to this element and found it was very much more deadly and carcinogenic than radium and we knew about radium from the watch dial painters.

So it was Dr. Morgan who actually initiated a new professional group which was called "Health Physicists" and they were to monitor, to develop new and better radiation detection and monitoring instruments to monitor the radiation of the workers in their environment, to prevent and keep track of environmental contamination, dispose of radioactive waste and to conduct research and to determine hopefully, the level of exposure external and internal, below which there would be no or negligible somatic or genetic damage to humans.

So this new group of scientists got together and they called themselves Health Physicists. And I won't go into the history because there isn't time. And so Dr. Morgan actually worked at the department of health physics and was the director at the division of Oak Ridge National Lab and he stayed there 'til he retired in 1972. And he pioneered a lot of the work in monitoring of radiation both in the environment and in human bodies and animal bodies.

It's interesting. In 1950, he said it was a herculean task to obtain funds from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to do work in this area. And when they went to Washington to ask for 2 million dollars to start these programs he said the response was hilarious laugher around the conference table. He said he felt it was necessary to protect human beings from radioactive waste and he believed that we must protect the arthropods, the bacteria, the fungi, trees and animals, and explore the disposal of high level waste, and one retort from an AEC official at the meeting was, "man is the thing we should be interested in protecting--we should protect him—("him", not "her") and forget about these microorganisms and other form of life, after all it would be a good thing if radiation destroyed all micro-organisms." Upon which our life depends. Another absurd objection--"Karl why don't you just dilute the radioactive waste to occupational maximum permissible concentration level, discharge it into the Clint River, via [White?] Oak Creek and forget it."

So that was the attitude at that time and they found around that time that phosphorous 32 was found to be concentrating by a factor of a million in the white fish in the Columbia River, so they knew very early on about bioconcentration in the food chain. And this trend of being very conservative and concerned about radiation continued until the '50's and Dr. Morgan worked with Dr. Muller who first inspired me in my first year medicine was Dr. Muller, the geneticist who irradiated fruit flies to see the genetic damage passed on generation to generation. He won a Nobel prize for that.

But Dr. Morgan said it wasn't until Alice Stewart sitting here [applause] another pioneer in the area--in the '50's did her work showing that very small doses to fetus's in utero increased the incidence of Leukemia in this--these children after they were born. And a lot of that data was substantially attacked by the nuclear industry, her work is now accepted by all, and is a most important standard for us in medicine.

Then we had Dr. Mancuso and Stuart O'Neill who published the paper Radiation Exposures to Hanford workers dying from cancer and other causes. And last [...?...] the real work showing that radiation to humans was dangerous and that doses less than 10 rems ah, to children of the head and neck showed tumors and Dr. [Modan?] did that work.

Dr. Morgan though became disillusioned with health physicists and he said that he realized health physicists had no Hippocratic Oath of ethics. And for many, at least, the size of the numbers on the paycheck from the nuclear industry is what counts. And I think it's very important for us to understand this. In medicine, it's usually not the size of the check that we get that counts; it's the hippocratic oath and what we have to do for our patients. And the health physicists society started off with those ethics and it was Dr. Morgan who founded the health physics society.

The Department of Justice became involved working with the DOE to put down people who were coming up to say that they were getting cancer from radiation and he said character assassination of those who did testify for the plaintiffs, those injured by radiation, is the name of the game--character assassination. That's not how you work --in the scientific area--character assassination.

So that he said in the end that health physicists have really given away their ethics and started working to promote nuclear industry and nuclear power vs. radiation and safety health. And he said it is with great reluctance and regret that I might, now must recognize that the profession of health physics has become essentially a labor union for the nuclear industry--not a profession of scientists dedicated to protect the worker and members of the public from radiation industry.

I think when we have people here who are our pioneers and the great thinkers of our century, it's very important to remember what they said and to have Dr. Morgan here, representing this noble work, this ethical work that he founded, is the basis of this whole conference. And as we proceed today and tomorrow we must not just [forget?] external radiation, but the radiation received from internal emitters and that's the sort of work that Dr. Morgan and others pioneered.

Now, I would like to introduce our moderator and first speaker for this morning's session with whom I've worked closely in the last couple of years, Dr. Donald Louria is the professor and chair of the department for preventive medicine and community health at the New Jersey Medical School. He's taught at Cornell University Medical School before becoming chair of the New Jersey Medical School department of preventive medicine and community health. He’s a fellow at the American College of Epidemiology, and a member of the scientific advisory board for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He's been the author and co-author of over 300 articles in medical journals and 70 chapters in books or monographs. Dr. Louria.