JF Ptak Science Books Post 228

The total number of casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today exceed the initial figures of  1945–people were of course dying years after the blasts due to excessive exposure to ionizing radiation and other complications.  To understand the long-term affects of the use of these weapons the  National Academy of Science (under the instigation of the Truman White House) created the Atomic Bomb Casualty Committee in 1945.  Its earliest concerns were hematological, but then quickly spread into other areas such as leukemia, radiation cataracts, fertility, aging, mortality and genetics.  By 1950 there were more than 1000 Americans involved in this program, which had begun to whither by 1953 but which lasted until 1982.

This questionnaire comes from the ABCC and published in The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the prolific and important Neel and Schull) and published by the Academy in 1956. (The two would address the issue many times, and seem to have summed it up in The Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors, A Genetic Study.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991. The 1947 report of the ABCC may be read HERE.)

This study addressed the question of generational radiation damage and–after 1953–whether and if so how radiation damages DNA.  The issue was whether future generations of children would express increased birth defect ratios as a result of exposure to the bomb.  This questionnaire was given every fifth lunar month to the pregnant women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki–who were made to register their pregnancies with the government–and carried on for six years.   

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Also see the following:

Liebow, Averill.  Encounter with Disaster, A Medical Diary. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970.

Marston, Robert Q. M.D., and Fredric Solomon M.D., eds.  The Medical Implications of Nuclear War.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986.

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The figures for the dead and injured at Hiroshima and Nagaski, August 1945:

(Click on image to enlarge)