Genetic studies at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission-Radiation Effects Research Foundation: 1946-1997.

Abstract

It is difficult, some 52 years later, to recreate the intensity of the concern about the delayed effects of exposure to the atomic bombs, as well as other radiation exposures, that surfaced in the first few months after the bombings. It is not generally appreciated that the survival in Japan of so many persons receiving exposures to ionizing radiation up to the amount compatible with survival was unexpected. The physicists on the Manhattan Project had assumed that anyone close enough to the hypocenter of the explosion to have received significant amounts of radiation would have been killed by the blast or thermal effects of the bombs (1). The survivors within 2 km of the hypocenter of the explosion, this being the radius of significant radiation, were, therefore, a group without parallel in human history, regardless of individual feelings about the use of the two bombs, and the significance of an intensive follow-up of this group was at that time immediately apparent to laypersons and scientists alike of all nationalities. Dr. Putnam (2) has outlined the developments that led to the involvement of the Academy in the organization of the long-term studies of the atomic bomb survivors carried out by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). Elsewhere, I have described the somewhat unusual circumstances that resulted in then First Lieutenant Neel, Medical Corps, U.S. Army, being assigned to the small survey team that first touched down in Japan on November 25, 1946, charged with advising the Academy’s new Committee on Atomic Casualties concerning both the potentialities and the problems inherent in any study the Academy might undertake (3). Because my background at that time included a Ph.D. in genetics as well as my medical training, I covered the genetic beat for the group. It was obvious from the outset that …