To What Extent Can We Trust Ourselves?
With the twentieth century at its midpoint the United States geared up for a quantum leap in the magnitude and
frequency of atomic bomb tests. Wrapped in the flag, the testing package grew bigger, costlier, and deadlier.
Even before the first of hundreds of U.S. nuclear test explosions took place in the 1950s, some nuclear scholars
warned about the biological implications of large-scale atomic blasts. One of the first was Hans Bethe, a Nobel
laureate credited with discovering energy mechanisms present within the sun—knowledge that proved integral to Hbomb
development.
Bethe had served as director of theoretical physics at the Los Alamos laboratory during World War II. A
professor at Cornell University, he and eleven other prominent physicists expressed deep concern about the H-bomb
in a public statement issued at a Columbia University meeting of the American Physical Society, a few days after
Truman’s directive approving the new weapon.171
In late February 1950 Bethe appeared on an NBC radio round-table discussion that provoked national
controversy. When the moderator raised the question of radiation dangers from thermonuclear weapons, Bethe
responded: "You are certainly right when you emphasize the radioactivity. In the H-bomb, neutrons are produced in
large numbers. These neutrons will go into the air; and in the air they will make radioactive Carbon-14, which is
well known to science. This isotope of carbon has a life of 5,000 years. So if H-bombs are exploded in some
number, then the air will be poisoned by this Carbon-14 for 5,000 years. It may well be that the number of H-bombs
will be so large that this will make life impossible."172
Another panelist on the NBC program was Leo Szilard, a University of Chicago professor of biophysics who had
been influential in getting the U.S. to embark on atomic development for military purposes at the start of World War
II. A physics pioneer whose work on uranium’s neutron emissions had made it possible to sustain chain reactions,
Szilard posed a profound overview for the national radio audience to ponder. Said Szilard:
In 1939 when we tried to persuade the Government to take up the development of atomic energy,
American public opinion was undivided on the issue that it is morally wrong and reprehensible to bomb
cities and to kill women and children. During the war, almost imperceptibly, we started to use giant
gasoline bombs against Japan, killing millions of women and children; finally we used the A-bomb. I
believe there is a general uneasiness among the scientists. It is easy for them to agree that we cannot trust
Russia, but they also ask themselves: To what extent can we trust ourselves?173
Such talk from impeccably credentialed individuals, if widely disseminated, could have been a roadblock to the
nuclear weapons testing program. David E. Lilienthal, who had just retired from his post as chairman of the Atomic
Energy Commission, promptly denounced the scientists who had appeared on the NBC round-table radio show as
"oracles of annihilation." Lilienthal, speaking at a Town Hall forum in New York City, warned that the "new cult of
doom" was liable to bring about "hopelessness and helplessness. . . . And hopelessness and helplessness are the very
opposite of what we need. These are emotions that play right into the hands of destructive Communist forces."174
If physicists of Bethe’s and Szilard’s stature could be taken to task for warning the public about perils of
radiation, less secure critics had better watch their step. Those running the nuclear machinery were anxious to make
clear that they would employ derision and innuendo to fight anyone opposing atomic proliferation. Such pressure
would be felt for decades to follow as scientists attempted to investigate the full implications of radiation effects on
human health.
Dr. Szilard’s unpleasant question, however, would prove prophetic for many thousands of Americans whose lives
were forever altered by the mushroom clouds that followed his broadcast words: To what extent can we trust
ourselves?
171. Science, February 17, 1950, p. 190.
172. The H Bomb, p. 112.
173. Ibid., pp. 118-19
174. New York Herald Tribune, March 2,1950; reprinted in The H Bomb, pp. 121-122.