This account of how US authorities studied the surviving victims of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki ought to be of wide interest, but Lindee's
version of the story will not attract a general readership outside
academic circles. Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe, the 1994 Nobel
laureate in literature, has described the atomic bomb survivors as
"people who, despite all, didn't commit suicide." After the war
these people comprised the world's best sample by far for studies
of how exposure to radiation affects individuals and their
offspring. An Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission was set up under the
US Atomic Energy Commission, and the work of the ABCC over nearly
three decades is the subject of this book. Lindee (History and
Sociology of Science/Univ. of Pennsylvania) refers to the ABCC's
work as "colonial science," by which she means primarily that the
dominant power could not carry out its work without the cooperation
of its defeated subjects. How was the organization and work of the
commission affected by this dilemma? Did any kind of systematic
bias creep into the many scientific papers published under its
auspices? These are the kinds of questions that interest Lindee,
but the language in which she cloaks her conclusions sometimes
makes it hard to tell what they are. Take the question of why it
was decided that the ABCC would not provide medical care to the
survivors as it was studying them: "I suggest that the treatment
debate was a forum in which various parties explored the proper
relationship of the Americans to the Japanese." Although this is an
authoritative scholarly work, it suffers from an excess of
sophistication and circumspection, so that the questions readers
most want answered are not addressed squarely enough. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of
1945 unleashed a form of energy as mysterious as it was deadly.
Suffering Made Real is the compelling story of the first attempts
to understand how radiation affected the survivors of the atomic
bomb and subsequent generations of Japanese. Arguing that Cold War
politics and cultural values fundamentally shaped this scientific
research, M. Susan Lindee examines the daily workings,
expectations, purposes, and limitations of a project that raises
disturbing questions about the ethical implications of using human
subjects in scientific research. In 1946, an American scientific
agency, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), was established
in Japan to study the long-term biomedical effects of radiation on
the survivors. Over the next twenty-nine years, American scientists
and physicians, with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission,
published hundreds of papers documenting the effects of radiation
on aging, life span, fertility, and disease. In 1975, the agency
was renamed and reorganized to permit greater Japanese input. How
did the emerging Cold War affect the work of the ABCC? What
problems seemed most important to ABCC scientists in their
interpretation and public presentation of their data? Why did the
ABCC have a "no-treatment" policy toward the survivors, one that
conflicted with the ABCC's actual practices? Through a detailed
examination of ABCC policies, archival materials, the minutes of
committee meetings, newspaper accounts, and interviews with ABCC
scientists, Lindee demonstrates how political and cultural
interests were reflected in the day-to-day operations of this
controversial research program. Set in aperiod of conflicting views
on nuclear weapons and nuclear power, Suffering Made Real follows
the course of a politically charged research program and reveals in
detail how politics and cultural values can shape the conduct,
results, and uses of science. As scientists, politicians, and
health care professionals have become sensitized to the ethical
problems of research on human subjects, this book speaks not only
to the painful legacy of the atomic bomb, but also to contemporary
concerns about the biomedical use of potentially dangerous
substances on patients, children, prisoners, and other vulnerable
citizens.
General
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