Dr. Linus Pauling

AGING AND DEATH

   I don't know too much about this.  Three or four years ago I got

interested in the question of what causes Teople to get old , or what

is physiological age.  When infants are born there is a good chance that

they will die early in life; then their death rate becomes cxite low -

the death ratefrom am% one to ten - the number per thousand that die

each year; cancer is the principal cause of death in this region. It

gets lower still in the teens and twenties, for Americans; then it starts

going up.

  I got interested in aging because of my interest in mental diseases.
One child in 600 that is born is a Mongoloid. He is mentally deficient

and has other various stig.mata; his epicanthal folds are sort of odd that

give him lchr a kind of Mongolian appearance.  He usually has missing
                       the palms of

'phylanges and an odd pattern of lines in/his hands, and his ears are funny;

BXBXSXS and he is mentally deficient.  And sometimes people have said

that these mongoloids age more rapidly than other people and they look

like little old men.  Well, nobody 'knew then what caused mongolism; and

I thought that we ought to check up on their physiological age and see

if they really do age more rapidly than other people.  I talked about

this t:rith people who work with me; we began che&ing up to find out how

you determine one's physiological age.  If we think that peoale are older

than their years or younger than their years - physiologically - what does

that mean.  The way to tell how old a person is to look at him, I've

discovered.  There is no way of taking a sample of blood and putting it
in an apparatus and having it reveal a physiological age of 33.7 years,

or anything like that.  Nqbody knows how to determine physiological age.

For children, you can take an X-ray picture of their wrists, and you

can see the ends of the bones, hwere the bones are being depositied by


Dr. Pauling

cartillage; and from the amount of material that has been de-oosited you

can get a pretty good idea of how old the child is. After he gets to be

20 - from that time on, this method just doesn't work.

   Of course, one characteristic thing about getting old is that you

die more often (laughter).  If it were an `all or none1 process for indi-

viduals, then this would be a good way.  At age 30, say, you have a certain

l-ret ty small chance of dying.  At ages 40, 45, 50, the chances are larger.

The death rate :ner thousand people at age 35 is greater tlhan at age 30;

age 40 greater than age 35 and so on.

  There was an Englishman named Gumperts, over a hundredyears ago, who

made a very interesting discovery.  He plotted these specific death rates

and found that they lie on an exponential curve - like this.  This means
                                             fJ

that here you have a certain death rate - say l/\OOO; out here it is Z/1000;
here &/lOOO; 8/1000; 16/1000; 32/lOOOj a/1000, and so on. And the nature
of an exponential curve is such that these intervals are ecpl.  For

Dopulations of human beings, these intervals are 8$ years; you get twice
as old every 8& years - twice the chance of dying every 82 years. That


is the na r c+ of the Gumpert's curve.

   If you take different f populations of human beings - those with a

small life expectancy and those with a large life expectancy - and for

these different populations, the BE Gumpert's time constant is 84 years I

about 12 per cent of life expectancy of human beings at birth.  If you

take animals; for instance, a population of mice, and watch them. As

they begin to get old, they die off more and more rapidly; and if you

plot their curves, you find that their age specific death rate goes up -

doubles itself every 12 per cent of their mean life expectancy. This
makes it possible to carry out eqeriemants with animals and then get

informat ion about man.

If you take a batch of mice and irradiate them with a certain amount


Dr. Pauling

3

of radiation, you find that they die off more rapidly.  And if you take

other animals and irradiate them, they die off more rapidly. The same

amount of radiation causes the same fractional shortening of their life

expectancy - shifts their Gumpert's curves.

  This isn't a very good way of drawing a Gunpert's curve; I will draw
                                                  -7

another Gumpert's curve here. The logarithm of *'age specific death

rate . . .  Now, when you plot an exponential curve in this 1ogarit:hmic

way, you get a straight li~8 like this; and every &$ years it increases by
a 3/10, which is the logarithm of 2; so an increase of 3110 means a

doubling of the death rate.  Here, I have put down the Gumpert's curve

for AmericaAs living in the United States now,       a&
                                 and there a lot of inter-
    things
esting/you can say about it.  If we assume that this keeps on going, we

cam calculate that if you start out, say, with 100 million, how many would

be left at age 1171 It turns out about one; you would expect about oAe

American out of 100 million to live to be 117. You remember that last

year there was a veteran of the Civil War who lived to be 116 or 117,

and he was the only one which indicates that you can extrapolate . . . (laughter).

  If YOU had 300 million as the population of the world, you would get

one that lived to be 125.  I guess the stories about Methuselah have been

exaggerated somewhat.

That is the Gumpert's curve for the United States. This COrreSponds

to a nmean life expectancy of about 70 years.  This curve which applies

to parts of Pfrica, Northern Hhodesia, for example, with a life expectancy

of about 30 yeara, which represents a considerable extreme in the other

direCtiOA.  When you go to other countries - England, Norway, Sweden,

Denmark, you get greater life expenctancy; the Gumpertle curves are shifted

over in this direction.  This is the result of the better system of audtr

medical practice in these countries (laughter). This curve down here

represents a life expectancy of about 17 yeara


Dr. Fading

                                 4

/ i

which is the curve for the Papacos Indians in Arizona; this is the minimum

so far as I know.  We can ask why this is so. Well, we cam say that it

is probably largely due to the poor state of medical practice among the

Papacos Indians; and it is probably partly due to poor nutrition.

   Well,here we have the extremes.  If you plot the curve for the

American Negro population, it is shifted about &M& five years relative

to the American white population in the United states - probably poor

medical practice involved there.  It is pretty interesting.

   You can do other things: you can plot the curve for women `and the

curve for men.  The curve for women is about five years shifted to a

longer life relative to the curve for men. They die off from not quite

the same diseases, but nearly the same, and the incidence of these diseases

at age of 75 for women is about the same as at at 70 for men.

  You can plot the urban population and the rural population. People

in the country live five years longer than people in the city. Probably

a considerable part of this is a result of smog.  Some of it may be the

result of the strain of city life.  But I think it is probably largely smog

that is responsible.

  There are some other interesting things that can be done. Gumpert's

curves have been gathered by collecting the evidence for all sorts of

pOput&iOAS.  If we take the American population of cigarette smokers:

the non-smokers have a Gumpert's curve like this; the cigarette smokers

have a curve which down here starts out the same; pretty SOOA some differ-

ence, then deviating a little more.  These are one-pack-a-day smokers.

Then you have the two+Bcks-a-day.  The Gumpert's curve for people who

have smoked one pack a day for 20 years and then stopped is about the same

as that for the half-pack-a-day smokers.  It seems to be a pretty much an

ad&tive effect.  Thisstift is 8 years and this is 16 years. So, the
life e~eC~~CY iS decreased by 8 years for Deople who smoke one pack a day


Dr. Pauling

and by 16 years for people who smoke two packs a day.  These people don't

die of cancer of the lung - not all of them. Non-smokers who live in the

country never die of cancer of the lung - practically never - the indidence

is very low.  Non-smokers, generally, have a very low incidence - about
one in 300,including city people
                    ) die of cancer of the lung. Of the

two-pack-a-day cigarette smokers, one-fourth of them die of cancer of the

lung.  So this is pretty important, but of the cigarette smokers in general

who have an increased incidence of disease,  the increase incidence of death

over non-smokers is four times as great for death by heart disease as it

is for death by lung cancer.                           cigarette
               So coronary heart disease, caused by/smoking

kills off more people than lung cazxer caused by cigarette smoking.

   I have thought recently - here I am 59 years old and beginning to feel

it - this is what happens, /$~Ases the Gumpert's curve;  this reflects

something that is going on in the cell, and nobody knows what it is.  I've

wondered if it could be that proteins get denatured, that sort of precipi-

tate out in a sort of gum that settles down in `he bottom of the cell and

gets mired up with the gears and interferes with its working.  I tried to

get Professor Mettleson interested in this idea.  I thought it would be a

good idea if he could do some work on aging along with his work on

nucleic acid; nucleic acid is probably involved too.  Nobody really know9

what happens in the cell.  One thing you find if you look in the cells of

an old person Is that many of the chromosomes are damaged.  Of course, in

cancer tissue, too, you find damaged chromosomes - damage by whatever causes

-69 - perhaps high energy radiation.  Well, whatever it is that hapTens

to people, they do get old; and as they get old they begin to feel sort of

`put'.  They are not full of vim and vigor as they were when they were

young; their life isn't so happy as it was in their youth - golden youth,

As a matter of fact, you know, I don't think young people are hamy. They


Dr. Pauling

are really miserablp; they haven't got adjusted to the world yet; they
don't know whether they are doing the right things or not. A lot of secrets
are kept from them by the old people who won't tell them the truth, hoping
that they will keep out of mischief if they don't know ti what the truth is.

But after awhile, they get through this troublesome period; they get
married and those problems get pretty Well resolved, that is, if they are
not sick and their back doesn't hurt like mine has been hurting lately -

I don't know what's wrong with it.  So there is a period when you are in
excellent health and spirit; then you begin to get old, and after awhile,

you die of course. You begin to ask, "Shouldn't I begin to smoke a pack

of cigarettes a day so that I would cut off this last  eig t
                     d years, or
two packs a day and cut off the last 16 years - "!*ve lived a wonderful
life and I wouldn't have that terrible ?eriod of misery? The fact is
that this isn't what hapDens when you smoke one pack 6;' two pecks of

cig3xettes per day. What &JQSNCS.X&X happens is that you begin to get old;
the sludge comes dam in the cells of your body.  If you smoke two packs

a day when you are 50 years old, you feel as bad as a non-smoker who is

66 does.  So you just lose the 8 years or the 16 years out of the best

years of your life instead of cutting off the unsatisfactory years at

the end.  So this isn't the solution, then, to smoke cigarettes.
                s oking
  It is interesting that cigarettes
         ")      really does increase the physiol-

ogical age.  I saw in the paper the other day that some people in the
California Department of Public Health in Sacramento - Doctors Ileakley,

Drake, end Breslow, nThe relationship of the amount of cigarette smoking
to coronary heart disease mortality rates in men." They gathered the
mortality rates of cigarette smokers - one-pack-a-day, two-packs-a-day,

and non-smokers, and plotted just this - not the total cause of death -

but just coronary heart disease, and got just the same Gumpert 1 s curves LI


Dr. Pauling

7

8 and 16 years shift for coronary disease.  And they point out that the

increased incidence of coronary disease cause>four times as many deaths

for smokers as the increased incidence of cancer causes. They quote some

guys named Peglan and Kaiser who said, "Smoking is now the most dangerms

drug addiction."

  Cigarette smokers also die more rapidly from other diseases than do

other people.  They have undergone a general aging process. I might say

evidence about cigar smoking and pipe smoking is also pretty good. And this

evidence is that perhaps you cut a year off your life expectancy - not

8 or 16 years.

  There is also evidence about drinking;it is that you increase your life
expectancy (loud laughter) - if you drink a little. But the . . . . for

drinking is the question of the amount of alcohol ingested . . . . a large

quadratic term with negative sines.  The curve moves out in a favorable

direction, then turns around and comes back - for the larger amount of

alcahol ingested.

I have been intereste& in various questions about aging and death,

and I asked - I read in a journal - w&hat was it? - not a very reliable one -

Readers Digest (loud laughter) - that automobile accidents are the principal

cause of the decrease in life expectancy of Americans.  And I thought that

this was a very interesting statement.  After awhile, I got around to

saying, "1 wonder if it is true.'  So I made a calculation to find out.

forty thousand people are killed each year in automobile accidents; this

has stayed pretty constant

million people in America,

because the average person

for a num3er of years. There are about 150

40,OMover l&O million; we will multiply by 70

lives 70 years.  70 X 40,OO would be 7 X 4OOpOO

                                       1

l.hich is 2,800,OOO. And 2,800,OOO divided by 180,000,000 is & . SO,
one person in 64 is killed in an automobile accident; this is the expectancy


C r . Pa.uling

8

when one is born, but of course, the average age at death is 22 years.

Old people get killed once in a while, but it is mainly young ones who

get killed in automobile accidents.  So w since they have about 70

years mean life expectancy, they lose 50 years off their life expectancy.

, So if 50 years is lost for each one killed (writes) this comes out 0.8


year8.  So the average decrease in life expectancy from azrtomobile acci-

dents is eight-tenths of a yeer,  This isn't the principal cause of a

decrease in life expectancy.

  Cancer is very important; it is a great scourge. We know that many

people die of cancer; in fact, 20 per cent of Americans die of cancer.

And the distribution of cancer deaths corresponds pretty well to a

Gumpert 1 s curve.  After we pass the childhood years when there is a rather

high incidence of cancer - principal cause of death in children - the 20

per cent - that means that the death rate would be decreased by 20 per cent

if cancer were eliminated.  This would really be wonderful. Senator

Newberger had an attack of cancer, was operated on; end I judge &U&&U

that the operation was successful; he died of heart disease just a couple

of months ago.  But he became very much interested in cancer. He had been

interested already and his personal experience made him still more inter..

ested.  He said, sLet 1s appropriate 500 million dollars for a giant attack

on the cancer problem and see if our scientists can eliminate the cancer."

Suppose that this could be done, how much longer would we live? Each

year the death rate would be 80 ?er cent of what it is now, and you take the

logarithm of .8.  The logarithm of .5 corresponds to 8-& years; the logarithm

of .8 would be - well, I could even figure that out: the log of .5 is

log o 3 - log and a half of 2; and the log of .8 would be 1 - the log of 2 . ,


.   . . . . . so it is log .l - a tenth of the log of 2. And that means that

a third. of the 8& years, which means that it Could solve the cancer problem


Dr. Pauling

9

and Americana could live 2.8 years longer.  They might die of something


else - cardla-vascular disease - but they %x& might live 2.8 years longer.

  It would be worth the $500 million, I think, or even more if it could


be done.

   Cigarettes interest me. Last year, Americans smoked 5 X 10" cigarettes.

The cigarette companies have made bigger profits than they ever had before.

They cost $6,376,000,000 - about 1% of the national income; 5 X 10 l1 is

10 cigarettes per day per adult American - half a pack a day per adult


American.  So, the average American smokes half a pack of cigarettes per

day, and the Gumperts curve - that means minus four years. Smoking cigarettes

m causes Americans to die four years earlier than they would if they

didn' t smoke cigarettes.  It would probably take more than $500 million to

win out over the tobacco companies, but it would be a greater victory than

winning out over cancer.

  Here we have a situation that I think is a satisfactory one in that

you rave the opportunity of individual choice.  There are other circumstances

in which you don't have this opportunity - like the smog.  You could, of


course, move out into the desert, but the desert has been looking pretty

bad to me.  Up and around Bakersfield,  the oil refineries there have been

polluting the atmosphere terribly.  You get as much smog sometimes as you

have in the Los Angeles basin.  But, anyhow, with cigarettes you have the

opportmity of making the choice.  Half of the American people are

cigarette smokers and half are non-smokers;  and the non-smokers don't

have their life expectancy decreased at all - only a little bit as they

inhale the smoke of the cigarette smokers; but the smokers have their life

eqectancy decreased by eight years.  If we were to conquer both the

cancer problem and the cigarette problem, then the life expectancy of the

Americans would be increased by 6.8 years.  Even though the deaths from
               in some part (20%)

cigarette smoking are largely due/to cancer, this is still true.


Dr. Pauling

10

As the cigarette smokers would live 2.8 years longers, there would be an

increased incidence of death from other diseases.  These savings are truly

additive despite an apparent overlapping in the effect.

  Well, we can ask: whet about other causes in decreases in life expectancy?

I have checked up on a number of them.  You have a category of disease called

cardio-vascular renal disease.  This is a very broad category of disease - a

complex of a great many diseases - which causes about 60 per cent of deaths

of Americans.  There is death by coronary heart disease and by cerebral

thrombosis, or hemorrhage, or by rupture of the hepatic artery or some other

artery ,  or by kidney disease.  All these diseases are linked together, and

they are the principal cause of death allright - 60 per cent of the deaths.

If they were all to be conquered, people would live 10 years longer, but it

is a complex of disease and if you split it up into the different kinds, no

one of them is equivalent to cigarette smoking.  But cigarette smoking

is something that can be eliminated whereas we just know enough to conquer

these other diseases.

  I checked up on somet other things; I thought of high-energy radiation -

cosmic rays or natural radioactivity - background radiation.  Cosmic rays
produce about 20 per cent and natural radioactivity - radium, qotassiumM,
Carbon14 - about 80 ppr cent of the background radiation.  Altogether,

this amour&to about one tenth of a &zntgen per year - 7 rantgens.

We know that high energy radiation of all kinds causes gene mutations

which causes defective children to be born.  Several per cent of the children

born have congenital defects, many of them Cue to gene defects, and. many of

them, without doubt, caused by high energy radiation - 10 or 20 Der cent,

I think, of all gene mutations,  dther non-gene defects caused also to the

developing embryo.

Very interesting results have been obtained by Doctors Stewart, Webb,

and Hewett in England in their study of deaths in children by cancer.


Cr. Pauling

11

These children are between zero and 10 or 11 years of age. These chil-

dren die off at the rate of about one in a thousznd, or one in 1200, of

cancer.  Dr. Stewart, Webb and Hewett checked up on all the families that

they could find.  There were a few per cent that they couldn*t track down

but they got most of them, and on a controlled population of children who

hadn't died of cancer.  They checked on a number of EXEIEZL!XU~~~ES circus-

stances - as many as seemed reasonable - in the life of these children, and

they ruled all factors out except one.  The one factor that was significant -

the one differenee between those children who ihad died and those that hadn't

died - was whether or not the child had been subjected to radiation when

the mother had an X-ray made of the pelvic region in the Teriod of develop-

ment of the infant.  It turns out that exposure to 2 rdntgens, (which is the

amount you get in 20 years) doubles the chance that the child will die of
                      child
cancer.  So that chnges it,l/in 1200 to 1 in 600. There is no doubt that

the fetus can be damaged by even small amounts of radiation.  There has

been done a lot fpe of work on animals and on Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivors

2.6 to how much decrease in life expectancy you get.  It turns out to be

for human beings 10 days per runtgen.  Professor Hardin Jones whose name

is up there is Professor of Biophysics and Physiology in the Bonner

Laboratory in Berkeley - m University of California. I have lezrned a

great deal about these matters by reading his papers and even by hearing

him talk; in fact, I was stimulated into taking an interest in this field

through hearing him give a seminar in the physics department here about

three years ago.  He has just recently presented the evidence for this e 10

dayj-oer rpntgen for human beings.  Three years ago, he sa.id that the value

was between -. 1 day and - 20 days.  Row he has got it to -10 days with

considerable reliability.  That means that in 70 years background radian

tion gives you about 77 Rontgens, and that would be, then, minm 70 days.

This doesn't mean thx& everybody dies 70 days earlier, but what it e.oer


Dr. Pauling

12

mean is that some people will have cancer produced by cosmic raTs and

natural radioactivity and will die 10, 20, or 30 years earlier; and other

people will not be affected at all.  Or some people might have an increased

incidence of death from heart disease or hardening of the arteries, or

damaging the various cells of the huTan body as they pass through them.

   There is nothing much that we can do about this radiation; it exists

eveqphere,  a little more in some places than others, but it is hardly

worth while to move your place of residence beca,.ise of this, not nearly

so worth while as it would be to move from the city to the country, say,

where you could add five years to life ex?ectency if you move t:lere early

enough - or if you stop smoking cigarettes.

   We Live meriical X-rays.  It is estimated thet A?ericans receive

about .015 Ilontgen ;oer year, on the average, from medical X-rays, and

this would mean minus 105 days - decrease in life expectancy. ?robsbly

quite a number of leukemia,  bone cancer and other forms of cancer are

caused by medical X-rays.  Now, much of the irradiation of medical X-rays

is, of course, important, necessary.  Nuch of our medical progress has

resulted from the use of medical X-rays &ma for diagnosis and therapeutic


purposes.  I am thoroughly in favor of this. The only thing I am

against is the mtsuse of medical X-rays.  I know that there were, two

years ago in Pasadena, obstretricians who required tAhat every pregnant

WOW coming under their care have an X-ray picture made of the pelvic

                                                    me ical
region.  This causes d.a,mage.  Probably one pregnant woman in 20 has 7 justifi-

cation for having such an X-ray exposure.  That means that 19 children out

of 20 are born with an X-ray insult that will double the chance that they

will die of cancer before they have passed the tenth year of their life -

if they are similar to the British population, which we know they are,

  I felt very strongly about this and on a couple of occasions I


`7. Lr. Pauling

13

           this
talked about/to groups of yhysiciana.  The other day I talked in Los

Angeles to a grourp of physicians, telling him that I think it is wrong

for medical X-rays to be misused.  I think it is wrong for for dentists

to say, "Send the children around every six months for X-ray pictures of
t:@r jaw."  I saw a statement just today aP by Carl Morgan, the head of
the health division of the Argonne National Laboratories saying that dental
22 X-ray pictures may give an exposure of 300 Rontgens to the jaw. The
figures he gives are from 1.5 Rontgen and 300 Rontgen - 1.5 for good technique;

300 for poor technique.  There are dentists who do say: send children around

every six months; this is, of course, wrong.  Sometimes the dentist will say,
"But I have sometimes found a cavity under a filling that wouldn't have

been detected if X-ray pictures hadn't been taken.* It would have been

much better to have waited until the cavity made itself evident later on.

  The other day when I talked about this, some of the doctors got me to

one side and said, "you just don't understand the situation; we have to

take these X-ray pictures; we know that there isn't sound medical justifi-
cation for it, but we have to take them to protect ourselves against

malpractice suits."  And I said, "You shock me terribly.  This means that

doctors place financial considerations - the chance that they will lose

money in malpractice suits - above the welfare of their patients." And
here I have been brought up to think that the doctors are serving humanity,

that they have taken the Hippocratic oath.  In fact, I have just read a

statement by Dr. Lewis M. Orb, who is $xzk shocked that Congress is consid-
ering the Forand Bill providing medical care through federal aid, providing

medical care for old peopl8.  He said that the inability for the aged to

nay does not prevent them from obtaining medical care.  He said, "The Drime

concern of the medical profession is and always has been to serve humanity
regardless of reward or financial gain."  The Cadillacs just come along by

themselves.


l;ir. Pauling

14

  Well, there is no doubt that financial considerations are involved

in misuse of medical X-rays, and these doctors verified this.  In fact,

they were responsible for making it clear to me by their discussion.

This is moderately important.  It may very well be that Americans - unless

something is done about it - as Americans become more prosperous and more

of them are able to have X-ray pictures of the pelvic regions, the death

rate of all of our children will be doubled.

  Another matter that interests me is airplane travel. I didn't cowlete

my calculations on this but I have a piece of information of some interest.

In 1959, there were 0.67 deaths per 100 million passenger miles on the

Bmerican commercial planes, and in 1758, 0.34.  The average of these is

0.50 per 100 miliion passenger miles, and so we can take that as a starting

point.  I don't know just how many passenger miles were flown, so I can't

say just how much decrease in life expectancy for the average American

there is, but I was interested.  &iy wife and I travelled 70,000 miles in

the period between June and December of last year.  I thought it was inter-

esting to figure out - post-0pposterioLa it was - how much decrease in

life expectancy there would have been for before we started on the 70,000

miles.  Well, you can calculate it out.  Assuming that I have 20 years

and she has 4.0 years additional life expectancy - that is an average of

30 year8 - it turns out, using this 0.5 X 10 -8 , that it is four days.

Sut, of course, we came through, so that it is zero now that we have come

through.  That was the calculation of probability before we started on

the 70,000 miles of going through Africa, Japan, Australia and so on. . . .

  We rnipht ask that if you are going to go on an aiqlane, how much do

you lose in life expenctancy per hour of traveling - in a jet at 500 miles

per hour.  Well, this turns out to be pretty siqle. One hour of 500 miles


Dr. Parling

an hour turns out to he minus one hour in life eXpeCt8nCy.  (Laughter)

It diff'ers from cigarette smoking,  It is easy enough to figure out -


you see, you take one pack a w for 40 year?, 8 years decrease in life

expectancy and you multiply this out and it work6 out easily enough.

You have 14.8 minutes decrease in life expectancy for smoking one cigarette.

I haven't really carried out a thorough study on this, but I estimate that

it L takes about 4.9 minutes to smoke a ci,garette.  So, it is three times

as dangerous to smoke a cigarette on a time basis as to fly in an airplane.

If you fly in an airplane and don't smoke cigarettes, you are three times

as safe as you would be in staying at home and smoking them, and you are

four times as safe as you would be flying in an airplane and smoke cigarettes.

  This, I think, is a very interesting figure, that for all young people -

whatever time they put in smoking cigarettes, they are losing three tiges that

much time$ from their life.  This is well worth knGVing. I think the

tobacco companies know it but you wouldn't believe it by reading the state-

ments made by the scientists who work for the tobacco coqanies.

  I am going to mention fallout as a cause of decrease in life expectancy,

and the statement t'hat I shall make now represents a larger effect of fallo ut

than is represented in statements that I have made before regarding the

effect of fallout in causing death by lung cancer,  leukemia a.nd bone cancer.

  There is good evidence that e-uposure to irradiation causes physiological

aging and increases in incidence of death by all causes - high energy

radiation - so fallout radioactivity probably does this too.  There is good

evidence that 10 to 20 per cent of gene mutations are caused by natural

background radiation that strike the genes or chromosomes and damage them;

or damage some other molecules which then attack the genes or chromosomes.

Geneticists generally say 10 per cent but I think there is pretty good

evidence now that this figure is low and that it should be, say, 20 per cent.


Dr. Pauling

16

There is good evidence that diseases such as leukemia and bone cancer

and cancer of the thyroid have an incidence as the result of radiation of

about 10 per cent of cases caused by background radiation.  And it is

likely - from this minus 10 days per Rontgen - it is likely that all diseases

increase in incidence about 10 per cent from background radiation.  So we

can calculate from fallout what the effect would be.

  Fallout is estimated to be about 5 per cent of background radiation;

that would be three and one half days - not very dangerous, you see. It

isn't like cigarette smoking in that you can't take it or leave it - you

have to take it.

   I remember the cartoon by the great cartoonist in V!ashington - Herb Luck -

in which he said that . . . . . had volunteered for all of us as guinea pigs.

I don't like even this three and a half days.  m, That is a hundredth of

a year.  That would mean that if it were of such a nature that it caused a

catastropic effect on a certain number of people, it might be that one Terson

in a hundred would have one year cut off his life expectancy; or more likely,

one in a thousand will have 10 years cut off his life expectancy because

of fallout radioactivity an6 cause him to come down with cancer.  So for

certain individuals the effect of fallout might be a serious one, and for

others, not.

   Now, I haven't come yet to what may be the principal decrease in life

eqectancy for Americans.  I just received today a very interesting volume

put out by the United States Government Printing Office:  Hearings rrw-uI

before the Special Sub-Committee on Radiation of the Adjunct Committee

on Atomic Energy of the Congress of the United States, on biological and

environmental effects of nuclear war, June 22 to 26, 1959.  A lot of

stuff in this book was not reported in the press when these things were

carried out.  There is some testimony by Professor FIrdin Jones, for


Dr. Pauling                                        17

example.  I think it was suggested that the people who presented testi-

mony here discussed the problem of nuclear war on the somewhat standardized

basis.  It was suggested that they discuss an attack on the United States

involving a total of 4,000 megatons,  of which &alf is fission and half

fusion. -'  This would be equivalent to 200 20-megaton bombs. That is about

as big as they are made because there is not much use to make t5em bigger.

One of them is enough for any city. They have been exploded - tested. On

the first of &rch, 1954, we exploded the first ZO-megaton bomb.  It was

called the b . . . bomb, at Bikini.  It was pretty powerful;; it had the

energy for explosion of 20 megatons.  A megaton is a million tons of TNT -

equivalent.  During the second world war, there were used altogether about

three million tons of high explosives throughout the whole of the war. So

that bomb was seven times as powerful as the whole of the second world war.

And it is assumed that there %.zc be an attack with 200 20-megaton bombs.

This is what is described as a small nuclear attack on the United States.

In the studies made by the scientists in the Rand Corporation and

other such people, large nuclear attacks have also been postulated and

discuss ed.  I have estimated that we have 100,000 nuclear bombs and that

Russia has 50,000, and nobody has criticised this estimte.  I think it

is probably about right.  Some of them are little ones like the

Biroshima-Bagasaki bombs and some of them are big ones. You can discuss

a small nuclear attack in this wayr  The area of the United States is

about 3,000,OOO square miles, and I will divide it up into regions of

about 100 miles square, and leave out a third of it in the mountains, say,

It has become customary to talk about regions of regions 10,000 miles

square; for example, this could be Los Angeles.  Eere would be the central

part - Los Angeles, 15 miles diameter - Pasadena over here; Glendale over
    When
5ere.  +f one pf these bombs explodes, it smashes the city flat over an


Cr. Pauling

18

area abcut 20 miles in diameter, and there the blast fire and immediate

radiation effects are such that evervbcdy is killed. Actually the destruc-

tion would be over an area somewhat larger because frame houses are set

fire to 15 or 20 miles away.  But it is also customary to take an area of

400 square miles in which you get complete destruction. These 200 bombs -

if they exploded over the 200 biggest cities in the United States - would

wipe out half the population.  And then you get the effect of the radio-

active fallout.  The radioactive would be spread around - not uniformly -

there would be more of it close up.  If the wind were blowing, it would

spread out in that direction; but it is customary to assume that it would

pollute about 10,000 square miles.  If it were unii`ormly distributed over

the 10,000 square miles, the people in the first few hours would receive

20 times the aznount of radiation  necessary to czuse them to die in a

few days of acute radiation sickness.  Some people around the Feriphery

might v:ell survive - might survive if they got under ground and stayed

there several weeks.  This is why some people say that ?erha?s 95 Tjer cent

of American r,eople might be killed in such an attack - the Russian peoDle

too - because here you have about four per cent of the area that is just

devastated, and the remainder - the people would be killed - almost all of

them, but not for some time.  There would be time for them to get their

rockets or even to get into their planes an3 go over en.d dror, their

bombs so that com?lete destruction could be brought on the enemy too.

1;ha.t would possibly hap:Ien, of course, - if there were to be a nuclear war .

is that almost everybody in the United States would be killed and aI.most

everybody in i3ssia and almost everybody in England and elsewhere in

Europe b.ilere there are H-bomb bases now end rockets with nuclear T:!t?r heads.

Ttlere would be damage done to the people "It in the so*J.thern hemisohere,
                                      ._

but I think that life would survive in AlAstra.lia and. New Zealand and South


Ijr . Ps;uling

19

Africa; I hate to think of the South Africans being the ones who would

c 0p.e through.

   Xere I have this re;Jort, snd in agreement with what other people have

said, Professor Jones has said that you co7lld expect 5 to 20 Per cent of

Americans to survive a small nuclear attack.  Xnch bigger ones have been

discussed by the Rand Corporation people; and 5 to 20 per cent would


survive.  They would be geo$e, in geners.1, who have received quite a lot

of radiation, probably nearly as much as they could stand without dying.

He estimates that they would receive 300 Rontgens in the first week and

then another 100 Bontgens during the succeeding months during the first


year.  If we multi$y that by minus 10 days, we get 4,011 years minus

11 years in life expectancy by the aging effect of this. He also points

out that in the whole of the Northeastern United States they would receive

zs an estimated 3,500 Rontgens from the Strontium 90 in their bones, and

this would cause probably 50 Ter cent of them to develo? bone cancer.

And I haven't tsken that into consideration.  There would be so many bombs

there ..that I don't think there would be many survivors.

   Now, if there would be a nuclear war, we can f ig'ure out what the

decrease in life eqectancy would be.  I will assume that 90 per cent of

the people would be killed, and since there is no selection on the basis

of age, these would be people varying in age between zero and 70 or 80

years old.  So I multioly that by 35 and this gives the decrease in life

expectancy for those who are killed.  And those who survive will have a

decrease in life e+ectancy of 11 years. (I am not sure I am doing this

right).  Do I multiply by 10 Fer cent? Yes.  (writes on board). This

gives about 33 years decrease in life expectancy for the average American.

(Q. from av-dience).  No, only the infants would have 70 years cut off their
life; old mebn would have only their remaining year or two. The average


Dr. ?auling

20

age of the people that are killed would be 35 years, say; and so they

would have 35 years decrease in life expectancy, the rest of them 33.

Of course, this is the decrease in life expectancy for Americans if there

to be a nuclear war.  If everybody were killed, it would be 35 years

decrease in life expectancy.

   We might be more interested in the question: What is the decrease in

life expectancy for Americans living now because of the existence of

nuclear stock piles in the world? And this requires t&t we make an estimate
of the probability of nuclear war.  When there is peace in the world, which

is of course a sensible thing, then we don't have a decrease in the years

t'hat we will live.  If there is a war, there is a decrease of 33 per cent.

There are two possibilities - one that there be a nuclear war and one that


there be no nuclear war.  The simplest thing to do is to say that in the

absence of information bearing closely on this question, that these -have

equal probability.  (Writes.)  So we multiply -33 by $ and we get -l@ years

as the decrease in life expectancy for Americans from only the existence

in the world of nuclear weapons.  That makes that, then, the principal

cause of the decrease in life expectancy.

   Well, I know a few other things about aging and death, but I have

finished the whole hour.  Would you like to ask a question or two?

C&es:
Have y ou in the past, or do you now smoke?

P:
Dr.    When I was about your age or younger, I thought that it was proper,

something wrong if I didn't smoke cigarettes; so I smoked a few cigarettes.

But fortunately I was so poor that I didn't have money enough to buy them,

so I got through the danger period as a result of poverty.  It was a

fortunate thing; I might well have developed this drug addiction, as the

fellows call it.

Ques: Reading:  "Mice live up to 45 per cent longer after they have been
subjected to magnetic fields.  In cancerous mice . . . . . . after similar


Dr. Pauling

21

treatment, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . !' F&at does that mean?

P.
Dr.    I would say that it means that some newspaper reports are not very

reliable.  Kaybe even some scientists aren't very reliable.  I just don't

believe this; it seems highly unlikely to me.

$t?re 8 :  What is the effect of coffee drinking?


Dr. P.  I haven't seen any statistics on the effects of coffee drinking.

I saw a paper on production of gene mutations in micro-organisms by

caffein.  But I thought that it is unlikely that the gonads of hutran beings

get any appreciable amount of caffefn from coffee drinking.  Some of the

soma$tic cells may, and you may get some somatic mutation that would cause


cancer,  so I wondered if caffein might not he a carciogenic agent, but it

hasn't been shown to be one so far as I am aware.

Ques: If the people who smoke cigarettes would desist from the rjractice,

would they, because of their personality, be more apt to have hEart disease?

Dr. P.  Well, there has been quite a lot of study made of this. At Berkeley,

dmfng the twenties, there was quite a large population of ht,gh school
students who were classified on the basis of 100 character&d they have

been investigated . . . - the cigarette smokers and the non-smokers.

The smokers, even though it is rather a small population, are dying off at

a greater rate than the non-smokers.  This effect shows up with populations

as small as 50.  With 50 smokers and 50 non-smokers you get very significant

results.  An effort has been made to find some correlation between some one

or another of these 100 character6 on which they were graded when they were

in high school and their smoking cigarettes and not smoking cigarettes.

And there is no significant correlation with any one of the 100 characters.