From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive,alt.censorship,alt.activism,talk.environment
Subject: "SECRET FALLOUT, Low-Level Radiation from Hiroshima to TMI" [12/15]
Summary: part 12 of 15:  first half of chapter 19
Keywords: low-level ionizing radiation, fallout, deception, secrecy, survival
Date: 12 Jan 93 15:33:38 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu



                             *  *  *  *  *  *  *




                                      19


                              The Present Danger




    THE POTENTIAL EFFECT of the radioactive iodine on thyroid function and
    mental development was very much on my mind at that moment, since in
    early September I had presented our findings on the relation between
    fallout from bomb-tests and declines in the S.A.T. scores at the
    annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in New York.
    The likelihood that there would once again be widespread damage to the
    learning ability of children in areas reached by releases of
    radioactive fission gases, this time from peaceful nuclear plants
    either during normal operations or as a result of accidents such as
    the one at Three Mile Island, was in a way more disturbing than the
    evidence for rising infant deaths and later cancers.
       The nation could survive if there were a few more infants that died
    shortly before or after birth.  It could even survive if there were
    many more adults who would die of cancer or heart disease at age
    seventy rather than at eighty.  But no nation could survive in the
    long run if it continuously damaged the mental ability of its newborn
    children, especially in an age where verbal and mathematical skills
    were increasingly essential to the functioning of a high-technology
    society.  And since fewer children were being born, and the advances
    of modern medicine had increased greatly their chances of survival to
    adulthood even if they were physically and mentally handicapped, it
    would not take much more than a few generations for a nation with
    nuclear plants near its cities or sources of milk and water to destroy
    its health, its productivity, and thus its ability to compete with
    others who used less biologically damaging ways to meet their needs
    for energy.
       Therefore, when I received an invitation to present my most recent
    findings at a meeting of the Connecticut Parent-Teachers Association
    in Hartford a few weeks later, I decided to accept.  Hartford was not
    more than 40 miles northwest of the Millstone Nuclear plant, whose
    iodine 131 emission back in 1975 was officially listed as 10 curies by
    the NRC.  This was almost as great as the amount admitted to have been
    released at Three Mile Island by the utility's own environmental
    consultants.  For this reason, I decided to present my findings on the
    effects of Millstone as a way to estimate what the future health
    effects of the accident in Harrisburg were likely to be.
       Strangely enough, it was through my concern about the possible
    effect of the October 1976 Chinese fallout discovered in southeastern
    Pennsylvania by the operators of a nuclear plant on the Susquehanna
    River not far from Three Mile Island that I first learned of the high
    releases from the Millstone reactor.
       Apparently, as in the case of the Albany-Troy episode back in 1953,
    a heavy rainstorm brought down very large amounts of fallout from a
    nuclear cloud, setting off radiation alarms at the Peach Bottom
    Nuclear Power station near the Maryland border.  That rainout had
    caused the evacuation of many of the workers from the plant.  The EPA
    had failed to warn either the public, state health authorities, or the
    reactor's health physicists of the potentially high local fallout,
    hoping that it might not happen.  Only when the plant supervisor got
    in touch with Thomas Gerusky at the Pennsylvania State Bureau of
    Radiation Control and checks were made at other locations such as the
    Three Mile Island plant did it become clear that the high iodine 131
    levels were due to fallout, and not an accident at Peach Bottom.
       When the iodine levels in the milk started to climb to a few
    hundred picocuries and no one had warned the public that pregnant
    women should not drink the milk, a colleague of mine at the University
    of Pittsburgh and I decided to hold a news conference to issue such a
    warning.
       As it turned out, Gerusky decided not to order the cows to be
    placed on stored hay, even though some areas in Pennsylvania reached
    levels close to 500 picocuries per liter.  Only in Massachusetts and
    briefly in Connecticut and New York did the health departments order
    dairy cattle to be switched to uncontaminated feed, and only in
    Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which obtained most of its milk from
    Massachusetts, did infant mortality continue its sharp decline in the
    following few months among all the New England states.
       When a news story with my findings on the rises in infant mortality
    following this episode was published by the {Washington Post-Los
    Angeles Times} News Service in the summer of 1977, I received a phone
    call from a newspaper reporter in Connecticut, who asked me whether I
    had examined the possible effect of the Millstone plant releases on
    the pattern of infant mortality changes in New England.  Someone had
    given him a copy of a recent annual environmental report for this
    plant, and he wondered whether I might be willing to look at it for
    him since he was unable to interpret its significance.
       When the report arrived a few days later, I turned to the pages
    dealing with milk measurements.  I could hardly believe my eyes.  The
    control farms located in a direction where the wind rarely carried the
    gases from the stack showed levels of strontium 90 of only 5 to 7
    picocuries per liter, similar to the rest of the East Coast.  The
    concentrations in other nearby farms, however, reached values as high
    as 27 of these units, higher than those typical for Connecticut during
    the height of nuclear-bomb testing back in the early 1960s and similar
    to the highest concentrations measured by N.U.S. at Shippingport.  For
    the people living within 10 to 20 miles of the plant, nuclear-bomb
    testing might just as well have never ended.
       And when I looked at infant mortality in New England in preparation
    for a lecture at the University of Rhode Island, the familiar pattern
    I had seen at Dresden, Indian Point, and Shippingport once again
    confirmed the seriousness of these levels of fallout in the milk.
    While throughout the 1950s and 1960s all the New England states had
    shown the same infant mortality rate, following the onset of releases
    from Millstone in 1970, Rhode Island, directly downwind, suddenly
    stopped declining as rapidly as all the other states.  By early 1976,
    before the October fallout arrived from China, Rhode Island had nearly
    twice the infant mortality rate of New Hampshire.
       Shortly after I presented these findings at the University of Rhode
    Island, I received a telephone call from State Representative John
    Anderson of the Connecticut legislature, asking me whether I would be
    willing to undertake a more detailed study of the possible health
    effects of Millstone and the nearby Connecticut Yankee Reactor at
    Haddam Neck for the people of Connecticut.  I agreed on the condition
    that he would send me the full environmental reports for the two
    plants for every year of their operation, together with the detailed
    annual vital statistics reports of the State of Connecticut.
       A few weeks later a large box arrived containing the reports.  The
    story they revealed was a repetition of what had taken place at
    Shippingport, except that this time the environmental and health data
    were much more detailed and extended over many years before and after
    the start of operation.  Again, the strontium 90 levels in the soil
    and milk increased as one approached each of the two plants.  The
    levels were a few times higher near the Millstone Plant, with its
    boiling-water reactor (BWR), than near the Haddam Neck plant, with its
    pressurized-water reactor (PWR), which was similar to Shippingport and
    Three Mile Island.
       This time, however, data was available for every year of operation
    on a month-by-month basis, and it was possible to see how in the first
    few years of operation, the strontium 90 levels were no different near
    the plants from those in the rest of New England.  But gradually, as
    the fallout from bomb testing was washed into the rivers and the ocean
    by the rains, the soil and milk levels declined all over New England,
    while they stayed high or even rose for the farms within a 10- to 15-
    mile radius of the plants.
       On a number of occasions, when there was a particularly heavy
    fallout from a Chinese nuclear test, as in October of 1976, the
    records of the milk measurements showed the arrival of the fallout
    very clearly as a peak, particularly for the short-lived iodine 131
    and strontium 89, and to a lesser degree for the long-lived cesium 137
    and strontium 90.  But what was even more disturbing were the even
    larger peaks of strontium 90 and cesium 137 in July and August of
    1976, months before the bomb was detonated, not only in the local
    farms but as far downwind as Providence, Rhode Island.
       Yet the summary in the front of the utility's environmental report
    for 1976 maintained, as it had every year, that the strontium 90 and
    cesium 137 in the milk was attributable to fallout from nuclear
    testing.  It was sad to see that the once so hopeful nuclear industry
    now needed the continuation of nuclear-bomb tests to stay in
    operation.
       To calculate the radiation doses to the bones of children, I used
    the high local excess values of strontium 90 in the milk along with
    the NRC's own calculational model given in NUREG 1.109.  The results
    were of the order of a few hundred millirems per year, many hundreds
    of times the value of less than 1 millirad arrived at by the utility
    when the strontium 90 was left out of the calculations, and far above
    the maximum of 25 millirems per year that was proposed by the EPA as
    the maximum permissible value from the nuclear fuel cycle.
       Thus it was no surprise that the EPA as well as the NRC issued
    statements after my reports had been sent to State Representative
    Anderson and Congressman Christopher Dodd, in whose district the
    Millstone Plant was located, which claimed that the high strontium 90
    and cesium 137 levels in the milk near this plant were due to fallout
    and could not be attributed to releases from the plant.  The EPA and
    NRC never even attempted to explain why the levels of these
    radioactive substances should increase as one approached the stack
    from every direction.
       Instead, these government agencies, on whom the public depended for
    the protection of its health and safety, tried to mislead the public.
    They claimed that there was little strontium 89 present along with the
    strontium 90, as is always the case when fresh fission products escape
    into the environment, and that therefore the strontium 90 could not be
    due to plant releases.
       But what the nonspecialist could not have known is that strontium
    89 has a very short half-life of only 50 days compared with 30 years
    for strontium 90.  While the long-lived strontium 90 continues to
    build up in the soil around the plant, the strontium 89 rapidly decays
    away.  Thus, when the cows return to pasture in the spring and summer,
    the milk shows predominantly the accumulated strontium 90, and very
    little of the short-lived strontium 89.
       In fact, it is just as in the case of a coal-burning plant, where
    both steam and dust are emitted from the stack.  Clearly, one would
    not expect to see the surrounding area covered with water, which
    evaporates rapidly just as short-lived isotopes disappear.  Instead,
    one would expect to find a high level of ashes accumulating,
    decreasing with the distance away in every direction, just like the
    long-lived strontium 90 particles in the soil and milk around a
    nuclear plant.
       But the nuclear scientists and engineers in these agencies, taking
    advantage of the widespread lack of scientific knowledge among the
    general public, its representatives, and even the heads of their own
    bureaucratic organizations, acted to protect the national interest as
    they saw it.  Thus, they used their expertise to mislead the public,
    firmly believing that the need for energy independence or the
    willingness to use nuclear weapons far outweighed any conceivable
    small impact on human health.
       Having the detailed figures on the officially announced releases as
    well as the uncontested measurements of radioactivity in the milk
    around Millstone over the years, I could compare the releases directly
    with those from Three Mile Island.  Over a period of five years,
    Millstone had released half as many total curies of radioactive gases
    of all types into the atmosphere as Three Mile Island did in five
    days, including roughly comparable amounts of iodine 131.  According
    to the health statistics, infant mortality in Rhode Island, some 20 to
    40 miles away, was twice as great as for the most distant states after
    Millstone had operated for five years.  Therefore, in my first
    approximation, there would have to be at least a 50 to 100 percent
    rise in infant mortality and childhood cancers in the Harrisburg area,
    which would be followed in the decades to come by cancer rises among
    the older population, perhaps leading to as many as 4,000 to 8,000
    extra cancer deaths in the next few decades.
       There was no need to extrapolate from very high doses to very low
    doses, since the amounts released in both cases were comparable.  Both
    for the Millstone and Three Mile Island releases, the doses were in
    the range of tens to hundreds of millirems per year, and they were due
    to comparable types of radioactive elements created in the course of
    nuclear reactor operations.
       But precisely because the releases from Three Mile Island were not
    so very different in magnitude from what the NRC and EPA had set as
    permissible for normal nuclear reactor releases in the course of a
    year, it was clear to me that enormous efforts would have to be made
    both by the government health agencies and the nuclear industry to
    keep knowledge of the likely health effects of the accident from
    reaching the public or their elected representatives in Congress.  And
    this is precisely what happened in the weeks after my talk in
    Hartford, when the long-awaited report of the Kemeny Commission was
    being prepared in its final form.
       I had been approached by ABC to appear on the show {Good Morning
    America} to present my findings, which were apparently in sharp
    contrast to the conclusion of the Kemeny report, a draft of which was
    read to me by the producer.  According to this draft, which had a
    discussion of potential health effects that was confined to only a
    couple of pages, the only effects were psychological, with no
    detectable increases expected on infant mortality or cancer rates.  In
    effect, the Kemeny Commission had accepted the optimistic report by
    the NRC, the EPA, and HEW a few days after the accident.
       Apparently no efforts had been made to look at the actual
    statistics on infant mortality and miscarriages that had shown
    significant rises as early as May and June, four to five months before
    the final draft was being prepared in September and October.  Yet, if
    the commissioners had wanted to, they could easily have obtained the
    same data I had been able to find in the records of local hospitals
    and the reports of the U.S. Center for Health Statistics for every
    state in the United States.  If there really had been no increase in
    stillbirths and infant deaths, this would surely have been the best
    way to reassure the people of Harrisburg and the rest of the world
    living near nuclear reactors, once and for all ending the concern
    about nuclear power, silencing the critics, and freeing the industry
    from the uncertainty that was leading to its rapid decline in the wake
    of Three Mile Island.
       But this was clearly not the course chosen.  The actual data would
    have shown an increase in mortality rates near the plant during the
    summer months, while they declined in nearby areas not reached by the
    plume so carefully recorded in the utility's own internal reports
    available to the Kemeny Commission.  Such a pattern would have been as
    difficult to explain away as the peaks of strontium 90 infant
    mortality and cancer increases around Shippingport and Millstone in
    the past, hardly reassuring for a public that had by now learned to
    distrust deeply the public statement of utility officials and
    government scientists whenever it came to the health effects of low-
    level radiation from bomb fallout or nuclear facilities.
       Not being able to allow the truth to emerge, the government and the
    industry resorted once again to the familiar tactics of suppression
    and attempts to discredit the critics, as I would learn in the days
    following the official release of the Kemeny Report in early November.
       I was supposed to appear on {Good Morning America} the day after
    the Kemeny Commission report was published.  All arrangements had been
    made when I received a phone call from the producer saying that the
    format of the show would have to be changed, that they would need to
    find someone who would represent the industry and government point of
    view to debate me, and that this would mean a day's delay in my
    appearance.  The following morning, I received another call from the
    producer, who said that they had found someone who would represent the
    other side, and that the program was now scheduled for 8:15 A.M. the
    next day.  My tickets had been paid for, the hotel room in New York
    reserved, and a limousine ordered to pick me up and take me to the
    studio.
       But the opportunity to present the other side of the story to a
    nationwide audience in answer to the bland assurance of the Kemeny
    Commission broadcast the day before never came.  Just a few hours
    before I was scheduled to leave for New York, a call came from ABC
    saying that there was a last-minute change in the schedule, and that
    they had to cancel my appearance.  I remembered the enormous pressures
    that had been exerted by the Atomic Energy Commission on the producers
    of the NBC {Today} show back in 1969 when I was scheduled to appear to
    talk about the effects of bomb fallout on infant mortality.  But this
    time, it seemed likely to me that the pressure came from a commercial
    nuclear industry fighting for its life, and apparently these forces
    were too powerful even for a large television network such as ABC.
       A news conference had been arranged by a local citizens' group in
    Harrisburg for noon, following my scheduled appearance on {Good
    Morning America}, and so instead of flying to New York, I took the
    plane to Harrisburg early the next day.  It was the same flight I had
    taken the morning of the first news conference, when the radioactive
    gases were causing my survey meter to give me the warning of the large
    gas releases that the industry did not want to become known.
       The news conference took place in the same small room of the
    Friends' Meeting House where the first one had been called on the
    second day of the accident.  Dr. Chauncey Kepford, who had been one of
    the first scientists in the area to warn of the danger of the Three
    Mile Island plant, long before it went into operation, summarized his
    findings that the radiation doses were much larger than had been
    calculated from the simplified mathematical models used by the NRC and
    adopted by the Kemeny Commission.  Because of his efforts to warn the
    local group of concerned citizens to prepare their case against the
    plant, he had been fired by Pennsylvania State University, something
    that he had been able to prove in court when he had sued the
    university for damages.  Now he had nothing more to lose, and so he
    was able to provide independent evidence that the health effects of
    the accident would be much greater than the public had been led to
    believe.
       I then outlined the substance of my findings based on the state-
    by-state data in the U.S. Monthly Vital Statistics.  The data showed
    sharp rises in infant mortality in Pennsylvania and the area of New
    York State outside New York City, while the rates continued to decline
    in the areas of Philadelphia and New York City, where the radioactive
    plume had not been carried by the winds.  I also cited the evidence of
    higher infant mortality rates in the Harrisburg and Holy Spirit
    Hospitals (in the Harrisburg area) for the months following the
    accident as compared with the same period a year before.
       To this I added the latest findings that the rate of infant deaths
    had also gone up as far away as the Pittsburgh area, toward which the
    radioactive gases had drifted in the early period of high releases as
    recorded in the records of the largest hospital (namely the Magee
    Women's Hospital, associated with the University of Pittsburgh).
    According to the records of the hospital, which accounted for about
    half the births in Allegheny County, the number of deaths for the
    three-month period of May, June, and July had gone up 93 percent--from
    27 in 1978 to 52 in 1979--while the births had remained essentially
    constant, rising only 2 percent--from 2166 to 2221.  Furthermore,
    detailed examination of the causes of death revealed that the excess
    was due to an unexplained increase in prematurity, underweight births,
    and respiratory distress of the type found in the Harrisburg Hospital.
    There had not been any epidemic of other diseases or problems
    associated with the delivery process.
       I concluded by saying that the evidence was therefore very strong
    that in the first few months following the accident, a few hundred
    excess deaths above normal expectations took place in Pennsylvania,
    contrary to the claims of the industry and the Kemeny Commission that
    there would be no detectable additional cases of cancer, developmental
    abnormalities, or genetic ill-health as a consequence of the accident
    at Three Mile Island.
       There were a few questions after I handed out copies of the U.S.
    Monthly Vital Statistics tables I had used, together with other tables
    and graphs summarizing the findings.  The executive vice-president of
    the Harrisburg Hospital, Warren Prelesnik, who had given me the
    figures for his hospital, was present in the event that a reporter
    might wish to confirm the numbers, but no one inquired further, and
    the news conference broke up.
       Television cameras representing the major networks had been
    present;  some of the network reporters interviewed me separately
    immediately following the news conference.  But neither that evening
    nor the next day was there any mention of these disturbing findings
    either on the local news in Pittsburgh or on any of the national
    television news programs.  There were a few very brief local radio
    news items, but not a word of the news conference appeared in any
    Pittsburgh or Philadelphia papers.
       It was as if an iron curtain had descended around the Harrisburg
    area, sealing off the people of the rest of the United States and the
    world from the news that would have warned them of a totally
    unexpected severe effect of low-level fallout.  But neither the
    nuclear industry, the military, nor the state and federal governments
    committed to nuclear power wanted them to know.  What so many people
    had feared would happen in a society committed to nuclear power had in
    fact taken place.  The most important of all our civil rights, the
    freedom to learn of matters affecting our lives and those of our
    children through a free press, was being secretly subverted by an
    enormously powerful nuclear industry and a military establishment that
    had spawned and nurtured it, all in the interest of national security.
       Since in our society there are so many independent magazines,
    newspapers, radio stations, and news services, unlike in a monolithic
    society such as the Soviet Union, there is no way to insure absolutely
    that a determined "dissident" scientist armed with publicly available
    government data can be prevented from having his message eventually
    reach the people.  Therefore, the best way to prevent wide
    dissemination of undesirable information is to destroy the credibility
    of any individual seeking to reach the public and the scientific
    community at large.  In this way, the message would either not be
    transmitted by wary news media or it would not be believed, especially
    if it was not reported in sufficient detail.  This was, in fact, the
    tactic that was adopted following the news conference in Harrisburg.
    In the course of a detailed investigation for a story published in the
    June 1980 issue of the Canadian magazine {Harrowsmith}, one of its
    associate editors, Thomas Pawlick, a former investigative reporter for
    the {Detroit Free Press}, found out the following:

       First to attack Sternglass was {The Harrisburg Patriot}
       newspaper.  A November 1979 article by Richard Roberts
       questioned Sternglass' figures on infant deaths in the city,
       charging that they did not "jibe with the hospital's statistics"
       as supplied by Harrisburg Hospital corporate relations officer
       Ernest McDowell.  In a later unsigned editorial, the paper
       skirted the limits of libel, charging that the scientist was
       "inept at gathering statistics, or worse, he simply fabricated
       them to fit his conclusion."  The editorial added:  "For a
       scientist to present grossly inaccurate data is inexcusable.
       But to fit the method of analysis to a conclusion makes the
       scientist's motives suspect.  Sternglass seemed principally
       concerned about his talk with the extent to which his appearance
       was documented by the media."  There was no rise in infant
       deaths, concluded the {Patriot}.
          According to Harrisburg Hospital executive director Warren
       Prelesnik, who supplied the initial figures used by Sternglass,
       "no fabrication took place," and Sternglass' motives were far
       from suspect:
          "Dr. Sternglass used figures from a Hospital Utilization
       Project (HUP) computer read-out supplied by us," says Prelesnik.
       "The first set of figures we gave him, which he used in good
       faith, excluded, I believe, one or two cases (the discrepancy
       mentioned previously).  This happened because we interpreted the
       term `infant' differently than he did at first.  We corrected
       this in a second set of figures I gave him on November 20, 1979.
       As for the figures quoted by Mr. McDowell, they came from a
       different source, that is, the hospital's Pediatric Mortality
       statistics."
          The Pediatric Mortality statistics include not only infant
       deaths, but those of older children--up to 11 years of age in
       one case--as well as abortions and stillbirths.  Averaged out,
       McDowell's figures would show little change after the accident.
       Only when infant deaths are isolated from the whole, as in
       Sternglass' report, does a post-accident rise show up.
          The newspaper had undeservedly maligned Sternglass, whose
       claim of a rise in hospital statistics was correct.  His figures
       for Magee Hospital in Pittsburgh were never questioned.

       Nor did the article in the {Harrisburg Patriot} question or even
    refer in a single word to the highly significant numbers taken right
    out of the official U.S. Monthly Vital Statistics reports.  But within
    a few weeks, nuclear industry spokesmen all over the world were
    quoting the {Harrisburg Patriot} editorial in attempts to discredit
    the paper which I delivered at the World Congress of Engineers and
    Architects in Tel Aviv, Israel, in December.  This was especially the
    case in Sweden, where a great public debate on nuclear energy was in
    progress in connection with a referendum scheduled for early 1980.
       But in the battle to restore my credibility, I received unexpected
    support from someone who had been on the inside of the Pennsylvania
    Department of Health, Dr. Gordon MacLeod.  In fact, Dr. MacLeod headed
    the department during the period of the accident, having been
    confirmed in his position only twelve days before it occurred.  He had
    been forced to resign shortly before the Kemeny Commission report was
    made public, and had returned to the University of Pittsburgh, where
    he headed the Department of Health Care Administration in the School
    of Public Health.  As Pawlick described it in his {Harrowsmith}
    article:

          In an interview with a reporter for {The Washington Post}
       [published February 2], MacLeod revealed that 13 babies (later
       corrected to 14) in three Pennsylvania counties in the path of
       the radioactive plumes had been born with hypothyroidism--ten
       more than would normally have been expected to occur.  This
       initial figure was later expanded to include a total of 27
       post-accident hypothyroidism cases throughout the whole state.
          This disclosure prompted the state Department of Health to
       release its own figures, which confirmed that a higher than
       normal number of cases of hypothyroidism had been noted in the
       county immediately downwind of TMI.
          On March 30, 1980, Dr. MacLeod went further.  In a
       controversial speech delivered at Pittsburgh's First Unitarian
       Church, he stated that "recent data collected by the
       Pennsylvania Health Department show an increase in infant
       mortality within 10 miles of Three Mile Island when compared
       with the same population in the same time period for the
       preceding two years."  He pointedly noted that this information
       had not been made public by the health department.

       The exact figures for the population within 10 miles were 20 infant
    deaths in 1977, 14 in 1978, and a jump to 31 after the accident in
    1979 for the six-month period April through September, while the
    number of births remained essentially constant.  This meant that there
    had been a doubling in the infant mortality rate.
       But of even greater importance, despite the relatively small size
    of the numbers, was the fact that for the area still closer to the
    reactor, the zone within a 5-mile radius, the rate had increased even
    more.  In 1977 there had been only 3 infant deaths in this zone,
    declining to only 1 death in 1978.  But in the six months after the
    release of the radioactive gases, the number rose sharply to 7 deaths,
    in close agreement with the sevenfold rise in the updated newborn
    death rate at the Harrisburg Hospital.  Pawlick told the story this
    way:

          The Department of Health, its public credibility at stake,
       was forced to issue a news release April 2, in which it admitted
       that the rate of infant deaths per thousand live births "within
       ten miles of Three Mile Island" from April 1 through September
       30, 1979 (after the accident) was 15.7, compared to a lower
       death rate of 13.3 per thousand for the entire state.  The
       release, however, confused the issue by not comparing the
       April-September 1979 death rate with the *same period in 1978*.
       Instead, it recounted the figures for the period October 1978
       through March 1979 (before the accident)--figures for the
       *winter* months, which are normally higher than summer months
       anyway.  The rate for this rather irrelevant period was 17.2 per
       thousand.

       Suddenly, despite all the efforts of the nuclear industry, the NRC,
    the EPA, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the {Harrisburg
    Patriot}, my findings had been substantiated by the most credible of
    all sources, the Secretary of Health of the Commonwealth of
    Pennsylvania at the time of the accident.  Moreover, the Office of
    Vital Statistics of the Pennsylvania Department of Health had
    reluctantly confirmed his figures.  
       But the battle over the statistics at Three Mile Island was far 
    from over;  bigger guns would have to be brought into action.  The 
    very next day, {The New York Times} carried a story on these death 
    rates headed:  "No Big Change Found in Infant Death Rate Near Three 
    Mile Island."  It was a special interview with Tokuhata in which he 
    claimed that studies just completed by his department found "no 
    significant changes in these rates before and after the Three Mile 
    Island Accident."  As Pawlick pointed out, however:

           The Department of Health news release and the {New York Times}
       story both neglected to cite the figures for people living within 
       a 5-mile radius of the nuclear plant that failed, as well as to 
       cite the figures for the same months in earlier years.  In an 
       April 7 letter to the {Times}' editor, Dr. MacLeod made up for 
       this deficiency.  He did not reveal his sources, but it is 
       supposed they were former colleagues within the Department of
       Health.  (Indeed, a secretary of Dr. George Tokuhata, director
       of the department's Bureau of Health Research, admitted that the
       department's February 2 and April 2 news releases cited figures
       "that weren't originally intended for the public or the press,
       but the material was leaked.  Somebody leaked the figures and we
       had to confirm them.")
          In his letter, MacLeod revealed that the infant death rates for 
       those living within both a 10-mile and 5-mile radius of the
       stricken reactor had, indeed, risen sharply after the accident
       when compared to earlier years.  In 1977, between April and
       September, the death rate was 6.7 per thousand within 5 miles of
       the plant and 10.5 per thousand within 10 miles.  In 1978, the
       rates fell to 2.3 per thousand and 7.2 per thousand, respectively.  
       But in 1979, after the accident, they jumped to 16.2 per thousand 
       in a 5-mile radius of the plant and 15.7 within a 10-mile radius.  
       MacLeod's figures substantially confirmed what Sternglass had been
       saying right along, that babies died in much higher numbers after 
       the accident than they had been dying before it.

       There was only one problem:  {The New York Times} had refused to
    publish Dr. MacLeod's letter, which, with its crucial numbers, would
    have restored my public credibility.
       Instead, the {Times} published a long article on the front page of
    its "Science" section by its reporter Jane Brody, on April 15, in
    which federal and state government spokesmen such as Dr. George
    Tokuhata tried to discredit both Dr. MacLeod's findings on
    hypothyroidism and my results on the rises in infant mortality.
       What was particularly disturbing was the fact that neither Dr.
    MacLeod nor I was given an opportunity to reply to the statements of
    the spokesmen for the State of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Center for
    Disease Control in Atlanta cited in the {Times} article.  MacLeod had
    received no call at all from Jane Brody, as I learned later, and the
    only questions I was asked had to do with the charge by Arthur
    Tamplin, the man who had been asked by the AEC to criticize my
    findings on infant mortality and bomb fallout back in 1969, that my
    studies were "incomplete."
       Only three days later, still another attack was launched by the
    {Times}, this time on the editorial page.  As Pawlick noted, the
    editorial was almost as insulting as the earlier editorial in the
    {Patriot}, accusing MacLeod of irresponsibility and me of "mishandling
    data," branding both of us as "Nuclear Fabulists" in its headline.
       Thereupon, MacLeod sent another letter to the {Times} dated April
    22, this time with a note to the editorial page editor, Max Frankel,
    asking whether {The New York Times} made it a policy to pillory
    individuals on its editorial page without giving them an opportunity
    to reply.
       This time, MacLeod was told to call the science editor of the
    {Times}, William Stockton, who indicated that he had some problems
    with the letter, among which was MacLeod's listing of the actual
    numbers.  Stockton also wanted to know why MacLeod did not
    disassociate his position on nuclear energy from mine, since he
    apparently was not opposed to nuclear power, something that MacLeod
    refused to do.
       After further discussion, Stockton indicated that he would
    recommend publication of the letter only if MacLeod were willing to
    revise it.  One alternative was to leave out the actual numbers that
    were subject to misuse, as well as a discussion of the sex ratio among
    the children born in the area cited by one of the federal government
    critics, which MacLeod had pointed out to have been completely
    erroneous.  The letter as finally published by the {Times} on May 14
    began as follows:

       To the Editor:

          Your April 18 editorial accusing me of telling nuclear scare
       stories and dealing recklessly with statistics is flawed by
       errors or omissions and ignorance of the facts.
          The editorial, based on Jane Brody's news story three days
       earlier, can only revive public distress over data handling by
       state and federal officials.  Had Jane Brody or your
       editorialist interviewed me, I could have told them immediately
       that I am not opposed to the use of nuclear energy.  And I could
       have repeated that it is premature to blame the clustering of
       thyroid defects and the increase in infant deaths on the
       accident at Three Mile Island;  but it cannot be ruled out yet,
       as federal and state officials have tried to do.
          More than a year after the nuclear accident I released raw
       infant-mortality statistics which were then six months old.  My
       announcement prompted the state to release infant deaths per
       thousand live births within 72 hours.  Although both statistical
       measures are at best crude monitors of infant deaths, they
       should have been made public months before.   After all, public
       health data belong to the public.

       After pointing out that the data published so far did not include
    the numbers for the babies exposed in the first three months of
    development, when the embryo is especially sensitive to radiation, he
    continued as follows:

          Yet to be explained is why 5- and 10-mile infant deaths
       around Three Mile Island during the six months following the
       accident climbed sharply, compared with the same period in
       previous years.  In fact, the increases in the 1979 infant death
       rates over 1978 were statistically highly significant.  Such
       significant increases in infant death rates following a nuclear
       reactor accident warrant complete candor and disclosure, not
       delay and denial.  Had a decrease in infant deaths occurred, I
       trust it would have been widely publicized.

       Here then was the crucial statement indicating that the numbers
    were found to be statistically highly significant by independent
    statisticians whom MacLeod had consulted, contrary to the claims of
    both Tokuhata and the scientists at the Center for Disease Control.
    But the actual numbers that would have convinced many skeptical
    scientists and laymen of the truth of what I had been saying over the
    years were left out.  But so was any remark that could have been used
    to support the industry's attack on my credibility.
       Turning next to the question of the significance of the increase in
    hypothyroidism, MacLeod went on as follows:

          Despite the shortcomings in Brody's article, she contradicts
       your editorial undermining me for recklessly linking thyroid
       defects to radiation released from the crippled reactors.  She
       stated, "Dr. MacLeod, however, did not attribute the cases to
       the accident."
          I had expressed concern about a three months' delay by the
       Pennsylvania Health Department in announcing an unusual cluster
       of 12 times the expected number of hypothyroid cases in the
       county immediately downwind of Three Mile Island.  My advice was
       accurately reported at the time as made only to encourage early
       detection of thyroid deficiency from any cause in unscreened
       newborns lest an untreated infant become a cretin.
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