Warning of the insidious effects on generations of unborn children for centuries to come, his voice and those of thousands of scientists were heard by many governments that ceased their open-air nuclear testing. The radioactive elements released in the air by nuclear tests do not stay there permanently. In the form of radioactive rain and radioactive snow they fall down on the earth. They enter the plants through leaves and roots and stay there. We absorb them through the plants, by drinking milk from the cows or by eating the meat of animals which have fed on them.
Radioactive rain infects our drinking water.
More Americans became aware of Dr. Schweitzer when in 1949, at age 74, he made his first trip to the United States to pay homage to one of the greatest influences on his life, the poet-dramatist, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose 200th anniversary was being celebrated at Aspen, Colorado. His debt to Goethe was profound. Perhaps the most heartening moment during his trip was the sight from his train window of bales of hay being dropped from airplanes to hungry deer gathered in an inaccessible valley. Dr. Schweitzer's philosophy opened a new dimension to the struggling world of North American animal welfare, becoming especially noticeable in the early 1950's. For then, there came into being the Animal Welfare Institute, the Society for Animal Protective Legislation, The Humane Society of the United States and the Kindness Club in Canada.