VOL.3,NO.5

 

Sylvia Lockshin "T77 “"“
664 N. Michigan Ave. Suite 720 Chicago, Illinois 60611 120 She lborne - Apt . 909

IN THIS ISSUE: 133E235“ °“"' "m 2””
1 . Radiation Leaks at Three Mile Island

2. Sudden Infant Death and DPT Vaccine

3. Children’s Problems

This month, two events occurred which illustrate how much scientists
still have to learn about the brave new world they've created.
First, from Tennessee, came reports of several cases of sudden
infant death following closely upon the babies having received DPT
(diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus) vaccine. I had hardly
digested this news and gone on to talk to the doctor who had
reported these findings when news broke of the radiation leakage at
the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg,
m‘ Pennsylvania.
I)r I{0bert Both of these terrible events seem to me to be linked: Man

' has found the power to control much of his own planet, but he still
Mendelsohn lacks the knowledge to make that power absolute. In this month's

Newsletter, I am giving you my reaction to these two happenings,

along with the caveat that the more we know, the less we know.

  

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Radhnbn: By the time you read this, the nuclear leakage from the accident
lNhyn0t at the Three Mile Island power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, will
QQCUQMQ hopefully be ended. However, it seems to me that there are some
important lessons to be learned for the next leakage which nuclear
engineers in other parts of the country have already stated could
certainly happen.
When I joined my assistant, Vera Chatz, the morning of March 29,
1979, to write my medical column, her first and startling question to
me was, "Why aren't they evacuating Harrisburg?" And even though
officials gave the usual assurances that the radiation level was safe,
her question started off a chain reaction in my mind. After all, didn't
our country take the extreme precaution of inoculating 80 million people
just in case there might be a swine flu epidemic? Aren't entire
communities evacuated when trucks overturn and noxious fumes and other
dangerous substances are released?
Since the media reports were so scanty, we decided to do a little
research on our own. Ms. Chatz telephoned the Harrisburg Patriot and
Evening News where she learned that 20 millirems per hour of irradiation
had been detected in Goldsboro, Pennsylvania, a town opposite the island
on the river on which the nuclear power plant stands, about one mile
away. This alarmed us since for more than 20 years, federal scientific
panels have established the maximum safe dose of manmade radiation at
170 millirems per year. An ordinary chest x—ray delivers from 20 to

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