Dr. John W. Gofman passed away this month.
Dr. John W. Gofman, a nuclear chemist and doctor who in the 1960s heightened public concerns about exposure to low-level radiation and became a leading voice against commercial nuclear power, died on Aug. 15 at his home in San Francisco. He was 88.
And so, another footnote of history passes into oblivion.
Sigh ...
By all accounts, this man was a good scientist; however, it appears that, ultimately, he will be remembered as a fool. For someone who campaigned for so long against the "dangers" of low-level radiation and who was "one of the 25 leading heart disease researchers of the past quarter-century" to die of a heart failure at 88 is quite ironic.
Even more so, his own words make the irony all too obvious:
I probably received between 50 and 100 rems of radiation, a huge dose, from my work with the radium. Add that radiation to the amount I was exposed to both during my earlier uranium work and in the course of processing the ton of uranium nitrate that I just told you about ... and you'll see that I've absorbed enough radiation to make me feel lucky just to have lived this long.
He said this 26 years ago. I guess heart disease caused by radiation finally caught up with him. Still, 88 is a ripe old age. He would have made a stronger point if he had gone out like a hero:
Three other scientists in our Berkeley group didn't make it. Joe Kennedy worked with Seaborg and me a great deal, and he died at age 38 of stomach cancer. Joseph Hamilton, who was in charge of the cyclotron we used, died of leukemia in his early 40's. And Bertram Lowbeer, who worked in the lab with radioactive isotopes, died in his 40's ... also of leukemia.
What his comments on his exposure and the fates of his colleagues have to do with commercial nuclear power is beyond me. Sure there was a higher risk of cancer among researchers in the early days. For example, Enrico Fermi also died of stomach cancer. The doses that these researchers received are several orders of magnitude above what anyone receives from nuclear plants and well above background radiation levels.
Science is sometimes dangerous. Michael Faraday, to whom we are all endebted for his work in electromagnetism and electrochemistry, likely suffered at the end of his life from mercury poisoning, which was a result of his experiments. Isaac Newton is also suspected to have suffered from this debilitating condition (see L. W. Johnson and M. L. Wolbarsht, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 34, No. 1, Jul., 1979, pp. 1-9).
Another irony is that Gofman apparently cared more about protecting the public from commercial nuclear plants than he cared about protecting workers from nuclear weapons plants or protecting the public from nuclear war. Having been involved with the Manhattan project, I would have thought we would have known better.
... even though I adamantly oppose nuclear power plants -- I'm on record as supporting the American atomic weapons program.
So ... he cares whether you get cancer, unless you are working in a bomb factory or unless you are the victim of a war. Oh dear ... so much for "atoms for peace."
It appears to me that Gofman went off the deep end. Of course, these comments were made in 1981, before we knew what we know now about exposure to low-level radiation (i.e., that it is less dangerous than originally thought). Still, I don't think that he ever changed his views in light of new evidence. Fools usually don't.