CONTENTS

Forthcoming and Planned Publications

Wartime Studies of Effects of High Altitude on Aviators

Study of Carbon Monoxide With Radioactive Tracers

Blood Studies With Radioactive Iron

Human Use Committees

Approval for Studies on Ionizing Cosmic Particles

Heavy-Ion Research With the Bevatron

Boron Isotope Research and Therapy

Shared Knowledge and Coordination of AEC-Funded Research

Classified Research Involving Human Subjects

Classification of Fallout-Induced Radioactivity Detected in Animals

Heavy-Particle Radiography

So, I don't know who suggested—maybe I thought of it myself, or maybe somebody in my group. At that time, a part of a Russian satellite fell down in Canada, containing plutonium. It contaminated the countryside in Canada, and there was a big flap about this.⁴⁶ They [(the Canadian people)] felt they [(the Soviets)] should clean up the place. The thing shattered. There was fissionable material and other radiation all around.

They [(the U.S. government)] sent groups of teams up there and then they got some radioactive pieces back. We got [these] back to Livermore, but the [pieces] were so radioactive, there was nothing much you could do about it. You have to put it behind a shield and just wait [for the radioactivity to decline].

So my method worked out great. I put some things behind a thick lead shield. And then, I made the heavy-particle beam go through [the assembly]. It imaged these things behind the lead shield rather nicely. So I became quite excited about it. I said [to myself], "Here is a method that Livermore and other people could use for investigating highly radioactive pieces"—not [only to determine] the [amount of] radiation, but [also] the shape [of the object].

So I wrote a letter to Dr. [Robert] Wood at the DOE, [or] whatever it was at the time, describing the method and saying, "We want to give you a priority on this. We haven't published it. I think it should be followed up, and it could be done at the bevatron. You would have to get a separate beam [channel]. It would be somewhat expensive, but I think it would be very good."

So Washington went into a flap, and I still don't know why. Maybe they were doing the same thing that I was trying to do, but they didn't tell me. I was the inventor of the method.

Anyway, they didn't follow up, as far as I know, any part of this at all. Then, somebody mentioned [that they had an] ultrasonic method that they hoped was going to work out. And that was that.

Heavy-Particle Beams and Medical Research

In fact, I feel—as long as I can complain, I'll do it right now. I spent my life on this! It's a good [method] for breast cancer and other human disease. But, by the time it gets to the [headquarters of] DOE, science becomes low priority. High priority is politics.

So, what did they do? Briefly, they stopped the whole Bevalac project. They mothballed the Bevalac, and they spent more money [(perhaps a billion dollars)] on trying to clean up the place⁴⁷ than [they spent] on the scientific research. I think that's criminal on the part of the agency, because they were cleaning up things that didn't need any cleanup,⁴⁸ and the research should have continued.

Now the United States is behind because it doesn't have a heavy-ion accelerator. The space program is behind. The breast cancer research is behind.

Well, luckily, other countries recognized the value, so now there is a good project in Germany, a beautiful heavy-ion accelerator. They will do the very same things, copying exactly what I said, and they're getting to human use, and [I hope that] part of it will be breast cancer [treatment].

The Japanese accelerator: The Japanese didn't hesitate spending money on their heavy ion accelerator, and they will use it in cancer therapy all-around.

Pituitary Irradiation Studies

A few years later, when the 184-inch cyclotron was operating, Ernest Lawrence very generously gave us a [treatment] room, and we developed the beams. At the time, the only beam that [we had] was deuterons and helium ions.

The protons were too high-energy for physics, and they were not willing to spend the money and the effort on the protons. So, we threw out the protons.

But the helium and deuteron⁴⁹ beams became very good, and we demonstrated on animals that it cured at an amazing rate some mammary cancers in rats.

Also, Ernest Lawrence and myself decided that these beams can be aimed so accurately that we should look for problems in medicine that cannot be handled [by other means], [but] that could be handled by the particle beam.

Dr. Donald Van Dyke and I started to study the pituitary gland of animals. That's because the pituitary is a tiny gland in the center of the head. It's the master gland of the body. And we were just curious to see, "Can this beam selectively inhibit the pituitary?" Well, that turned out to be very successful.

We demonstrated in rats that we can hypophysectomize⁵⁰ the rats without a drop of blood. And then, we carried it to [other animals and to] monkeys. We could hypophysectomize the monkeys, too. And, again, no blood and no great discomfort to the animal.

So about that time, a Swedish doctor, Herbert Oliecrona, published a paper whereby he removed the pituitary gland from breast cancer patients. He did 12 patients, initially, and this was a miraculous thing. Not only did the breast cancer disappear, but also the extensions of the cancer. The metastatic⁵¹ extensions were also improved.

So we became quite excited and said, "Here is our application. We already have the technique developed in animals. Let's do it in humans." We convened a national committee—a professor at Harvard, and Chicago, several people [were] on it—who voted [that] this is a desirable project. I was not a voting member of the committee.

We then tried [the beam] on several dogs with cancer. There was a large Doberman pinscher that had cancer that was ulcerating and oozing milk all the time. That was one of the signs that the cancer was there.

We irradiated this dog in the pituitary and, within two weeks, the secretion of milk stopped and the tumor began to regress, even though we irradiated [only the pituitary].

So Dr. Huggins, who is a Nobel Prize winner, got very excited. (He was a member of the committee surveying this.) He wanted to be a member working with us, and he came out [to Berkeley] and we started a human project.

We did about 50 or 60 patients with the helium beam, and about half of them showed regressions of the tumor; not only of the initial tumor. Every one of these patients had metastases, and they were doomed to die. So half of them got well, some of them for a prolonged time.

We discovered we had to aim the beam at the pituitary gland, which is about one centimeter [(0.4 inch) deep] in the body. We developed an elaborate [instrument] for this.

But some of the patients, about a year after treatment, developed some neurological⁵² symptoms—[mainly] double vision (diplopia). The reason was because we affected some of the cranial nerves.

So we finished this project, and then we decided [that] we needed a better beam, and the better beam [was] to be a carbon beam. The reason is because carbon can be aimed more accurately. The helium and proton beams scatter too much: If you try to do this with protons, you also irradiate the optic nerve and other parts of [the] brain, so we decided to do some other things "until" the carbon beam [would become] available.

Well, that took my whole rest of my scientific life—20 more years—and not due to my fault, but, again, if you want to point fingers, you could say that the learned officials in Washington, D.C., never understood this matter completely and never really gave enough support. They supported physics [with] a thousand times more [money] than biology. We were just [riding] piggyback.

So, finally, the bevatron committee said, "Why just pituitary tumors, or pituitary irradiation? [Treat destroying all kinds of] tumors in the body [with the bevatron]."

Dr. [John] Lawrence retired, [and] the initial team was gone. I had to make an agreement with the Radiation Oncology Department, [UC] San Francisco. The doctors became more interested in irradiating direct tumors, so most of the Bevalac project was done with heavy neon and other beams rather than on breast cancer.

Failed Private Venture to Build an Accelerator for Medical Research

The hospital complex of four hospitals in Oakland[, California,] was going to be donating land to build the accelerator, which we called "Libra." I wrote detailed [reports] about it. I had officials of [AEC] visit, officials of NCI⁵⁴ visit. All kinds of officials were visiting all the time.

By that time, the [AEC] had a program from Washington: ["technology transfer"].⁵⁵ The agency was told to help the private users of the results of the work of [AEC].

The Lawrence Berkeley Lab [received] monies to do this, and, naively, we thought that maybe they will help us build our machine.

In fact, the Director of LBL at one time officially told us that he not only will help with planning and engineering design, but also we can have several of the parts of the Bevalac when the Bevalac will be dismantled so that we can install it at some saving of cost in our machine.

So what happened? First of all, the personnel at the Radiation Lab appropriated my ideas. All of a sudden, they were also designing a Libra to be [installed] at the Radiation Lab at Government expense.

That, of course, cooled off my private donors. This required several million dollars. [They figured,] "If the Government is going to do it, why should we give private money for it?"

Secondly, the [AEC] didn't approve the project, but [instead] they decided to mothball the Bevalac. So, what do we have now? We have zero. No private machine [and no technology transfer].

Selection of Patients for Research

I think the [medical] doctors will tell you that when you can diagnose, by objective methods, [the existence of] bone metastasis or skin metastasis, other [metabolic ions], then the patient['s cancer] is advancing. Those are the patients we used. We used private doctors and private patients.

The private doctors had to agree in advance. [After treatment,] we were going to return the patient to the care of his doctor, but he had to agree to make all the necessary tests in collaboration with us and to follow this patient to death and, then, make the data available to us. It worked out very well.

Now, the national project [is] completely different. It's set up for protecting the doctors and make the doctors richer. The patients are a low priority somewhere. But the national project used—[it is] difficult to describe this in a few words.

First of all, there is a statistically blind study. The doctor cannot decide what his patient gets. The patient has to agree, without seeing anything, to participate in this project. Right there, that cuts out some of the patients.

Secondly, they're choosing [treatment by lottery]. Then they treat the patients. The patients in our study, presumably for scientific validity, are getting exactly the same as the other patients, perhaps, in an x-ray department somewhere.

Well, this does not protect the patient. It doesn't do much for the patient, because the doctors won't put the patient into this group until the patient is really terminal. Until that time, they want to milk the patient's money, if I may say that, and try to "save" the patient.

When a doctor decides his patient is really beyond help, then he becomes a member of this group, and, by a lottery, [a patient may be] assigned to us but, perhaps, the patient is already so far-gone [that] there is really nothing much we can do. But the doctor's responsibility is greatly decreased.

But what does the doctor do? He doesn't try to cure this patient; he looks at the protocol. So, now they want to treat this guy with x rays, the other guy with heavy ions.

It's what [the doctor is] going to do. [He will not] worry too much when that patient develops a metastasis on his ear or anyplace else: "Let somebody else do that."

I think that [national program is not helping]. [It is] the wrong thing to do to the patient. It's the wrong way to proceed, and yet the whole National Cancer Institute is following it. I think it's very bad.

Anyway, it doesn't have to be this way, but you have to be a private hospital to do it the other way, which is the way we did it initially.

So, those studies, however, are progressing, and with all the bad things I'm saying, I should say that the doctors who have [worked on] it are dedicated and they have shown that in several classes of disease the heavy ions are useful.

Two of the large classes, one of them prostate cancer and the other lymph cancer, are still being studied. Now, that is an interesting thing, because —[presumably,] the doctor is my friend, but he won't tell me how the patients are doing, because the same NCI study prevents him to do so.

First of all, he would select a patient from several patients, and he feels that this patient might benefit. We weren't trying to do a blind statistical study. We were asking the doctor to send us patients, even though far ahead, but nevertheless patients who might benefit from this new method, patients who are willing to undergo a new thing. Okay?

So, the doctor had to agree, for example, not to give other medications unless we agreed afterwards, or other operations. We wanted to know everything, and to follow the patients in a way that he would agree to. And then—and send them the patients from time to time, et cetera, so they could follow the patient.

There was no control group, as such, because Dr. Lawrence and I felt, too, that a responsible physician would be very uncomfortable, if he can see any hope for the future life of this patient, to put him in a blind trial when [the doctor] doesn't know what [the patient is] getting.

It's a different method from what they use today, and, you know, I could spend the rest of my time until I die trying to convince the medical profession. I don't think I can do that, but I just tell you how it was.

I might just say that the doctors we chose were good doctors.

At one time, we were referred a patient who didn't have breast cancer at all, and, then, it was decided that maybe we don't want to work with that doctor because [of that].⁵⁶

And then, the patient—the volunteer would be told [in detail] what the procedure [and risks are], and they would be treated [only if they volunteered]. And then, the doctor could withdraw the patient either before or after the [irradiation], but we would have to know.

If he withdrew the patient [and] then decided to use boron, then we would have to make a note in our notebook and put that in [a special] group.

And then, we would also get all the x rays, and we would make our own x rays, do all kinds of studies on the patient before we decide that this is a proper candidate, being a person who has advancing disease and metastases.

If they didn't have metastases, and if the disease seemed to be arrested, we would not treat that patient. So, we may send the patient away, say[ing to the patient], "I'll be in touch with Dr. Smith, and if you get worse, call Dr. Smith, and maybe he will want to send you back here." That happened a few times.

Remembrances of Dr. William Siri

Policy on Radiation Exposure Levels

I can just tell you something, however, about radiation in general and how I think it has turned out, after I retired, that a lot of the things that I accepted while I was officially working, I am now liberated to criticize.

One of the things I accepted was the determination of permissible dose for radiation workers [and sick] patients, and I now think that all the committee, the United States committee,⁶⁰ has been woefully, completely off on that, because they finally adopted the linearity hypothesis.

That [linearity assumption] means that [the] smallest dose of radiation is already bad. At the time, I knew that this is not so, but what they are telling me—and it didn't come through to the public, I think—[is] that they did this to be "extra safe": "To be extra safe, we assume linearity." It's not a scientific conclusion.

Well, I am convinced that it's a wrong conclusion, [convinced] that small doses of radiation are not necessarily bad. [I think that it is incorrect to think of radiation as] pristine [(by itself the cause of any kind of effect)]. It is radiation [added to] the rest of the environment [that must be considered as a whole].

[Several] of the committees I know about, said, "Well, we're not concerned about carcinogenic agents in the environment, any of that stuff. We're just interested in radiation."

That's completely wrong and fallacious, scientifically, because radiation acts by cooperation with all the rest of the environment, and there are many other agents in the environment that [can] make radiation look bad.

It may be, also, that [these agents] would themselves cause even more cancer, or whatever, than radiation. But, this is all left out, and the agency [(NCRP)] is holding the bag on this scientifically wrong conclusion—that radiation is all bad.

I know radiation is not all bad, because all of life has developed—all of the complexity of life—in the presence of more [celestial, solar, and geological] radiation than we receive today. The whole earth owes its existence to some celestial events which include uranium in the body of the earth.

If we didn't have uranium in the earth, uranium and radium and all those "bad substances," already there would have been a cold death of the earth, and nobody would live, because the uranium content and the radium content of the earth help to keep the earth warm [and] just at the right temperature to allow the prolongation of life for at least another billion years.

And so, I know as a physical scientist that to put scientific validity to those low-dose effects is completely wrong. As a result, the agencies [(DOE, Environmental Protection Agency, et al.)] have spent billions of dollars in cleaning up things when they could have just let it alone.

In fact, I tried to get some of the [shielding] blocks [for] Libra. We could have saved a lot of money by using some of the blocks. But, it turned out [that] the [AEC] was not free to give it to me.

Then, the port of Oakland was interested in using some of the blocks for shoring up the Oakland harbor. Again, they [(DOE officials)] just said, "No, you can't do that, because it will cost billions of dollars to clean this up."

Now in my opinion, that is just rubbish because, first of all, most of the radioactivities are decaying relatively fast, and they're in the concrete. They're not going to harm anybody.

But then, if I go off to Hanford⁶¹—I don't know any details there, but I did talk to some scientist friends at Hanford recently, because of another problem. I know the director of the Biology Division at Hanford, and he was telling me that they've spent $2 billion to clean up Hanford!

I became interested because of this uranium problem. I am interested scientifically in uranium in the earth, not for reference, but [to answer such questions as] "Where is the uranium, what is its role in the earth, where did it come from?" It's a very interesting thing. It may have come from a supernova that exploded about the time when the sun was made.

Anyway, when I found that out, it turned out they are spending this couple of billion dollars. But not only that, but that in the cleanup procedures, they used extremely carcinogenic and bad organic compounds.

This enters into another interest I have. The thing I remember is aniline compounds, compounds that have the organic dye, aniline, in them. [I believe that] they are using it, and they're throwing it out into the earth around Hanford. Aniline is one of the worst carcinogens, particularly when radiation is also present.

These words you don't have to take as gospel truth, because I don't know, really, what they are doing, but one of the scientists told me [that] this is what they are doing. The reason I was interested [is] because I am interested in aniline carcinogenesis.⁶²

So there. I gave you not a really quantitative reason, but a reason why I, as a citizen, am worried [about] what is DOE doing with aniline and with other bad substances like this, trying to clean up something.

Well, actually, the earth knows what it can do, and the earth will detoxify, render harmless most of the substances sooner or later. I don't know about plutonium in bombs and things like that.

Criticism of Insufficient Attention to Cosmic Radiation

They have a whole list [of research to be done]. Their scientific biology funding backing is less good than the DOE's. And they are very political, also. Well, anyway, let me just give you a couple of examples.

The basic thing that I am complaining about is that the space agency is doing next to nothing to find out what are the possible bad effects from the heavy component of cosmic rays, which is quite a serious component.

Every astronaut that gets up there gets much more than the permissible daily dose, [but they] are not doing this research [on it].

And why not? I think the reason, now, is interagency and politics both. NASA says that DOE should do it; the DOE says that NASA should do it. Both of them told me, "No money for it."

Now, my group was involved in space research, both basic and applied. One thing I found out in two different experiments—it relates now to plants: not even humans, just plants. If you are going to have a long-term sojourn in space or go to another planet, the plants that you will use to get food and oxygen have to live.

So, the heavy particles [in space] bombard these plants all the time. So, I was interested in damage by heavy particles, and Dr. Slater and I discovered a kind of damage which is unique. Okay.

Since that time, in two different sets of experiments, we found this developmental malformation. It's a streak on a leaf that's developing [in a growing plant]. We thought it was not a nuclear effect in the cells, just a thing that would go away.

Well, now we found out that the kernels of the corn are on the end of the streak, and you have a number of mutations in the second generation from heavy particles received in the first generation.

So I think this is an indication that the space agency [(NASA)] and DOE should know about this, because here is an effect that may inherit for several generations and, among other things, it might make the plant population in, say, 10 years or whatever—it's a long-term thing—completely useless, because they will be so full of damage.

So, what did [NASA] do? They don't support this research, and neither does DOE.

So let's get to carcinogenesis. Dr. [Webb] Haymaker has shown in primates, in monkeys, that space radiation, particularly, is dangerous in producing brain tumors.

Ordinary radiation doesn't do so much of it. Ordinary radiation goes to the parts of the body, like bone marrow, that replicate themselves a lot. Brain cells don't replicate; they just sit there. But the damage from the heavy particles is permanent, and, eventually, can cause brain tumors.

So, I have very clearly [reported this] to the Department of Energy and to NASA, and do you think they would do anything? Zero. Zero research on this field. I could say that they don't understand good science, or [that] they are political, and [supporting brain research,] that doesn't earn them political [advantage].

But since [the demise of the Bevalac] the United States doesn't have a heavy-ion accelerator in the first place. They [could not] do it. [However,] the Germans could do it, and probably will.

Penalties of Not Educating Physicians in Nuclear Science

That's because the medical people don't get an education in nuclear science. That's another place where the DOE is sadly deficient. In the early days of AEC, [it] used to have a number of projects at different universities, helping with fellowships for master's degrees and doctoral degrees.

Then they decided to stop all this support because [of], again, a political reason. Some other department—Health, Education and Welfare⁶⁴—was responsible. And what happened? Health, Education [and Welfare] probably didn't think radiation—they hated radiation: "We shouldn't educate people about [radiation]!"

So, now the physicians don't get the education and the physicists don't get education. Believe it or not, there's hardly any radiation physicists [around] anymore who understand the basic physics of radiation that's necessary to understand biological effects. That's because all these agencies have neglected the training.

So, that's what I get for my old age, when I used my whole lifetime to research this. Instead of progression, there [seems to be] regression.

As I say, in Japan and Germany and now France, the European community of nations have proposed two different accelerators like Libra, like my Libra. They will perhaps build it.

What I think, now, [is that] DOE is trying to get off radiation. I think that's a big mistake, because radiation is part of the earth and part of life, and their initial mandate was to study it, and they should keep studying it.

Radiation Therapy for Skin Disease

Anyway, there was a patient with Kaposi's sarcoma. I know he was very advanced in his disease. He wasn't going to live very long, and he had many lesions on his skin. So, he was given controlled doses [of radiation]. There were so many lesions that you couldn't treat them all, so I have to say this person was hopeless.

Publication of Medical Research

Now, most other things, people tried to publish, if not the details, at least something about it, because there are so many medical meetings. The doctors have to go [to the meetings] and give talks. They always try to put in the most recent stuff in their talks.

Now, for my other things, I have not been involved [with] human [research]. My involvement has been less and less since the retirement of Dr. [John] Lawrence. Well, I can just tell you an episode from my own life.

I did become very involved with breast cancer, and I went every day for a while into our hospital. We had our own hospital at Donner [and] did everything the doctors do with them [(patients)].

At a certain point, the [UC Berkeley] medical school suggested that I actually get an M.D. degree, and they offered it to me free. I could even maintain my job. I had a deep talk with Dr. Lawrence and other doctors. They unanimously said that I am much more useful as a physicist [than] as an M.D., because there are hundreds of M.D.s, but few biophysicists. I decided not to get the medical training, and, at that same time, I reduced my involvement with the patients. I realized that, you know, there are hundreds of M.D.s who can do this. What I am involved with is new research and in trying to understand the mechanism of the disease, which does not involve me [getting] deep into medicine.

Studies With Various Isotopes

The idea was to replace whole-body x ray in bone-marrow transplantation studies. You probably know that's a big field, now. You usually use whole-body x ray, which [would be] lethal to [a bone-marrow] patient. This form of yttrium, Winchell hoped, would not be lethal.

It has gone [away]. I don't know whether they did any human patients or not, but I know they did dogs. And then it died; it wasn't followed up. So, that's the yttrium.

Participation in International Research

They were very enthusiastic when I was in Vienna, and so we spelled this out for them. We didn't even need money, just fellows; send in the fellows.

They were so bound up with red tape, it never became realized. At the start of that, there was all kinds of [interest from] the delegates from India. I think that came up.

So, the delegate from India, who was a physician, suggested that the United Nations set up, maybe even build, an accelerator or [fund] a larger study where India would supply the patients for this United Nations–approved study.

That, to me, sounded good also, because here was endless material, people who maybe don't get any medical treatment or very poor medical treatment. The United Nations could have moved in and done good things.

But again, it didn't—in fact, I'm sorry to tell you that several of these what you might call "initiatives," which went through the United Nations, did not materialize.

And the same with the World Health Organization.⁷⁷ I have visited them a couple of times in Geneva, [Switzerland,] and, again, they were talking about things like that. They would bring it up: "How we can get the underdeveloped nations into this?"

The obvious thing was education, usually, and they saw [that] our university is quite big. It could have been useful, but nothing ever happened in terms of anybody putting money down. It may be just as simple as money.

I have collaborated with Sweden quite a bit. I went to Sweden for a year, and they used protons at the time. They did different things, different from us.

Guggenheim Fellowship at Harvard University

Oak Ridge Chosen to Become the Isotope Production Center

But, we realized that we could build, for example, a bank of cyclotrons to supply the whole country, if you like. Then, at the same time, Oak Ridge proposed that they become the center. The person involved was Paul Aebersold, who used to work at Berkeley, and, eventually, he was working in Washington, D.C. He was the head of the [AEC's] isotope branch.⁷⁸

Part of the thing boiled down to whether or not medicine needs carrier-free isotopes⁷⁹ or you carry and it doesn't matter. I voted for the carrier-free, or at least for some carrier-free.

It turned out that Ernest Lawrence, who was still alive at the time, was not anxious to become a supply agency. We talked, you know, quite a bit about who is going to do this. Each time, you're pointing at each other, "I don't have to do this anymore; you do it." And it turned out that the milieu of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab was not really ready to become a supply agency.

And that was also true for reactors. It came up, "Should we build reactors?" And, again, Ernest Lawrence wanted us all to do research and not to get down to what would be an everyday job.

So Berkeley wasn't very anxious, and Oak Ridge was rather anxious to do the job at Oak Ridge. So, we let them have it. They were talking about banks of cyclotrons they were going to build, and a private company was going to enter in.

Research Collaboration Between Berkeley and Other Researchers

And, also, [we had] the decompression chamber from the other work.⁸¹So our tests for blood cell production was to put rats into the decompression chamber.

Dr. Lawrence went for a couple of expeditions to the Cordillera Mountains⁸² in South America, with the high-altitude labs, where we studied human beings as they increased their own blood volume. Will Siri was involved in that.

So Dr. Jacobsen, always, we had close collaborations. I feel that our Lab has supplied, perhaps, some of the essentials when it was discovered that the kidney is producing the hemopoietic⁸³ hormone.

Now, another collaboration came with [University of Chicago professor] Dr. Charles Huggins, who was a cancer expert and Nobel prize winner, and he was asked to be a member of the committee that would pass [(decide)] on the pituitary irradiation of humans. I didn't even know him until that time.

He turned out to be a wonderful person, and so we had an ongoing collaboration with him. Right away, he supplied some of our patients, and then, also later on, every time, we exchanged a lot of information.

I discovered estrogenic receptor in breast cancer. We found that only half of the patients were benefitted by pituitary irradiation. The thought was that the estrogenic receptors in breast tissue are an indication, that if there are such receptors, then the pituitary irradiation might be effective.

I don't know about everything that went on with it, because, after the decompression sickness, I got off of that. Our Lab was big enough [that] I had other things to do. That's when I decided to study cancer as a cellular disease, and my group was going in that direction, rather than the decompression sickness.

I just found recently that all this has been relaxed, because several drugs that are being used in the United States have aniline derivatives in them. The arm of the Government that is—well, I don't know what it is.

I'm involved right now with a former student of mine who is a dental surgeon, who has discovered that his anesthetic has this stuff in it, and he has had a project on this, and the national agencies have finally awakened to the fact that he is correct. So, right now, there's a lot of activity on this.

And also I made other isotopes for them. In those days, the physicians did not realize all the things a physicist can do.

The reason they hired me is because, presumably, I knew about radioactivity and how to separate, chemically, radioisotopes. So, the first job they gave me was that. I was the liaison person at the cyclotron for the medical studies.

Reflections on Research Accomplishments

But at a more fundamental level, I think I am one of the leaders of the theoretical interpretation of radiation injury—again, at the cellular molecular level.

I regard myself as sort of one of the pioneers of modern biophysical science and biophysical science in medicine. The university founded a department around me.

I also think I am involved now in the basic understanding of the relationship between physical science and biological science. The conception [that I held] during most of my life was that all of biological science is explainable on the basis of physical science, but [now I believe] this is wrong. Instead, what has to be done is to explain all of science, including physical science, on the basis of the actions of the human brain.

It's kind of a different thing. Maybe I should separate the Marshall Islands and the hot reactor and race for the real hot stuff at Hanford and elsewhere from the relatively trace amounts which occur at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab or in many, many places, which have some trace contamination. I am not happy that the contamination happened, but, [that] is not necessarily a reason to spend a big part of our national wealth on cleanup.