Experts Urge Nuclear Weapon Control

"I have concluded that the most likely target of a Soviet nuclear attack on Boston would be the frog pond in Boston Common," the former director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories said, and 700 doctors, students and social activists laughed self-consciously.

Limbo

The comment was typical of attempts to relieve the tension at a symposium on "The Medical Consequences of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear War" held in the Science Center this past weekend. The title is somewhat misleading: military experts and political analysts, not doctors, comprised about half the speakers.

The deliberately impressive array of speakers--a Nobel laureate in medicine, a retired admiral (defector from the military-industrial establishment), two pioneers in the development of nuclear weapons, researchers of Hiroshima and of the nuclear tests in Utah, the top names at Harvard Medical School--viewed the possibility of nuclear holocaust from a variety of traditionally antithetical perspectives.

The speakers shared a concern over the insidious nature of nuclear warfare, although some seem more enraptured with the omnipotent physics of the phenomenon, the psis and the megatons and the rems, than with the human dimensions of its consequences.

The symposium began with an immediate analysis of the consequences of a 20-megaton nuclear assault upon Boston. The speakers detonated one devastating statistic after another: 2.2 million immediate fatalities, 80 percent of medical facilities in the Boston area totally destroyed, all frame and brick buildings within six miles levelled (so much for Widener), 17,000 injured persons for every healthy doctor. And, of course, undetermined genetic effects to haunt future generations.

Their intensity ignited the overflow audience, equally divided between bald physicians and hairy activists, who responded in gasps, shudders, and finally applause. "I've never felt so frightened and excited at the same time," said one young listener.

The speakers did not relish depicting the gruesome scenario; as psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton noted, "It's painful-we're filling our heads with images of annihilation." But they persevered, often eloquently, because they were crusading for a universally vital cause-the prevention of a nuclear holocaust.

Many of the macabre metaphors were expressed in religious terms, ranging from "being blown back to Genesis" to "Armageddon." In particular, Lifton argued that a "new religion called 'nuclearism' the embrace and worship of these weapons of destruction-has been formed."

Two alleged devils were the targets of repeated hissing at the symposium; Edward Teller, father and continued supporter of the hydrogen bomb, and Jimmy Carter, who triggered the current jingoism and increased spending on nuclear weapons, said George B.Kistiakowsky, Lawrence Professor of Chemistry Emeritus. Echoed Bernard Lown, professor of Cardiology at the School of Public Health, "If the people knew the truth, they'd tear Washington down."

The speakers were certain of the diagnosis, rejected charges that they are naive or hysterical, and are instead "at once fearful and optimistic," as one New York doctor put it. They were less certain of the cure, occasionally even betraying a sense of tragic futility, as when MIT physicist Henry W. Kendall said, "The nuclear arms race is the most outstanding folly on which mankind has embarked." Applause. "But I don't quite know what to do about it." Laughter.

Some speakers believe modern day evangelism will prevent a nuclear war. "The only thing that can really move the government is a broadly-based mass movement for peace," Kistiakowsky said.

But Sunday morning, pointing to a U.S. map with little black dots denoting likely Soviet targets-concentrated, of course, on the Northern Atlantic seaboard-the speaker seemed as confident about the prospect of a nuclear holocaust as other preachers are about the Second Coming. "Our government is arming and preparing for nuclear war," said Gene Lagque, retired rear admiral, adding that military men operate on the premise that war will come.

The speakers, occasionally frustrated, often inspiring, seemed to imply that if only politicians and the public were as farsighted and rational and humanitarian as they, we'd return to the Garden of Eden. But instead of paradise, they fear a nuclear hell, in which as Khruschev warned, "The survivors will envy the dead.