Radiation Injuries and Statistics: The Need for a New Approach to Injury Litigation

The emphasis given by the mass media of communication to some of the dramatic problems arising from the use of nuclear energy unfortunately has diverted attention from some of the matters about which something can be done by lawyers, administrators, and legislators without the necessity of complicated international negotiations between various parties to the “Cold War.” The headlines leave the uninformed, and perhaps often also the informed, public with the impression that even for radiation injuries the important problems all deal with such questions as: (1) Will only a few or many millions of people survive an all-out nuclear war? (2) Will the fallout from nuclear weapons testing cause no, a few, or hundreds of thousands of cases of leukemia and similar diseases among the populations of the world?