The BEAR1 Report to the Public

BEAR1 renounced LNT as we now know it.

Figure 1. In 1956, this booklet was distributed to some 5000 libraries and media outlets. It claims LNT does NOT apply to non-genetic effects such as cancer.

This post assumes you are familiar with the Rockefeller Foundation’s effort to end atomic bomb testing. There’s a short summary at Big Oil and Nuclear Power. There is a much longer description in Chapter 5 of Why Nuclear Power has been a Flop. It’s a fascinating story of how the Foundation used a combination of greed and fear of the bomb to suborn the scientific community. Professor Calabrese has carefully documented this saga. You can find a detailed description at Cancer Risk Assessment. Read no further unless you are familiar with this background.

As past of their carefully orchestrated plan to replace the tolerance dose with LNT, the Rockefeller Foundation published a plain language summary of the BEAR1 Committee’s Report called The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Report to the Public. In 1956, the Foundation sent a copy of the 44 page booklet to all (roughly 5000) US libraries. The booklet is well written, but has no author.¹ It is a very revealing document.

The Report to the Public sets the stage by beginning with a dire warning.

Behind any discussion of radiation must necessarily loom the specter of full-scale atomic war. That a single thermonuclear weapon can cause severe radiation damage hundreds of miles beyond its area of immediate devastation is all too well known. That enough such weapons exploded in an all-out war might render the entire earth, or large parts of it, uninhabitable, is at least conceivable.[p 2]

We then turn to the findings of the BEAR1 Committee. The first finding is a bold, clear, unqualified statement.

The inheritance mechanism is by far the most sensitive to radiation of any biological system.[p 3]

For emphasis, this sentence is set off by itself. This claim may sound strange to our ears, but in 1956 it needed no support. What follows is an Apostle’s Creed of 1930 genetics. The emphasis is mine.

Any radiation which reaches the reproductive cells causes mutations (changes in the material governing heredity) that are passed on to succeeding generations.

Human gene mutations which produce observable effects are believed to be universally harmful.²

Everyone is subjected to the natural background radiation which causes an unavoidable quantity of so-called spontaneous mutations. Anything that adds radiation to this naturally occurring background rate causes further mutations, and is genetically harmful.

There is no minimum amount of radiation which must be exceeded before mutations occur. Any amount, however small, that reaches the reproductive cells can cause a correspondingly small number of mutations. The more radiation, the more mutations.

The harm is cumulative. The genetic damage done by radiation builds up as the radiation is received, and depends on the total accumulated gonad dose received by people from their own conception to the conception of their last child.

So far as individuals are concerned, not all mutant genes or combinations of mutant genes are equally harmful. A few may cause very serious handicaps, many others may produce much smaller harm, or even no apparent damage.

But from the point of view of the total and eventual damage to the entire population, every mutation causes roughly the same amount of harm. This is because mutant genes can only disappear when the inheritance line in which they are carried dies out. In cases of severe and obvious damage this may happen in the first generation; in other cases it may require hundreds of generations.[page 3]

Thus, for the general population, and in the long run, a little radiation to a lot of people is as harmful as a lot of radiation to a few, since the total number of mutant genes can be the same in the two cases.[page 4]

The first bold paragraph is the no-repair assumption. This was also so obvious that it needed no argument. The word repair shows up no where in the booklet. It wasn’t needed. If there is no repair, the second bold paragraph, which is the definition of linearity, is logically unassailable.

It would be hard to find a better annunciation of the postulates that lead to LNT. But the subject is only genetic damage. The concern is not the person who suffers the exposure, but the effect on future generations (a word that shows up 21 times in 44 pages). In case you have any doubt:

It has sometimes been thought that there may be a rate (say, so much per week), at which a person can receive radiation with reasonable safety as regards certain types of direct damage to his own person. But the concept of a safe rate of radiation simply does not make sense if one is concerned with genetic damage to future generation. What counts, from the point of view of genetic damage, is not the rate; it is the total accumulated dose to the reproductive cells of the individual from the beginning of his life up to the time the child is conceived.[p 17]

In other words, for genetics the tolerance dose is a ruse. The fact that the person who got the dose shows no effect is irrelevant. His germline genes have been altered, and that will show up in his progeny.

Non-genetic effects merit only two pages. The word cancer shows up just twice, and then only as part of a list of possible non-genetic effects. But those two pages are very important. The Report is clear:

1) Non-genetic effects are not that important.

2) Non-genetic effects do NOT follow LNT.

Passing from the effects of radiation on future generations to its effects on persons directly exposed, we find a considerably simpler situation, so far as the general population is concerned. As has already been mentioned, the inheritance mechanism is far more sensitive to radiation than any other biological system. Therefore, if the general level of exposure is held down to genetically acceptable levels, there would be no noticeable effects on the bodies of the persons exposed.[p 20]

We start with an acceptance of a tolerance dose for non-genetic effects which could have been written by Lauriston Taylor. Note my emphasized phrases.

Doses up to about 100 roentgen [1000 mGy], when spread over years have not been shown to shorten human life. On the other hand, we cannot yet say that there is a minimum amount below which the effect does not take place. If very large numbers of people were exposed to a gradually accumulated dose of 100 roentgens or even less, their life expectancy might well be lowered by a minor, but statistically observable amount.[p 20]

But acute doses do cause non-genetic effects:

In general we may say that the type and severity of pathological effects depend on the amount of radiation received at one time and on the percentage of the total body exposed.[p 21]

These people were not stupid. They knew the whole dose rate profile was important (except for genetic effects). The BEAR1 committee did not believe in LNT as we now know it.

Here’s what I think happened. In 1956, the Foundation knew it could not make the case for LNT for non-genetic effects. But they thought they could for genetic, and that’s all they needed.

But their genetic case was already crumbling. The Report to the Public makes no mention of the Neel Study (which had been going on for 10 years) nor Caspari’s fruit fly nor Russell’s mice studies, which clearly contradicted LNT for genetic effects. The discovery of DNA whose double helix immediately suggested a repair mechanism was already three years old. Old theories and old geneticists were being pushed off the stage. The report feels obliged to make the following oblique reference.

Presumably a changeling gene undergoes some chemical rearrangement, although we do not yet know any of the details of the process.[page 15]

Just about the time the Report to the Public was distributed, the Neel Report, which showed no genetic effects to some 70,000 children of the bomb survivors who were conceived after the bomb was dropped, went public. The Foundation’s well laid plan crashed and burned. The Foundation had no choice but to throw the cancer Hail Mary. Enter Ed Lewis and his co-conspirators.

The only reason that the completely novel idea that cancer incidence follows LNT, which the BEAR1 report dismissed out of hand, was not immediately shot down was nobody who knew better --- not even Lauriston Taylor --- was prepared a take a stand that could be used to support more bomb testing.

Humanity is burdened with LNT not because of the greed of a handful of creepy geneticists. Humanity is burdened with LNT because the Rockefeller Foundation put the scientific community in a quandary. The community chose to violate its principles for a short term gain. It’s a Shakespearian tragedy on an auto-genocidal scale.

1. Calabrese has unearthed correspondence that shows that the Report to the Public was written by an unnamed Scientific American editor and was not reviewed by the BEAR1 Committee.\cite{calabrese-2022} Several members of the committee belatedly objected to some of the wording. But they kept their complaints private. The Report is best viewed as what the Rockefeller Foundation thought they could sell in 1956.

2. Circa 1960 members of the BEAR1 committee privately objected to this wording, especially the adverb.\cite{calabrese-2022}