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Medical Discovery News
Science permeates everyday life. Yet the understanding of advances in biomedical science is limited at best. Few people make the connection that biomedical science is medicine and that biomedical scientists are working today for the medicine of tomorrow. Our weekly five-hundred-word newspaper column (http://www.illuminascicom.com/) and two-minute radio show provide insights into a broad range of biomedical science topics. Medical Discovery News is dedicated to explaining discoveries in biomedical research and their promise for the future of medicine. Each release is designed to stimulate listeners to think, question and appreciate how science affects their health as well as that of the rest of the world. We also delve into significant biomedical discoveries and portray how science (or the lack of it) has impacted health throughout history.
Medical Discovery News
It Didn't Pay to be Down Wind
882 It Didn't Pay to be Down Wind
Welcome to Medical Discovery News. I’m Dr. Norbert Herzog.
And I’m Dr. David Niesel
High atop a tower in the New Mexico desert, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated in a test called Trinity on a July day in nineteen-forty-five.
People over a hundred miles away could see the mushroom cloud. No one knew then how far the fallout would go, but now a study shows that within ten days the radioactivity had reached forty-six states, Canada, and Mexico.
As depicted in the biopic, Oppenheimer, the Trinity test ushered in a new age of nuclear weapons testing that culminated in the bombing of two Japanese cities and ended in nineteen ninety-two having set off over a thousand nuclear explosions.
Recently, scientists reconstructed the weather the day Trinity exploded by charting weather patterns extending thirty thousand feet up. Using this data, researchers could track the fallout of Trinity and the nearly one hundred tests that followed. They could estimate ground deposits of radioactivity for the first five days after each test.
It revealed that northeastern New Mexico was heavily impacted. There are stories of children playing with the ash like snow, trying to catch it on their tongues.
Despite the passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, many in New Mexico have been denied. About half a million people lived within one hundred fifteen miles of the test site.
They weren’t warned and many have since died of cancer. Even though the US and Russia have been reducing their nuclear stockpiles, countries like China and North Korea may be producing more.
We are Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog, at UTMB and Quinnipiac University, where biomedical discoveries shape the future of medicine. For much more and our disclaimer go to medicaldiscoverynews.com or subscribe to our podcast. Sign up for expanded print episodes at www.illuminascicom.com
