Chernobyl Data

I read with deep sadness your superb article (“Chernobyl,” World Report, April 23) on the fallout problems from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

In the mid ‘70s, I was part of a government-sponsored surgical team that removed cancerous thyroids from the gentle islanders who inhabited the Marshall Islands when we decided to do nuclear testing. We brought these lovely people to Cleveland’s Metropolitan General Hospital where the renowned thyroid specialist, Dr. Brown Dobyns, operated on them.

We had taken these people from their “homes” and moved them “safely” to the island of Rogerik some 500 miles southeast. The wind carried the radioactive material to that island, contaminated the islanders and children in their wombs.

After all these years, after the billions of dollars spent trying to find ways to store nuclear waste, we are still being pressured by the scientific community to accept nuclear energy as a way to meet mankind’s energy needs. How many homes and lives must be sacrificed before that same community realizes that we already know the devastating effect of nuclear energy? Has not the horrible legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki been understood?

JAMES B. HUGHES

Los Angeles