J.1548-1387.2010.01126.X.Pdf

BOOK REVIEWS Half-Lives and Half-Truths, Confronting occurred the world over spreading fallout the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. far and wide), and (5) disposal (anthropol- Barbara Rose Johnston, ed. Santa Fe: School ogist Edith Turner, astounded at a very high for Advanced Research Press, 2007. x + cancer rate in Alaska’s Inupiat community 326 pp. in the 1990s, helped illustrate that it was not “lifestyle” but a nearby radioactive dump Brian McKenna site that accounted for the spike). World- University of Michigan-Dearborn wide thyroid cancer, leukemia, birth abnor- malities, and other conditions linked to nu- The world is in a perilous financial melt- clear exposures are far more extensive than down. This book addresses the industry that previously thought. The anxiety of living introduced us to that term. There are 439 next to a radiogenic site is felt by millions. nuclear power facilities on the planet to look Moreover, the majority of the suffering— after. At least two nuclear reactors have more than 70 percent—has occurred in in- already suffered partial or full meltdowns digenous communities, referred to by one (Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl critic as “national sacrifice zones” (p. 301). in 1986) causing much bodily and psy- Johnston entitles one of her own chapters chological suffering, especially in the now- “more like us than mice” (lower case as radiogenic communities that surround the in original). The phrase is drawn from a plants. The current financial meltdown has transcript from the Atomic Energy Commis- come from the U.S. government’s embrace- sion Advisory Committee on Biology and ment of neoliberalism, a movement that Medicine that referred to indigenous peo- abandoned effective regulatory oversight ples as such. Johnston writes, “This view— over banking, housing, and Wall Street. Has that human groups are more or less evolved, the homeland security state, under neoliber- with primitive ‘natives’ being biologically alism, done any better regulating the most inferior to Western ‘civilized people’—was a lethal industry in the world, nuclear? common and useful notion ...dampen[ing] Not on your life. As Johnston and her any moral qualms about the planned use of 14 anthropology colleagues make abun- the Marshallese population in human radi- dantly clear, it’s not just nuclear melt- ation experiments” (p. 26). down disasters that we should fear but The Marshall Islanders have suffered the cradle-to-grave circuit of nuclear pro- greatly. As we learn in the chapter by Holly duction. This circuit includes: (1) uranium Barker, they live in Micronesia, acquired as mining (Navaho miners have been espe- a trust by the United States as a kind of war cially hard hit with thousands of deaths), booty after the United States defeated the (2) uranium processing (there are 2.35 bil- Japanese in World War II. On the atolls lion tons of radioactive “tailings” remain- of Enewetak and Bikini in the Marshall ing after uranium extraction), (3) weapons Islands the United States detonated 67 ther- development (between 2001 and 2004, tens monuclear weapons from 1946 to 1958. of millions of cubic meters of liquid radioac- It was the equivalent of 1.5 Hiroshima- tive waste were dumped into Russia’s Techa style bombs dropped every single day for River), (4) testing (2,057 nuclear tests have 12 years (p. 214) The 6.3 billion curies 558 Book Reviews 559 of iodine-131 released there is 150 times powerful concluding essay by Laura Nader greater than the estimated 40 million curies and Hugh Gusterson. The book has seven released at Chernobyl. U.S. government re- maps, 16 photographs, and seven tables. searchers evacuated some Marshallese and My favorite figure is on the cover itself: a enrolled them in a secret medical experi- bright yellow and orange rendering of a nu- ment, called Project 4.1, to ascertain the ra- clear explosion replete with seven soldiers diation effects on human beings. Marshall in silhouette. It signals that the book will be Islanders were placed back on the radio- unconventional, and it is. genic islands—with its contaminated food, The decades-old silence within biomedi- soil, and water—to monitor their health cine and anthropology regarding nuclear and calculate radiogenic effects. And they catastrophes is duly noted. When scientists found a very long list of them, from dia- produced data that contradicted the offi- betes, growth impairment, and sterility to cial story they found themselves outcasts, miscarriages, congenital birth defects, and discredited, or unemployed. The message: cancer. The National Cancer Institute pre- there are severe consequences for speaking dicts hundreds of additional cancer cases out. The results are deplorable. As Johnston into the 21st century. The medical and pub- puts it, “control over scientific findings al- lic health infrastructures are overwhelmed. lowed the systematic use of half-truths to Meanwhile, in 2009 the U.S. government pacify public concerns while expanding the contributes just $7 per patient per month in nuclear war machine” (p. 2). In this light the communities most affected by the test- every anthropologist must learn the name ing programs. According to Barker, “There Earle Reynolds, and the chapter by David is no oncologist in the Marshall Islands, no Price is a good place to start. chemotherapy, no cancer registry, and no In 1951, Reynolds, a physical anthropol- nationwide screening program for early de- ogist, moved his family to Hiroshima to tection” (p. 215). work as a biostatistician for the Atomic Johnston and her contributors used Bomb Casualty Commission’s Pediatrics participant-observation, interviews, sur- Department. The more he learned about the veys, literature reviews, government docu- devastation and the physical and psycho- ments, freedom-of-information-act (FOIA) logical horrors endured by the Japanese, the requests—with much governmental mate- more he became convinced that the nuclear rial redacted—and engaged advocacy to as- arms race had to be stopped. He under- certain the hidden history of what Johnston stood that his work was to survey the bod- calls the “first nuclear age.” It is, of neces- ies of Hiroshimans to predict casualties in sity, transdisciplinary work. The chapters a later nuclear war. He quit and became represent critical ethnographic case stud- a world renowned activist. He received let- ies from the United States (secret nuclear ters of support from around the world, even dumping in Alaska, mammoth radiation from Martin Luther King Jr., but his col- releases in Hanford in Washington State, leagues in the American Anthropology As- rebellious Navajo uranium miners in Ari- sociation came to regard him as “a danger- zona and New Mexico, frightened down- ous outsider” (p. 62). wind communities in Nevada, and pseu- Price used FOIA requests to learn to dopublic participation programs in Rocky what extent Reynolds’s actions were moni- Flats Colorado), the South Pacific (e.g., the tored by the state. He was closely watched. toxic Marshall Islands), and two former Moreover, as Price notes, “Reynolds’s Soviet republics (secret nuclear cities in Rus- activist-applied anthropology radically un- sia’s Chelyabinsk, a site whose radiologic hitched mission from employment. His accidents were worse than Chernobyl; and story illustrates how applied research find- Kazakhstan, a region blanketed with radia- ings can bear a weight of uncomfortable tion from 496 Soviet-era nuclear tests). The responsibility—a responsibility that if acted articles are well integrated and build to a upon can lead anthropologists to take duty 560 Medical Anthropology Quarterly bound actions ...[that endanger] their ca- pological action research to help develop reers. That it seems unusual to consider personal injury claims for the Marshallese. the outlaw Reynolds an applied anthropolo- With support from the Public Advocate gist tells us more about the ethical banality for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal and a we encounter in our work in mainstream Marshallese Advisory Committee, they de- applied anthropology than it does about veloped a model to rethink the meaning of Reynolds” (p. 70). land value in accordance with traditional If one wonders why most choose to shun views, where land is not owned but is a social activism and remain silent, a letter means to sustain life. Drawing on Native from a Marshall Islander to one Dr. Conard, American–First Nation–Aboriginal case law a physician, helps provide part of an answer. and related methodologies, they wrote re- ports, organized testimony and worked tire- Your entire career is based on our lessly behind the scenes as advocates. In a illness. We are far more valuable to spectacular April 2007 decision, 16 years you than you are to us. You have since the first claims were filed, the Nuclear never really cared about us as Claims Tribunal awarded the claimants people—only as a group of guinea $1.03 billion, setting enormous precedents pigs for your government’s bomb for years to come. research effort. For me and the And yet, despite this terrific work, people on Rongelap, it is life which Johnston and Barker often seem to be do- matters most. For you it is facts and ing it in the margins. As Laura Nader notes, figures. There is no question about “over the past fifty-plus years, relatively few your technical competence, but we American anthropologists ...have voiced often wonder about your humanity. opposition to this [Marshall Islands] de- [p. 45] struction” (p. 304). Nader critiques the scores of anthropologists who worked in The anthropologists in this book are, the Pacific, like Margaret Mead, but never however, critical rebels like Reynolds rather spoke up about the nuclear testing. More than that letter’s addressee. True to their than just to criticize, the book provides interdisciplinary training and moral con- much insight into why.

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