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David Bradley
The Bradley Estate
Obituary
David Bradley Physician who became pioneering antinuclear activist. Born on Feb 22, 1915, in Chicago, IL, USA, he died on Jan 7, 2008, in Norway, ME, USA, of renal failure, aged 92 years. Nuclear warfare was in its infancy, viewed as an extension of conventional warfare, when David Bradley served as a radiological monitor or ”Geiger man” during the Bikini Atoll tests in the South Pacific, in 1946. Scientists knew what the acute biological effects of radiation were, but not what happened after exposure to radiation and radioactive fallout. Bradley, then a young US Army military officer, was charged with monitoring the dangers of radiation to human beings and other animals in the months after the test explosions. In a laboratory at sea, he and other medical officers tested the urine of men exposed to radiation from the blasts and who washed and scrubbed the ships with soap and lye. The efforts were in vain. ”No matter what they would do, they couldn’t get the radiation off” and radiation levels could vary greatly within a few feet, according to Jeff Patterson, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, USA, and a colleague and friend of Bradley. There was ”no place to hide”, as Bradley would name his 1948 bestseller that described the tests. The US government cancelled a third test planned for that summer and sent the men home. What Bradley saw on Bikini Atoll deeply disturbed him. He was horrified at the prospect of having to triage after nuclear bombs went off, according to his niece, Peggy Timmerman. Shortly after returning from the South Pacific, 1160
he left medicine and became a pioneering antinuclear activist, lecturing for the newly formed United World Federalists peace movement. In No Place to Hide, Bradley wrote that the monitoring measures he undertook in 1946 were useless in practice. Considering the instruments available, the delay in collecting samples and contamination, Bradley wrote, ”at best our urinalysis is a crude and scarcely scientific procedure”. If an atom bomb were to explode over an army or population, ”from a medical as well as from a military point of view, urinalysis, blood counts, and other such protective measures would be about as useful to a fellow in such a catastrophe as Metropolitan Life Insurance.” Bradley ”was a real visionary to have made those observations at that time”, Patterson said. Throughout his life, Bradley regularly spoke about the Bikini Atoll tests and the need to improve medical care of veterans exposed to radiation. He was ”one of the first to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons”, according to Victor Sidel, a professor of social medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, USA, and founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a group that won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. In 1982, Bradley told The New York Times that there was still no place to hide. ”What’s changed is that the people, after 34 years of being in a stupor over the arms race, have suddenly come to realise something about where that race has taken them.” On the 40th anniversary of the Bikini Atoll tests, in 1986, Bradley and other members of Operation Crossroads travelled back to the island. At the commemoration ceremonies, Bradley told the Associated Press that ”we are all more or less victims of this (nuclear) mania and obsession”. Bradley graduated from Dartmouth College in 1938 with an English degree. He then studied history and English at Cambridge University, UK, before working as a newspaper correspondent in Europe during the Russo-Finnish war. After the war, he returned to the USA and entered Harvard Medical School. After graduating, in 1944, he joined the army as a medical officer and was sent to Bikini Atoll 2 years later. He would later write about his career that ”Somewhere in that intermediate zone, which combines both science and humanism, as always, comes medicine.” In addition to his advocacy work, Bradley was a champion skier and team manager of the US Olympic Nordic ski team. He co-wrote an instructional ski book and was inducted into the National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1985. Bradley served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives for 1955–59 and 1973–75. He was a lecturer at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire from 1966 to 1981. Bradley is survived by his second wife, Sally Tucker Smart Bradley, six children from his first marriage, and two brothers.
Alison Snyder [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 371 April 5, 2008
Obituary
David Bradley Physician who became pioneering antinuclear activist. Born on Feb 22, 1915, in Chicago, IL, USA, he died on Jan 7, 2008, in Norway, ME, USA, of renal failure, aged 92 years. Nuclear warfare was in its infancy, viewed as an extension of conventional warfare, when David Bradley served as a radiological monitor or ”Geiger man” during the Bikini Atoll tests in the South Pacific, in 1946. Scientists knew what the acute biological effects of radiation were, but not what happened after exposure to radiation and radioactive fallout. Bradley, then a young US Army military officer, was charged with monitoring the dangers of radiation to human beings and other animals in the months after the test explosions. In a laboratory at sea, he and other medical officers tested the urine of men exposed to radiation from the blasts and who washed and scrubbed the ships with soap and lye. The efforts were in vain. ”No matter what they would do, they couldn’t get the radiation off” and radiation levels could vary greatly within a few feet, according to Jeff Patterson, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, USA, and a colleague and friend of Bradley. There was ”no place to hide”, as Bradley would name his 1948 bestseller that described the tests. The US government cancelled a third test planned for that summer and sent the men home. What Bradley saw on Bikini Atoll deeply disturbed him. He was horrified at the prospect of having to triage after nuclear bombs went off, according to his niece, Peggy Timmerman. Shortly after returning from the South Pacific, 1160
he left medicine and became a pioneering antinuclear activist, lecturing for the newly formed United World Federalists peace movement. In No Place to Hide, Bradley wrote that the monitoring measures he undertook in 1946 were useless in practice. Considering the instruments available, the delay in collecting samples and contamination, Bradley wrote, ”at best our urinalysis is a crude and scarcely scientific procedure”. If an atom bomb were to explode over an army or population, ”from a medical as well as from a military point of view, urinalysis, blood counts, and other such protective measures would be about as useful to a fellow in such a catastrophe as Metropolitan Life Insurance.” Bradley ”was a real visionary to have made those observations at that time”, Patterson said. Throughout his life, Bradley regularly spoke about the Bikini Atoll tests and the need to improve medical care of veterans exposed to radiation. He was ”one of the first to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons”, according to Victor Sidel, a professor of social medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York, USA, and founder of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a group that won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. In 1982, Bradley told The New York Times that there was still no place to hide. ”What’s changed is that the people, after 34 years of being in a stupor over the arms race, have suddenly come to realise something about where that race has taken them.” On the 40th anniversary of the Bikini Atoll tests, in 1986, Bradley and other members of Operation Crossroads travelled back to the island. At the commemoration ceremonies, Bradley told the Associated Press that ”we are all more or less victims of this (nuclear) mania and obsession”. Bradley graduated from Dartmouth College in 1938 with an English degree. He then studied history and English at Cambridge University, UK, before working as a newspaper correspondent in Europe during the Russo-Finnish war. After the war, he returned to the USA and entered Harvard Medical School. After graduating, in 1944, he joined the army as a medical officer and was sent to Bikini Atoll 2 years later. He would later write about his career that ”Somewhere in that intermediate zone, which combines both science and humanism, as always, comes medicine.” In addition to his advocacy work, Bradley was a champion skier and team manager of the US Olympic Nordic ski team. He co-wrote an instructional ski book and was inducted into the National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1985. Bradley served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives for 1955–59 and 1973–75. He was a lecturer at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire from 1966 to 1981. Bradley is survived by his second wife, Sally Tucker Smart Bradley, six children from his first marriage, and two brothers.
Alison Snyder [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 371 April 5, 2008