Abstract
Where's the (irradiated) beef?
One year ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the use of irradiated beef in the national school lunch program. But critics like the watchdog group Public Citizen cried foul, saying that using irradiated meat in hot lunches would treat kids–whose parents might not approve–like guinea pigs.
The school lunchroom is just the latest battleground in the USDA-irradiation industry struggle to get Americans to accept irradiated edibles. But so far the battle for acceptance has been uphill.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry lobby group, describes what others refer to as “zapping” the food supply as “the use of ionizing energy to kill bacteria, parasites, and insects in food and to retard spoilage.”
Beginning in 1963, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gradually approved the irradiation of nearly all foodstuffs. However, only a few uses have been accepted by consumers; for instance, many commercially available spices are irradiated. And much of the food NASA astronauts consume in space is irradiated.
At the First World Congress on Food Irradiation held in May 2003 in Chicago, irradiation advocates were upbeat. Ronald Eustice, executive director of the Minnesota Beef Council, predicted that irradiation would join pasteurization, immunization, and chlorination as “the fourth pillar of public health.” The Minnesota school board disagreed; a month before the food congress it said “no thanks” to irradiated beef (July 2003, Nuclear News).
It's nearly 2005, and a second World Congress has yet to be announced, and food irradiation may have fallen on hard times. After the anthrax mailings in late 2001, analysts predicted a boom for irradiation companies–that they would prosper through zapping the mail, if not the food supply. Instead, industry heavyweight SureBeam–a company that had grown to irradiating 15 million pounds of beef a year–filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on January 13.
Lawsuits filed on behalf of SureBeam stockholders accuse the company of misstating earnings and engaging in other creative accounting practices. Although accounting irregularities were cited as the cause of bankruptcy, in its 33 months as a public company, SureBeam failed to turn a profit (San Diego Union-Tribune, April 6).
The industry as a whole faces a much tougher hurdle: taste buds. The August 2003 Consumer Reports found that in blind taste tests consumers could identify irradiated meat by its slightly scorched taste and by a smell reminiscent of scorched hair. Some marketing trials have failed, too. After offering irradiated ground beef in 2001, more than 80 grocery stores in Florida and Wisconsin pulled the product because customers refused to buy it.
Not exactly the stuff of dream ad campaigns.
So, in the grand euphemistic tradition of dried plums–you know, prunes–Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin popped a provision into the 2002 farm bill that would allow companies to call irradiated beef “pasteurized beef.”
Want to taste “pasteurized” beef? Head to a Dairy Queen or a Super-America; both chains use ground beef that has been zapped. Unlike grocery store irradiated food, which is required to sport the radura symbol on its packaging, these foods don't have the same labeling requirements.
For its part, the USDA likes to call food irradiation a “safe alternative to fumigation.” Others prefer “cold” or “electronic pasteurization.” It won't matter, though, if irradiated beef by any other name smells like burnt hair.
Bret Lortie is a Chicago-based writer and former managing editor of the Bulletin.
Bolton explains
The undersecretary for arms control and international security, John R. Bolton (at right), explained the Bush administration's nuclear proliferation policies in a September 7 Financial Times op-ed:
“Rather than rely on cumbersome treaty-based bureaucracies, this administration has launched initiatives that involve cooperative action with other sovereign states to deny rogue nations and terrorists access to the materials and know-how needed to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD).”
“The Bush administration is reinventing the nonproliferation regime it inherited, crafting policies to fill gaping holes, reinforcing earlier patchwork fixes, assembling allies, creating precedents, and changing perceived realities and stilted legal thinking.”
“As we learned from the unravelling of the clandestine nuclear weapons network run by A. Q. Khan and from the Libyan WMD program, proliferators employ increasingly sophisticated and aggressive measures to obtain WMD or missile-related materials.”
“Among the most prominent of this administration's counterproliferation innovations is the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). We say that PSI is ‘an activity, not an organization.’”
“This administration is working to make up for decades of stillborn plans, wishful thinking, and irresponsible passivity…. We're no longer waiting beneath the empty protection of a reluctant international body while seeking grudging permission to take measures to protect ourselves.”
We're itching for a fight. If you're not with us, you're against us.
We're going to make up the rules as we go along.
Who would have thought the Third World could develop technical capabilities?
We'll be seizing ships on the open sea.
Iran, North Korea, you're next on the hit list. Anyone for Syria?
Pumping up the volume
U.S. Army PsyOps have been known to employ music such as unrelenting heavy metal and banal children's songs as a means of breaking foreign prisoners.
But now the latest in non-lethal weapons brings the concept of acoustic punishment to the battlefield with a twist–instead of music, a deafening shrieking induces enemy combatants to abandon their intentions.
The long-range acoustic device (LRAD), manufactured by the San Diego-based American Technology Corporation (ATC), has already been deployed in Iraq to help deter insurgent attacks and to disperse potentially violent protests.
The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet estimates that in the first month it used LRADs in the Persian Gulf, more than 80 percent of wayward vessels altered their course because of the device's ear-piercing siren and stern warnings. The navy promptly awarded ATC a second contract for “urgent and immediate” LRAD delivery to its forces in the Persian Gulf. The marines have also used LRADs in Fallujah and other insurgent hot spots.
(Crowd control in Iraq will get an additional boost next year when U.S. troops deploy another non-lethal weapon: the microwave gun, which uses an electromagnetic beam to heat water molecules under the skin until the pain becomes unbearable. As with the LRAD, the Defense Department says the microwave gun is not fatal, and does not cause long-lasting injuries.)
Designed partly to ward off U.S.S. Cole-type terrorist attacks, the LRAD operates in two modes. The first is as an übermegaphone that broadcasts its user's commands to a chosen target (in multiple languages, no less). If the warning proves ineffective, the user switches the device into siren mode, and the LRAD then emits such a loud screeching noise–think of a roaring smoke alarm–that enemy combatants stop their approach. The LRAD's beam of sound-waves is so tightly focused that both LRAD operators and non-targets in the immediate vicinity are unaffected by the wailing. The piercing sound can reach up to 500 yards over water and 300 yards over land.
American Technology Corporation Vice President Carl Gruenler and an LRAD.
Not solely marketed for combat use, the portable, dish-shaped device has attracted the interest of U.S. municipalities, which have begun adding them to crowd control and law enforcement arsenals. The New York City Police Department purchased two LRADs for crowd control during the Republican National Convention.
The NYPD tested the LRADs' public address capabilities in Times Square before the convention and proudly proclaimed that the device's messages were loud enough to be heard more than four blocks away. (The NYPD removed the screeching siren capability from its LRADs, promising that they would be used for longrange communication only.)
For the convention, the police attached the LRADs to the tops of a pair of Humvees in the Madison Square Garden parking lot. Rumors of their use were rampant among convention bloggers and protesters, but no one claimed to have even heard them. The NYPD said it used the LRADs to usher protesters to rally-designated areas, and that it would have used them to direct the convention's large crowds to safety in case of a terrorist attack.
ATC bills the LRAD as a homeland security catchall, promising LRAD will better secure airports, pipelines, power plants, bridges, tunnels, and national borders. Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Charles McQueary testified that “the LRAD is one of the most promising existing technologies” that could be used for border and transportation security on a larger scale.
Although their device has been used in conflict, ATC officials refute LRAD's weapon designation. “LRAD is not a weapon,” wrote ATC's vice president of military and government operations, Carl H. Gruenler, in a March 16 letter to the Los Angeles Times. “LRAD is a highly directional, long-range hailing and warning device that communicates intelligibly in a narrow beam at over 500 yards.”
Semantics aside, human rights organizations worry that the LRAD could cause permanent hearing damage. (In late 2003, Forbes.com also reported LRAD use might cause spontaneous diarrhea, persistent migraines, and nausea.) Independent tests show that LRAD does not violate National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health levels for noise exposure source levels and durations, according to ATC.
This assumes, however, that users will always follow the directions for employing the device, which, as Gruenler stated, means using the siren only in short bursts. He admits that if the LRAD's siren is allowed to blare for a long period of time, significant hearing damage is possible.
For a “hailing and warning device,” the LRAD packs a mighty punch. “Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there,” Gruenler told the Associated Press (March 3, 2004).
In Brief
September 11 is a date the American public will never forget. The year 9/11 happened, on the other hand, is proving to be a bit more taxing on the nation's memory. A nearly two-year-old government sign at Ground Zero listed the date of the attacks as “September 11, 2002” (Thesmokinggun.com, July 15). But after a 21-year-old man alerted embarrassed New York and New Jersey authorities to the error last July, it was quickly corrected.
In response to yet another Bush administration claim that Iraq had obtained uranium from Niger, in late July Proliferation News (www.carnegieendowment.org/npp) tried using something all too rare in the Iraq-has-WMD story–common sense. The News pointed out that it takes “approximately one metric ton of good ore from a Niger mine to produce 3 kilograms of yellowcake (uranium oxide concentrate). It then takes about 215 kilograms of yellow-cake to produce 1 kilogram of highly enriched uranium for a bomb. It takes about 25 kilograms of [highly enriched uranium] to make a bomb.” In other words, just to get enough material for a single nuclear device, the operation would have had to avoid detection while smuggling 4 million pounds of ore from Niger.
The good news? The Bush administration says it wants to lower the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The bad news? Somehow, it turns out having fewer weapons will cost more money. As Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, surprisingly argued in a letter to Congress, the reductions require an expansion of the nuclear weapons complex, including the construction of a new plutonium parts production facility, funds for research and development to keep “critical skills” sharp, and a program to shorten the preparation time needed to resume nuclear testing.
Gordon Prather, one-time nuclear weapons physicist, responded to a September report that, like Iranian scientists, five U.S.-trained South Korean scientists had also used lasers to separate minute amounts of plutonium: “If Bush has to treat South Korea the same way he intends to treat Iran,” wrote Prather, “at least he won't have to invade them. We already have 37,000 troops stationed there” (Worldnetdaily.com, September 11).
One time-honored way to claim to have reduced government payrolls is through contracting work out. According to Elizabeth Brown, that's exactly what the Defense Department is doing–hiring defense contractors to help write the department's budget (www.publicintegrity.org, July 29). Booz Allen Hamilton prefers to describe its budget task as performing “analysis to support budget requests.” But aren't Booz Allen and fellow providers like Perot Systems Government Services and Miltec Systems tempted to make sure there's a little something in the next budget for themselves, maybe by specifying requirements only they can meet? Why no, of course not, insists Defense Department spokesperson Glenn Flood. Flood says there's no conflict of interest because the companies have no guarantee they will get future contracts.
Selling insecurity is a major industry. According to Michael Myser, colleges can apply for federal funding for classes that fall under the homeland security rubric (Wired News, August 18). And so they are offering courses ranging from “Urban Security” at Cooper Union to Rice University's “Jihad and the End of the World.” But why settle for only one or two courses, if you can get the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology division to establish a “center for excellence” at your school? The first two such centers, at the University of Southern California and the University of Minnesota, are already multimillion-dollar winners, and Homeland Security seems eager to recruit more.
Take the 300-page book, Weapons of Mass Destruction: What You Should Know: A Citizen's Guide to Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear & Radiological Agents and Weapons ($39.99 in paperback), which appears to consist entirely of reprinted material, mainly from government sources. In lieu of crediting the reprinted materials, the author writes, “To these sources, I must say THANKS for facilitating the process of preparing this book.” Filled with amusing typos (unborne baby, celsium 137, versicant, and so on), the text begins with: “As Steve Bowman stated in his article ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’”–but gives no hint of when or where the article appeared. In a nifty parallel, the book's author describes himself as a university professor but offers no clue as to where his university might be.
Scientists pick flicks
When it comes to science fiction movies, it turns out the finest minds in modern science are a lot like the rest of us.
An August poll conducted by Britain's Guardian newspaper (an unscientific survey, we're guessing) revealed that the world's leading scientists prefer large, salivating aliens to more realistic scientific theory in their favorite science fiction movies.
A dose of space travel, exhilarating action sequences, or artificial intelligence doesn't hurt either.
The survey's top vote-getter was director Ridley Scott's futuristic film noir Blade Runner. Very loosely based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner stars Harrison Ford as a Los Angeles policeman who hunts androids–termed “replicants” in the film.
The film was a critical and commercial disappointment when it was released in 1982, barely recouping its estimated $28 million budget during its theatrical run. But it has established cult status over the ensuing two-plus decades, capturing scores of devotees–including, according to the Guardian's survey, some of the world's most brilliant minds.
Blade Runner possesses some grounding in legitimate science–Ford's character uses the Voight-Kampff empathy test to differentiate replicants from humans. “[It's] the sort of thing that cognitive neuroscientists are actually doing today,” according to professor Chris Frith of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College-London.
But mostly Blade Runner is just good movie fun. “It was so far ahead of its time,” King's College stem cell biologist Stephen Minger told the Guardian. “And the whole premise of the story: What is it like to be human and who are we, where [do] we come from? It's the age-old questions.”
Top 10 sci-fi films
1. Blade Runner (1982)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
3. Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (tie)
4. Alien (1979)
5. Solaris (1972)
6. Terminator (1984), T2: Judgment Day (1991) (tie)
7. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
8. War of the Worlds (1953)
9. The Matrix (1999)
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Gerard Piel, Ralph E. Lapp
The Bulletin recently lost two good friends from the past–Gerard Piel and Ralph E. Lapp.
Bulletin sponsor and former Scientific American publisher Gerard Piel died September 5 from complications of a stroke he suffered in February. He was 89.
Piel purchased Scientific American in 1947 as the magazine's popularity and readership was floundering. He immediately instituted a number of changes. The most important: Allowing scientists to write articles about their research.
Piel's moves proved successful. Within four years the magazine turned a profit, and by the 1980s its circulation topped one million. He sold the magazine to its current publisher, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, in 1986. It is now published in more than 15 languages.
A generous intellectual and financial sponsor of the Bulletin since the 1950s, Piel provided a vital helping hand to the budding magazine during its early days. With Piel's aid, the Bulletin's circulation climbed from fewer than 5,000 readers in the early 1950s to nearly 25,000 readers by the early 1960s. Dubbed the “Piel Effect,” the circulation spike was the highest growth rate over a 10-year span in the Bulletin's history.
Longtime Bulletin contributor Ralph E. Lapp, a civil defense, nuclear power, and test ban proponent, died September 7 of pneumonia following routine surgery. He was 87.
Lapp's career in nuclear physics began by happenstance. While studying cosmic rays in the Stagg Field press box in December 1942 at the University of Chicago, he noticed a ramp leading to the squash court beneath the stadium's bleachers. There, Lapp found Enrico Fermi and his team birthing the atomic age. Clad in his white lab coat, Lapp introduced himself as a nuclear physicist (a bit of a stretch) and began working on what would become the Manhattan Project.
Like many of the project scientists, Lapp became uneasy with the ramifications of the bomb. He was one of more than 60 scientists who signed a petition imploring President Harry Truman to demonstrate the bomb before deploying it. Lapp circulated the petition around Los Alamos with little luck. “Los Alamos was on a collision course with history,” he told a United Press International reporter in 1995.
After the war, Lapp held a number of public sector jobs–he worked on the first hydrogen bomb test, served as head of the navy's nuclear physics research department, and was named assistant director of Argonne National Laboratory–before starting a nuclear consultancy firm in the early 1950s.
Throughout the rest of his life, Lapp was a fierce supporter of both civil defense and nuclear power; yet he passionately argued that the U.S. government was misleading the public about safe levels of radioactivity. The Washington Post termed Lapp “a one-man atomic truth squad and nuclear lie detector.”
Lapp wrote many Bulletin articles on the dangers of fallout from nuclear testing. He also penned 22 books. His seminal, critically hailed The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon (1958) detailed the effects of the massive Bravo test on a Japanese fishing crew.
Despite his contributions to the nuclear age, Lapp remained humble.
“Mine was a very modest role in the atomic energy picture,” he wrote in his 1953 book The New Force. “It was my good fortune to be in on many big events in atomic energy among outstanding men.”