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"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. Visiting Schweitzer, Fallout Dangers and an Approach to Medicine. (2:16)

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Frank Catchpool: So he stayed about ten days in the hospital and had many conferences with Albert Schweitzer in his room. I wasn’t in on these conferences, but Linus told me that he had come to ask Albert Schweitzer to sign his petition of Nobel laureates to the United Nations protesting the continued pollution of the world’s atmosphere with radioactive contaminants because of the threat that this posed to future generations and causing greater rate of mutations and so on, and all the reasons that you know about.

I knew also that my only access to news at that time was Time magazine, and I could tell that there was mention of this. I read about this appeal and the scorn that was being poured on it by Time Life, Incorporated or whatever it was, and how it was considered to be bad American defense policy. And that anyhow it had all been decided that there was a very clear-cut threshold of radioactivity below which no possible damage could be done to anybody and above which some damage might be done. And that we were no where near that threshold, according to the AEC.

We went 'round the hospital together, walked around through the grounds of the hospital. I pointed out various things. Like most people he was appalled at the primitiveness of the hospital. I might just add, in passing, that this primitive approach to medicine is now back in vogue again, many people feel that this is the way medicine should be practiced on a primary care delivery basis. That’s what I’m trying to do nowadays, be a primary care physician, and we don’t need enormous great hospitals and institutions with all their complications. And we talked about this a bit.

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Date: 1977
Genre: sound
ID: 1977v.66
Copyright: More Information

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