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STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 (415) 321-1200

 

February 1, 1971

STANFoRD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

Dr. A. W. Hilberg

National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20418

Dear Dr. Hilberg,

I attach herewith a document entitled "Cost Analysis of Genetic
Diseases from Radiation; $100 per man rad". :

I am sending this to you in connection with the study by your
NRC/NAS Committee of biological hazards of radiation. I am in the
course of a more detailed revision of this document and the conclusions
presented therein must be held to be quite tentative. I am submitting
the present version at this time however in the knowledge that I may
not have completed a more definitive statement in time to be useful to
your committee. If I do I trust I will be able to enter a revised version.

I hope that this presentation will not generate an unnecessary amount
of quibbling over the appropriate dollar value for I am quite willing to
admit a considerable range of uncertainty by a factor of at least three
and perhaps as much as ten. However, I do not believe that this will
impair the usefulness of this approach and my main purpose is to provoke
you and my colleagues to attempt a more precise definition of the cost
of radiation hazards. I attempted to reach this evaluation through a
reasonable objective procedure but I should take some comfort 1) in the
fact that it is likely to be attacked severely by both sides in the
present controversy and 2) that it coincides almost exactly with an
independent estimate made by Dr. Bo. Lindell of Stockholm on the
utility of radiation-protection as perceived by health physicists. I
imagine you already have access to his paper on this subject; if not
Dr. Russell Morgan can provide it or you can write to him directly for it.

One can also criticize the very attempt to put a dollar figure on
human health and I would myself insist that this is useful only for
comparative purposes and has no place in a determination of absolute value.
Some additional remarks on this point are included in another article also
enclosed, which in turn refers to a paper by Dr. Thomas Schelling on the
analysis of the economic value of human life which I most strongly commend
to you,

over

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Dr. A. W. Hilberg ~2- 2/1/71

In my opinion the most serious impediment to rational public policy
in this area is an ingrained confusion between personal and social
hazards. The AEC, in my opinion, could establish much more restrained
policies for average population exposure without serious impediment to
the exploitation of nuclear energy. However, it appears to be inhibited
from doing this because of an expected outcry from any small number of
individuals who may be aarieved at having a personal perhaps even transient
exposure that falls above the threshold established for the average
population. This point could well be illustrated by applying the
calculated health cost rate of $100 per man rad.{i put aside, for a moment,
that most of the genetic cost will be socialized anyhow by diffusion
through the gene pool.) The individual health cost may still be an integral
fraction of that number and for sake of argument I will leave it at that
value.

As I understand them, the current environmental standards for
nuclear power plants allow for an exposure rate up to 0.5 rad at the
boundary of the plant site. A very limited number of individuals may
therefore be arbitrarily taxed to the extent of $50 per annum by
virtue of their exposure, sometimes involuntarily, to this dose.
Measured as a personal cost we might decide either to provide for
specific reimbursement (which is constructively accomplished in the
economics of labor costs) or be willing to dismiss it as another of
the small but inevitable fluctuations of injury that are the by-
products of many forms of social action - zoning, selective service,
and so on. On the other hand an economic cost of $50 x 200 million or
$10 billion for the country at large would probably be regarded as an
intolerable penalty. This kind of issue becomes very much more difficult
to discuss when life and health rather than dollars are at stake, but we
cannot evade the reality that connects these.

In sum, le me then stress that the purpose of this submission is
to urge your group to attend to the questions that it raises much more
than to ask it to adhere to these specific answers that I have given
herewith.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr

ec: Dr. Crow
Dr. Wolff