NUCLEAR GUARDIANSHIP FORUM, On The Responsible Care of Radioactive Materials
Issue # 1, Spring 1992, p. 6.
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                      HONORNING A COURAGEOUS SCIENTIST

     Dr. Alice M. Stewart is a British medical doctor and a
     distinguished epidemilogist, who for 27 years conducted scientific
     research in social medicine at Oxford University. Her work first
     established the connection between childhood leukemia and fetal
     X-rays. She has continued to look at the effects of low-level
     radiation on the health of children and adults.



                               ALICE STEWART


                     Using the language of science

                     she showed us the steep curve

                     mysterious on the graph

                     pointing to casualties of a certain kind.

                     Only over time, did the idea

                     come to her, hidden

                     under this curve early deaths

                     of another kind produced a different

                     invisible curve

                     making it one long slope

                     of dying.

                     All this proceeded in

                     a now to be calculated way

                     after the first explosion

                     began the chain of events,

                     diminishments, loss,

                     collapses, cancers

                     the disappearance of

                     family, friends.

                     Genetics? she said

                     The children?

                     The ones born later.

                     Yes, but that

                     is another study.

                     Perhaps next time,

                     another lecture.

                     The consequences

                     grim as they are

                     are sterling clear.

                     There to see in the numbers.

                     One might easily

                     infer

                     the stories, the

                     telling

                     blank spaces.

                                          Susan Griffin

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     Susan Griffin is the author of Pornography and Silence, Woman and
     Nature, Rape, the Politics of Consciousness, and the Emmy Award
     Winning play, "Voices". Her book of poetry Unremembered Country
     won the prestigious California Commonwealth's Clube's Silver
     Medal. Her recent play "Thicket" premiered in May of 1992 in San
     Francisco. A Chorus of Stones, The Private Life of War, was
     published by Doubleday and Company October, 1992.