My 2014 book Crossing the Line: Trafficking and Torture of Human Guinea Pigs in 1950s U.S.-U.K. Atomic Test Biological Experiments is about what the title says. Thank you.

Mansion in the Storm (oped)

On June 11, 2024, Congress allowed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to expire. Since 1990, the RECA law has provided a modicum of financial help to a small segment of the worst-affected radiation victims harmed by our nation's nuclear weapons tinkering in the middle of the last century. The recipients of the former RECA law include 'downwinders,' nuclear test site workers and uranium workers--as of today, these Americans who sacrificed for their nation no longer have access to remedies for their radiation-linked diseases from Congress, which failed to extend and expand its 33 year pay-out program for Cold War victims.

Radiation-harmed populations of our nuclear past are now legally forgotten--how long before media and political attention will diminish too, as happened again and again during the long saga of America's forgotten radiation victims? In our previous national 'reflections' of our nuclear past, which were short-lived episodes of American moral clarity, like the present moment, our government initiated various kinds of 'sleuthing' that lacked the hallmarks of traditional riddle-solving. The government repeatedly attempted to shed light on the nuclear past and yet we curiously still have no adequate data on our exposures and no real studies to review our nuclear past. By all cultural appearances, including studies, books, and movies on the topic, the mysteries of America's atomic age have been prematurely ‘solved’ for Americans, but a different reading of the atomic era shows that we aren’t living in the domain of a best-selling narrative.

Imagine, for a moment, if Agatha Christie allowed one of her suspects to conclude the mystery novel for her with a semi-logical assertion as a substitute to the ‘whodonnit.’ Being that semi-logical asserting detective in that alternative Agatha Christie novel ending meant that the challenge was very different. It wasn’t any longer about revelation and arriving at the right answer. It wasn’t about dispelling agonized confusion or pinning blame on the right suspect. It wasn’t about delivering a sense of justice and closure with notes of brilliance and warmth.

America isn't unnerved by the thud of a closing, incomplete tragic nuclear national chapter any more than we are bothered that we are driven by a greater interest that we believe what we want as a nation--our lesser interest is that our enigmas have lingered.

By not squaring with the realities of our cultural tinkering in atomic alchemy, we remain cognitively stuck in the mansion in the storm. Americans will forever be wondering about the mystery of what we were really exposed to, what the government really knew, and what diseases are lurking in our future, if they hadn’t already sprouted. RECA was a distraction to these legitimate concerns. Neither that law's sunsetting nor the analogy of an Agatha Christie novel can rattle us enough to care that we have become abandoned participants in our own national mysteries.

By Andrew Kishner

NOT WITHHELD - The National Nuclear Security Administration has deceived the American people. They don't believe in Santa Claus and don't think you should teach your children about random premeditated dreams.

HAA (5.25.86)

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