My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
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Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#2I thought this article was one of the best descriptions I've seen of the perils (both personal and teleological) of the scientific process.
"We should celebrate scientists not solely for their accomplishments but also for their courage and the tenacity required to discover anything at all. There are brave people out there working right now. They are brave not because they are killing themselves slowly or leaping from airplanes or catching rare tropical diseases, although scientists have done all those things. They are brave because of the intense emotional risks of trying to do something no one has done before by following your own lead. Radiation is a potent allegory for human life. Everything is always, inevitably falling apart; we are all in arrested decay. Our greatest achievements may become at best footnotes; few people remember us; we can’t know what will eventually come of our work."
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#3Random tidbit, I lived a few hundred meters away from Marie Curie's place in my younger days (long after her death, in the 80's).
A friend of mine in fact lived at her place. One day, the city decided to have radiation studies done and everyone in the area got visits from scientists - they took ground and water samples at multiple locations.
Results were communicated later - and radium, radon levels were more elevated especially at the old Marie Curie's house. However, nothing had been done following these findings.
Several areas in the city with radium and other radioactive materials have been found (older and newer dumps really!). Some areas are blocked off with radioactive signs, some houses have been destroyed for safety now.
Both our families moved. Note that the house also is at chemin du radium in France.
My friend's family and mine have left a few years later. All that to say, even recently there was still very little awareness and safety precautions being taken.
Some reference: http://www.franceinfo.fr/emission/le-plus-france-info/2013-2...
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#4>[...] Irène Joliot-Curie “had a penchant for asserting that anyone who worried about radiation hazards was not a dedicated scientist.” There are photographs of Joliot-Curie sucking a fluid up a glass tube to move it from one container to another, a practice called mouth pipetting. The historian Anne Fellinger has asserted that the substance is polonium [...]
We would be better served by the condemnation of lethal stupidity than the hollow glorification of scientific "heroes". We need the truth more than we need role models.
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#5>[...] Irène Joliot-Curie “had a penchant for asserting that anyone who worried about radiation hazards was not a dedicated scientist.” There are photographs of Joliot-Curie sucking a fluid up a glass tube to move it from one container to another, a practice called mouth pipetting. The historian Anne Fellinger has asserted that the substance is polonium [...] We would be better served by the condemnation of lethal st…
The truth at the time was that there was no known hazard to health.
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#6>[...] Irène Joliot-Curie “had a penchant for asserting that anyone who worried about radiation hazards was not a dedicated scientist.” There are photographs of Joliot-Curie sucking a fluid up a glass tube to move it from one container to another, a practice called mouth pipetting. The historian Anne Fellinger has asserted that the substance is polonium [...] We would be better served by the condemnation of lethal st…
The truth at the time was that there was no known hazard to health.
Have you read the article? The hazards were known, alright. And heroically ignored.
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#7"Perhaps the most tragic demonstration of this involved workers at the United States Radium Corporation factory in Orange, N.J., which in 1917 began hiring young women to paint watch faces with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. The workers were told that the paint was harmless and were encouraged to lick the paintbrushes to make them pointy enough to inscribe small numbers. "
How awful is this ? I had never realized radiation had been so misunderstood back then...
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The truth at the time was that there was no known hazard to health.
Have you read the article? The hazards were known, alright. And heroically ignored.
The article gives me the impression that the Curies' medical knowledge was primitive or nonexistent by today's standards. It makes it seem like they thought radiation would just magically cure cancer, like a philosopher's stone.
Does anyone know if this is correct? The article mentions that they knew radiation would kill tumors; did they know it just killed everything, but would kill the thing it was closest to fastest, or did they think it had magical specificity? Perey noted that francium would accumulate in tumors; did she know that tumors have faster metabolisms (the basis of a lot of treatments today) or did she think it had magical tumor seeking properties? If they were in fact ignorant by today's standards, were they ignorant by their own's?
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#9"Perhaps the most tragic demonstration of this involved workers at the United States Radium Corporation factory in Orange, N.J., which in 1917 began hiring young women to paint watch faces with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. The workers were told that the paint was harmless and were encouraged to lick the paintbrushes to make them pointy enough to inscribe small numbers. " How awful is this ? I had never realized rad…
The Radium Craze up to the nuclear bomb watching tourism of the Atomic Age are indeed quite bizarre to modern sensibilities. Or you could say they reflect an optimistic and romantic hope of what the future could bring, which we no longer have.
You might be interested in http://www.academia.edu/3586500/Half-Lives_The_Rise_and_Fall... , which writes that
> Prescribed Radithor by his doctor in 1928, Byers was dead by 1932 (aged 51), with his autopsy revealing that he had consumed approximately 1,400 bottles in afew short years — at least one every day. Radithor was a radium drinking solution promoted by one Dr. William Bailey (a fake name) whose products did in fact contain significant amounts of the element. The recognition that rich patients — and not just female industrial dial painters — were dying because of these products led “the federal government to act with far greater alacrity to help consumers than to assist workers.”
Re: My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium, and It Killed Her
#10>[...] Irène Joliot-Curie “had a penchant for asserting that anyone who worried about radiation hazards was not a dedicated scientist.” There are photographs of Joliot-Curie sucking a fluid up a glass tube to move it from one container to another, a practice called mouth pipetting. The historian Anne Fellinger has asserted that the substance is polonium [...] We would be better served by the condemnation of lethal st…
The truth at the time was that there was no known hazard to health.
According to http://www.academia.edu/3586500/Half-Lives_The_Rise_and_Fall... :
> Martland, on the other hand, emerged as a champion against any internal medical use of radium, alerting the AMA to its potential dangers as early as 1925
That's "Some Unrecognized Dangers in the Use and Handling of Radioactive Substances", at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=238584 . It includes:
> when long lived radioactive substances are introduced into the body ... death may follow a long time after, from the effects of constant irradiation on the blood-forming centers.
Joliot-Curie was awarded her doctorate in 1924.