Just For Openers, Lives Are At Stake

All right, everybody, swallow hard.

If, by the way, you happen to be looking in the mirror and notice any bulges on your thyroid gland as you swallow, you might want to see your doctor.

But today’s big gulp comes in the way of explaining one of the central principles guiding the American news media. It is this: Every U.S. citizen has a profound stake in the public’s access to information compiled by our government.

In a series of stories over the last two weeks, The Spokesman-Review has reported on a long-delayed National Cancer Institute study which finally reveals the truth. The level of radioactive iodine in the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in Nevada from 1951 to 1962 was far higher than we’d ever known.

In 1959, the old Atomic Energy Commission reported that the average dose from this fallout was 0.2 to 0.4 rads, which stands for “radiation absorbed dose,” a measure of the amount of energy absorbed by the skin. Today, the new National Cancer Institute study estimates that Western states actually received doses more than 100 times higher.

In fact, as many as 75,000 middle-aged Americans who were young children in the 1950s may develop thyroid cancer as a result.

The Atomic Energy Commission’s Cold War-era coverup of this information is just part of that agency’s shameful history of secrecy. At the time, many Americans suspected the commission was lying, but those who spoke out were branded unpatriotic. A group of 50,000 American mothers who, in 1961, organized protests against nuclear testing, were hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Finally, in 1982, Congress ordered the National Cancer Institute to conduct this study. The work began in 1983, and by 1994, a draft report was completed. For reasons we can’t fathom, however, the institute failed to release this information until last week, after the news media, doctors and other watchdog groups demanded it.

Thyroid cancer is a treatable disease. Deaths are relatively rare. But symptoms are also difficult to detect - that swallow test is about the only way you can spot a thyroid nodule yourself. Without the information provided in the National Cancer Institute’s study, millions of Americans spent years unaware they might be at risk. Many, until last week, never realized it would be wise to ask a physician to examine their thyroid gland.

It is impossible to discern what might lead a government agency to take such risks with the lives of American citizens. It’s difficult to imagine what peacetime agenda could loom larger than safeguarding the public’s health. No doubt, the reasons for this delay will be probed for a long time. Congress is likely to demand an explanation of why the study it requested 15 years ago is only now available.

But in the meantime, this story is a perfect object lesson. There’s a reason the news media in general, and this newspaper in particular, keep pressing for greater access to public information. We file lawsuits, harangue federal agencies, police departments, city councils and school boards, and make the case for freedom of information so loudly and so often that we sometimes grow tiresome.

Here’s one reason we do it: What you don’t know can kill you.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board