The Manhattan Project: The Brain Child Of The Manhattan Project

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The standards of morality are often violated during war. No one even question the ethics of certain actions until all is set and done, especially the victors. It then comes without surprise that the brain child of the Manhattan Project was one of these morally turbulent actions. The Manhattan Project, started in 1942. It consisted of a small group of government recruited scientists, physicists, chemist, metallurgists and engineers. Lead by Robert Oppenheimer in charge of developing nuclear arms [1]. Nuclear Arms, as opposed to conventional arms, generate their destructive force from nuclear reactions. The issues that are related to the use of nuclear weapons is also far different than the issues generated by conventional bombs. The long term …show more content…

However, all the impacts that the nuclear bomb left to this day are but a shadow of the health effects that were observed during the 1960-1990. The way researchers have quantified the long term health effects from the nuclear bomb, specifically for the significant increase in malignant tumors, is by using a absolute risk function. This function takes the total excess deaths from cancer over 1 million year per rad. The higher the number the greater deaths observed from cancer. Between 1950 – 1954 the absolute deaths from leukemia among nuclear blast survivors was 4.13. The amount of leukemia deaths decreases with the years so that during 1971 – 1974 the absolute death quotient was 0.42. For other cancers there is a different story. For all cancers excluding leukemia there was a disturbing upwards trend during the years following the use of the nuclear bomb. During 1950 – 1954 the absolute death quotient was 1.58 and during the 1971 - 1974 period the quotient was 9.17. These increases in the deaths from cancer during this 25 year period is frightening. The Americans by using this bomb killed thousands of people 10, 20, 30 years down the road from the war. Eliminating chunks of the Japanese work force even decades after the fact. This however, is not the end of the story, children were also victims of this atrocious weapon. As made clear in a study by the Radiation Research Society, the dose specific risk from radiation for breast cancer was greatest in females under the age of 20. This means that not only did America take out a large chunk of adult Japanese, they also afflicted innocent children post war with a terrible

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