Letter From Linus Pauling to John F. Kennedy
Dear Mr. President:
I urge that you not order the resumption of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons by the United States....
There is a general agreement among biological scientists about the biological effects of radioactive fallout. No one can deny that the fission products produced by these tests in the atmosphere cause genetic mutations that will lead to the birth of grossly defective children. The number of defective children produced by these fission products and by high-energy radiation in general cannot be accurately estimated. The estimates made the most reliable American geneticists, agreeing also with the estimates of the United Nations committee on this subject, are in the neighborhood of 1,000 grossly defective children per megaton of fission.
In addition... it is highly probable that radioactive fission products and carbon 14 damage human beings now living... in such a way as to cause leukemia, bone cancer, and other diseases.
I urge that you not order the resumption of atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons by the United States....
There is a general agreement among biological scientists about the biological effects of radioactive fallout. No one can deny that the fission products produced by these tests in the atmosphere cause genetic mutations that will lead to the birth of grossly defective children. The number of defective children produced by these fission products and by high-energy radiation in general cannot be accurately estimated. The estimates made the most reliable American geneticists, agreeing also with the estimates of the United Nations committee on this subject, are in the neighborhood of 1,000 grossly defective children per megaton of fission.
In addition... it is highly probable that radioactive fission products and carbon 14 damage human beings now living... in such a way as to cause leukemia, bone cancer, and other diseases.
JFK and The Survey
With the money and the resources ready to go, many of John F. Kennedy’s colleagues were in favor of nuclear bombardment of Russia. It worked when we bombed the Japanese, they thought, so why wouldn’t it work now? America was also by far the leading world power. The country was on top of the world, unstoppable. But JFK had been against the development of atomic technology from the very beginning. He had even spoken against the nuclear testing during his campaign for the presidency. He listened when Linus Pauling presented to him the preliminary findings of the Baby Tooth Survey. The survey drew on Kennedy’s sympathy and moral values because the data was collected from children not much older from his own son and daughter. Knowing that there was physical evidence to just how dangerous a war would be, Kennedy wrote a letter to Nikita Khruschev, who was then the leader of the Soviet Union requesting the disarmament of the weapons in Cuba. Khrushchev responded by demanding that the U.S. stop blocking the sea routes. More private letters were exchanged between the two figureheads, and eventually, a meeting in Moscow between American, British, and Soviet world leaders was negotiated.