Re: Dogma, anti-nukes,and the nuclear "debate"

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

A facetious comment on Stewart's very thoughtful post:



A bumper sticker I saw years ago said: "My karma ran over your dogma."



Now on a more serious note:



1.  If the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center had thought that Indian Point was a more worthwhile target, they would have attacked Indian Point.

2.  A January, 2003, issue of Chemical and Engineering News carried an article titled "Road or Rail" about SNF transportation to Yucca Mtn.  While the first part of the article, that cited the EIS, was reasonable, the second half of the article quoted Robert Loux, Robert Halstead, and David Lochbaum extensively, echoinbg both their distortions and their unsubstantiated claims of risk and danger, etc.  I am disturbed that the magazine of a respectable professional society should be so politically motivated that it feels it has to quote the "other side" on a technical issue (and yes, SNF transportation is a technical issue, and NO decision about it should be made on the basis of "perceived risk.").

If C&E News had an article on oxidation, would they dig up an advocate of the phlogiston theory to present the "other side?"  Do they feel compelled to interview creationists in articles about genetics and DNA? In  talking of impacts and momentum, do they cite Aristotelian mechanics in order to present a view "balanced against" Newtonian mechanics?  

C&E News is perfectly justified in reporting both sides of technical controversies, but this article presents both sides of a purely political controversy, in which the facts are essentially all on one side, and the other side relies on distortion and innuendo.  If I were still a member of the American Chemical Society, I'd quit.  I find it appalling that the news magazine of a respectable technical society is behaving like an ordinary daily paper that feels compelled to quote people on both sides of an issue and makes no judgment about the truth of what they say.



Ruth



Ruth F. weiner. Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com



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