Suffering Made Real

In 1946, an American scientific agency, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), was established in Japan to study the long-term biomedical effects of radiation on the survivors. Over the next twenty-nine years, American scientists and physicians, with funding from the Atomic Energy Commission, published hundreds of papers documenting the effects of radiation on aging, life span, fertility, and disease. In 1975, the agency was renamed and reorganized to permit greater Japanese input.