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Blinkered science: why we know so little about Chernobyl’s health effects

ABSTRACT The disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 was the largest civilian nuclear accident in human history. At the time and for years after, scientists called for a large-scale, long-term epidemiological study of the survivors. This study never occurred, and currently the websites of United Nations agencies record the health damage from Chernobyl as 33 to 44 deaths of emergency workers and 6,000 ‘easily treatable’ children’s thyroid cancers. Is that the extent of the damage? How can we be sure in light of the absence of a study? Using newly opened archival documents, this article explores how international regulatory agencies and research institutes expended a great deal of effort not to know about the effects of the Chernobyl accident, to limit research and to contain judgements. By focusing on controversies over low dose exposures and thyroid cancer, the article shows what the science of political containment looks like and how it came about. The Chernobyl case reveals how scientists engaged in a broad continuum of ignorance-producing activities. The obfuscation of possible health outcomes also grew out of an intense human desire for clarity, for a science that supplies answers, ones that are unequivocal and precise, even when mythical.