Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
But this is exactly the distortion the book is making in your mind - it's pretending this was clear at the time. But this "cluster" was no such thing to start with. It was a few apparently isolated cases where the doctors believed it was probably occupational, but even the doctors couldn't say exactly what or how - which is part of why some of them spent so long looking for phosphorous; no one imagined it could be the radium. And remember: the cases only started years later; most of the women weren't even working there any more; there had been many women work there but only these few were reporting problems. This was a new situation, I can see no way that the company could have worked out what was happening before 1924.
But in 1924 that started to change, and if Moore didn't exaggerate the Drinker's report then that would seem mark the place where USRC really knew there were problems they should be addressing - even if they still couldn't know the true nature or extent of the problem (because no one knew yet).
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The cluster existed; it doesn't matter that--apparently--no one could pinpoint the exact causation. There was enough to investigate and to take precautions.
In any case, at the point that the companies did know, their response was inadequate, to say the least.