Dr. John W. Gofman, the medical physicist whose fight for what he considered scientific honesty in understanding the health effects of ionizing radiation made him a pariah to the nuclear power industry and the U.S. government, died of heart failure Aug. 15 at his home in San Francisco. He was 88.
Often called the father of the antinuclear movement, Gofman and his colleague at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Arthur R. Tamplin, developed data in 1969 showing that the risk from low doses of radiation was 20 times higher than stated by the government.
Their publication of the data, despite strong efforts to censor it, led them to lose virtually all of their research funding and, eventually, their positions at the government laboratory.
Most of their conclusions have subsequently been validated, but critics say the risks have been ignored by an electric power industry that sees nuclear energy as a pollution-free alternative to fossil fuels and by a medical industry that continues to use much larger amounts of radiation for medical tests than are required.
"He always stood up for the integrity of science," said Charles Weiner, professor emeritus of the history of science at MIT.
"He was really an original voice" in the debate over the risks of nuclear power, Weiner said, "someone who was an insider in nuclear weapons production who was very highly regarded by leaders in the field . . . and who brought credential, credibility and authority."
Until his death, Gofman's position continued to be that there is no safe level of exposure to ionizing radiation.
"Licensing a nuclear power plant is, in my view, licensing random premeditated murder," Gofman said in the 1982 book "Nuclear Witnesses: Insiders Speak Out."
"First of all, when you license a plant, you know what you are doing -- so it's premeditated. You can't say, 'I didn't know.' Second, the evidence on radiation producing cancer is beyond doubt. . . . It's not a question anymore: Radiation produces cancer, and the evidence is good all the way down to the lowest doses."
Gofman and Tamplin's data about the health effects of radiation -- and their revelations about the Atomic Energy Commission's attempts to silence them -- played a large role in the demise of that organization in 1974.
The Atomic Energy Commission was divided into two organizations: the Energy Research and Development Administration, whose goal was to promote the development of atomic energy, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was supposed to monitor the safety of the nuclear industry.
