Review: ‘Atomic Doctors’ Provides Context to Doctors’ Conflicts in Manhattan Project

As scientists ramped up their plans to conduct the first test of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, planned for mid-July 1945, a small cadre of physicians rushed to complete a report on the possible health effects of the blast. 

Capt. James F. Nolan, MD, had been put in charge of health and safety monitoring at the so-called Trinity test, and on the morning of June 17, 1945, he boarded a plane in Albuquerque, New Mexico, so he could personally deliver the report to Gen. Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, stationed in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 

After a flight delay, a missed connection, and a long train ride, Nolan finally arrived at the Oak Ridge Site at 6:30 the next morning. Groves made Nolan sit outside his office while he discussed the highly sensitive report with his aides. The report spelled out the monitoring and evacuation plans for the Trinity test and expressed concerns about potential radioactive fallout from the blast. It included plans for responding to possible dangers not only to the personnel involved in the test, but also to residents in nearby towns, and outlined how the proper authorities would be notified if radiological dangers were identified. 

Four hours later, Groves called Nolan into his office and rhetorically asked him, “What are you, some kind of Hearst propagandist?” The reference to William Randolph Hearst, who was known for his sensationalist journalism, indicated his displeasure with Nolan’s recommendations and warnings.  
 

In the book Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Harvard University Press, 2020), James L. Nolan, Jr., provides new insight into this episode and many others during the Manhattan Project and early Cold War eras. Nolan, who is Washington Gladden 1859 Professor of Sociology at Williams College, and also Dr. Nolan’s grandson, suggests that Groves’s response to the Nolan report reflected his “single-minded preoccupation with security and secrecy,” which is a major theme of the book. 

Dr. Nolan “found Groves uninterested in the doctors’ concerns and his response indicative not only of the general’s ‘rifle-barrel’ focus on security, but also his lack of regard for medical doctors more generally.”

The primary actors in this episode, and others in Atomic Doctors, were part of three unique professional communities within the Manhattan Project, which Nolan identifies at the outset of the book. Each had its own distinct, and sometimes conflicting, vocational characteristics, which explains the tension between Nolan and Groves. The academics (primarily physicists) were focused on answering scientific questions and overcoming technological hurdles necessary to build an atomic bomb, and they were accustomed to an open exchange of ideas. 

The military, by contrast, was singularly focused on developing a bomb for combat purposes, and emphasized secrecy, security, and a strict hierarchy of authority. The medical doctors, meanwhile, “were marginally part of both communities but not fully members of either.” While Nolan suggests, “at least in theory, they were principally focused on matters of health and safety, on preserving and protecting life,” it was also true that “this was not a priority for either the military or the scientific community, and the doctors sometimes had difficulty getting members of these other groups to take their concerns seriously, particularly as they related to the dangers of nuclear radiation.”      

Atomic Doctors foregrounds the tensions among and within these three communities by focusing on four “critical moments” in which the Manhattan Project doctors were involved—a series of accidents involving plutonium research at Los Alamos, the Trinity test, the postwar investigative work in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the postwar nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. 

Nolan argues that a general pattern can be seen in each of these episodes: “With what little knowledge the doctors did have about the dangers of radiation, they offered warnings. These warnings were often ignored, dismissed, or misrepresented. When some of the outcomes of their warnings were subsequently realized, doctors were put in a position of having to cover for the military, often out of concerns about litigation and public relations.”

Nolan frames the general pattern seen in each of the four critical moments cited with a compelling discussion of the Manhattan Project as an archetype for thinking about the development and application of new and emerging technologies. Drawing from the philosopher Albert Borgmann, Nolan notes that on the one hand, there is an instrumentalist view of technology (the most commonly held perspective on the role of technology in modern society), which holds that technology is “neither good nor bad… It depends on us and our values whether it is used well or ill.” 

An alternative way of making sense of technology as a cultural force is provided by the determinist view of technology, which maintains that “technology, once set in motion, becomes self-augmenting and difficult to resist,” and comes in optimistic and pessimistic forms. Optimistic determinists view technological advancements as inevitable, “see technological progress as, in the main, for the good,” and believe that any negative outcomes can be resolved with a so-called technological fix. Pessimistic determinists understand technology as “an encompassing and irresistible force,” however, they have a darker view of technology’s potential as “a culturally and environmentally destructive force.” 

Nolan, while not overtly a determinist, is sympathetic to the critique of instrumentalism as naïve and misguided. He draws from the work of philosophers, physicists, historians and technological innovators in concluding that scientists and technologists, including those who worked on the Manhattan Project, got swept up in the moment. To paraphrase Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, they got caught up in the rapture of discovery and innovation, and, in the process, failed to understand the consequences of their inventions.

For Nolan, this is important to understand because the Manhattan Project doctors were also sometimes guilty of this tendency. The author shows how the military approached health effects of radiation as a public relations problem, and this meant doctors who knew better often toed the line for fear of upsetting their superiors. "When accidents did occur,” writes Nolan, “the doctors were used to procure scientific data and then became complicit in hiding evidence, motivated, once again, out of fear of litigation.” Atomic Doctors suggests the complicity of atomic doctors is only one example of the many legacies of the Manhattan Project that are still being wrestled with today.
 

Atomic Doctors will be of interest to readers who want to learn more about the history of the Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, especially the role that doctors played at the site, and the plutonium research that was conducted in historic structures like the Slotin Building. Additionally, the book provides valuable historical background on the longstanding efforts to protect human health and the environment and understand the effects of radiation exposure. Lastly, Atomic Doctors is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the history of nuclear research, weapons development and testing, which happened at many of the sites that LM manages today.

Dr. Eric Boyle is the Historian for the Office of Legacy Management and subject-matter expert for history at DOE. He supports historic preservation efforts at DOE sites across the country, helps manage a substantial archive of DOE records, and provides historical services and advice to DOE and anyone else interested in the history of DOE and its predecessor agencies.