After World War II, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes in its Oak Ridge reactor, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the currency of the Cold War, radioisotopes represented the government’s efforts to harness power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. Radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy and equipped biologists to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosyste ... More

After World War II, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes in its Oak Ridge reactor, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the currency of the Cold War, radioisotopes represented the government’s efforts to harness power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. Radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy and equipped biologists to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. However, the government’s attempt to present radioisotopes as marvelous dividends of the atomic age was undercut in the 1950s by the fallout debates, as scientists and citizens recognized the hazards of low-level radiation. The growing consciousness of the dangers of radioactivity did not reduce the demand for radioisotopes from hospitals and laboratories but did change their popular representation from being a therapeutic agent to an environmental poison. By the late twentieth century, public fears of radioactivity overshadowed any appreciation of the positive consequences of the AEC’s provision of radioisotopes for research and medicine. This book tells the story of how these radioisotopes, which were simultaneously scientific tools and political icons, transformed biomedicine and ecology.