The Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson proposed halting open-air bomb testing for fear of the cancer risks (a later study by the National Cancer Institute confirmed that nearby Marshall Islanders had endured cancer-causing levels of radiation exposure). Richard Nixon dismissed this as “catastrophic nonsense.” Cornelius Rhoads, who by then had moved on from experimenting on Puerto Ricans to become the most prominent cancer researcher in the country, agreed with Nixon.
