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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror
The movie was mostly shot on location near St. George, Utah, downwind of the U.S. Government's Nevada Test Site, the site of extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on the site, from which Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood for reshoots. The cast and crew knew about the nuclear tests (there are pictures of Wayne holding a geiger counter during production) but the link between exposure to radioactive fallout and cancer was less understood then.
All of the performers named above died of cancer. Powell died only a few years after the picture's completion. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died in the mid to late 1970s. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer four years later and committed suicide after he learned the cancer was terminal. Skeptics point to other factors such as tobacco use (Wayne was a heavy smoker, as was Moorehead) and the notion that cancer resulting from exposure to radiation does not have such a long incubation period. The cast and crew totaled 220. Of that number, 91 had developed some form of cancer by 1981 and 46 had died of cancer by then. However, striking as this seems, it is unclear if the incidence of cancer among them was truly higher than might be statistically expected for any group of people working in that profession during the 1950s.
Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, has described the incidence of cancer among cast and crew of The Conqueror as an "epidemic".
Noting that 91 members of the cast and crew had contracted cancer by 1984, with more than half of them dying, Dr. Pendleton stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop...I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."
I was reading a book about nuclear developement in the U.S. and came across the 'coincidence' of 91 out of 220 people who worked on the film The Conqueror getting cancer.
While Wayne was a heavy smoker and he himself believed that this was the cause of his cancer, there is no denying the fact that the statistics are absolutely convincing that working in St. Georges, Utah was hazardous. In fact the residents of that town showed a marked increase in cancer subsequent to the atomic testing.
The movie was mostly shot on location near St. George, Utah, downwind of the U.S. Government's Nevada Test Site, the site of extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing during the 1950s. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on the site, from which Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood for reshoots. The cast and crew knew about the nuclear tests (there are pictures of Wayne holding a geiger counter during production) but the link between exposure to radioactive fallout and cancer was less understood then.
All of the performers named above died of cancer. Powell died only a few years after the picture's completion. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died in the mid to late 1970s. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer four years later and committed suicide after he learned the cancer was terminal. Skeptics point to other factors such as tobacco use (Wayne was a heavy smoker, as was Moorehead) and the notion that cancer resulting from exposure to radiation does not have such a long incubation period. The cast and crew totaled 220. Of that number, 91 had developed some form of cancer by 1981 and 46 had died of cancer by then. However, striking as this seems, it is unclear if the incidence of cancer among them was truly higher than might be statistically expected for any group of people working in that profession during the 1950s.
Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, has described the incidence of cancer among cast and crew of The Conqueror as an "epidemic".
Noting that 91 members of the cast and crew had contracted cancer by 1984, with more than half of them dying, Dr. Pendleton stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop...I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."
I was reading a book about nuclear developement in the U.S. and came across the 'coincidence' of 91 out of 220 people who worked on the film The Conqueror getting cancer.
While Wayne was a heavy smoker and he himself believed that this was the cause of his cancer, there is no denying the fact that the statistics are absolutely convincing that working in St. Georges, Utah was hazardous. In fact the residents of that town showed a marked increase in cancer subsequent to the atomic testing.
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