Citas Petryna -j-

- Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations-

"The fact is that limited Soviet maps of Chernobyl helped to justify limited forms of dosimetric surveillance and resettlement actions. Nonknowledge became essential to the deployment of authoritative knowledge. High doses absorbed by at least 200,000 workers during 1986-1987 were insufficiently documented. According to one biochemist many of the cleanup workers "received 6-8 times the lethal dose of radiation." "They are alive," he told me. "They know that they didn't die. But they don't know how they survived." His statement speaks to the extent to which not only knowledge but also ignorance were constructed and used as state tools for maintaining public order. As science historian Robert Proctor tells us in his informative book on how politics shapes cancer science, ignorance " is not just a natural consequence of the ever shifting boundary between the known and the unknown." It is a "political consequence" of decisions concerning how to approach what could and should be done to mitigate danger or disease."