ABSTRACT
The confident optimism of radiotherapy proponents blinded them to the possibility that exposure might be dangerous to their young patients. When status lymphaticus was discredited as a pathological condition, and radiation diminished as a treatment for enlarge thymus, there was still no widespread concern that therapeutic x-rays, "properly" administered, could be dangerous. The current controversy over fracking, unresolved in any overall sense, has shown some benefit as a means of technology assessment. As is usual in such controversies, opponents raise whatever objections seem plausible while proponents counter by refutation or remediation while emphasizing any plausible benefits. Nearly every technical controversy or potential risk that does achieve high media attention loses it fairly quickly, even when the alleged hazard itself is not objectively alleviated or disproved. Like nontechnical political controversies, few technical controversies are fully resolved in the sense that adversaries agree "this is now fixed", or one of them admits "I was wrong, you were right".
