Click the LAUGH TRACK, just to get it over with…
All About Radiation is one of the books by L. Ron Hubbard that form the canonical texts of Scientology, although it is no longer promoted by the Church of Scientology nor included in their “Basics” book canon. Its first printing was from HASI (Hubbard Association of Scientologists International) by way of the Speedwell Printing Company, Kent, England, 1957. Later editions were published by the Church of Scientology’s in-house publisher Bridge Publications.
The book is controversial for its claims, amongst other things, that radiation poisoning, and even cancer, can be cured by courses of vitamins. There is no known cure for radiation poisoning, and current medical practice is to provide palliative care until the symptoms subside or the patient dies.
Hubbard’s “qualifications.”
Despite calling himself a nuclear physicist (some editions of the book even call him “one of America’s first nuclear physicists” on the dustjacket), Hubbard was not a qualified physicist. His degree was from the unaccredited Sequoia University, a diploma mill. The one course in nuclear physics Hubbard took was in 1931 at George Washington University, whose records indicate that he scored an F in the course. Hubbard dropped out of school shortly thereafter, with a 2.28 grade point average.
Hubbard referred to himself as a nuclear physicist on many occasions in the 1950s, such as in the tape-recorded 1956 lecture A Postulate Out of a Golden Age, where he not only claimed to be a nuclear physicist but that he was offered (and turned down) a U.S. Government post as one. This comment has been edited out of the CD version of the lecture currently offered by the L. Ron Hubbard Classic Lectures series.
In February 1966, Hubbard defended his mail-order degree: “I was a Ph.D., Sequoia’s [sic] University and therefore a perfectly valid doctor under the laws of the State of California”. But only a month later, he announced: “Having reviewed the damage being done in our society with nuclear physics and psychiatry by persons calling themselves “Doctor” [I] do hereby resign in protest my university degree as a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D.)”
A Church of Scientology leaflet distributed for a number of years before the book was finally discarded made remarkable claims about the book:
“In All About Radiation, we have the sane and sober views of a medical doctor on the physical facts and consequences of the actual atomic blast and the diseases resulting from it.
L. Ron Hubbard, who was one of the first nuclear physicists in the United States, has interpreted these facts and related them to human livingness, governments, and the control of populaces.
These facts when presented at the Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health at the Royal Empire Society Hall, London, in April 1957, so impressed Parliamentary figures that they requested immediate transcription of these lectures.”
Promotional leaflet, Church of Scientology, 1970s
For your viewing enjoyment … All About Radiation.
All About Radiation First Edition 1957