Isotopes and Innovation: MDS Nordion's First Fifty Years, 1946–1996 by Paul Litt (review)

332 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 Occasional digressions and unnecessary subjective assessment of character aside, Composers of the Nazi Era is an invaluable resource for those interested in gaining a more thorough appreciation of the political complexities faced by these eight composers. As a result of Kater=s painstaking research and conscientious documentation, the work will prove itself equally valuable as an overall portrait of the cultural climate of Germany during the Third Reich, and thus as a perfect conclusion to Kater=s trilogy. (IRENE MORRA) Paul Litt. Isotopes and Innovation: MDS Nordion=s First Fifty Years, 1946B1996 McGill-Queen=s University Press. xiv, 250. $40.00 For many, the word >nuclear= usually evokes visions of weapons of mass destruction or expensive and trouble-prone reactors. Yet the nuclear industry also produces vital products for therapy, diagnosis, and sterilization. Radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, and radiation processing have saved thousands of lives and are now taken for granted in medicine, industry, and agriculture. Through MDS Nordion, Canada is a major player in this field and has extended its influence throughout the world. Less well known than CANDU, cobalt-60 therapy machines and the production of a host of isotopes are another facet of the Canadian nuclear program that deserve more attention than they have hitherto received. In an attractively produced book, Paul Litt has done this in a commissioned history of MDS Nordion that will provide a more balanced view of Canadian technology than that which focuses on more spectacular and controversial aspects like the Arrow debacle and the CANDU nuclear power system. Litt presents a Canadian business success story of a company that in 1990 supplied 80 per cent of the world market for the radioisotope cobalt60 and more than half of the associated equipment for its therapeutic use, and provided two-thirds of the world=s supply of bulk reactor-produced isotopes. The story really begins when Eldorado Mining and Refining, which was initially in the business of producing radium and had become the wartime producer of uranium, created a separate radium marketing department under the leadership of Roy Errington in 1946. Using the products of the superb research reactors at Chalk River, Errington transformed his division into a producer of radioisotopes that were considerably cheaper and more effective than radium in the treatment of cancer. In 1952, the Commercial Products Division (CPD), as it was called (and remained for much of this history), became part of the newly founded crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). By then, CPD had developed the Eldorado A teletherapy unit, which was used in the world=s first cancer treatment with cobalt-60 in 1951. Cobalt-60 was the mainstay of CPD=s business and the base from which it HUMANITIES 333 gradually diversified. Also crucial was the umbilical relationship with Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, initially the sole supplier of that isotope and whose production problems affected CPD. In spite of a few missteps, such as the short and unsuccessful foray into the production of linear accelerators, CPD thrived and was an attractive target for privatization by the 1990s. Adjudged to be one of Canada=s fifty best-managed companies, it provided a striking example of the success of government enterprise in the high technology sector. The history of MDS Nordion is very much the history of Roy Errington, who had begun it with a handful of employees and led it for about half the time of its existence. Litt rightly gives him an important place in his book, although the reader sometimes wonders about the precise nature of Errington=s achievements: A good salesman? Adept or lucky in maintaining harmonious relations with the rest of AECL? Technologically far-sighted? A financial appendix with information that went beyond the odd chart that appears in the book on CPD=s sources of revenue and expenses would not have been out of place in this corporate history. A quick overview of the international competition that went beyond the useful listing in an appendix of foreign companies in the same business would have given more relief to the portrait of MDS Nordion. These quibbles do not detract from the main achievement of this book: raising...