James Madison wrote, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy, or perhaps both."  The increased suppression of scientific dissent in America in recent years proves the accuracy of Madison's observation.

In a recent diary, I described the lack of adequate and accurate public information on radiation hazards. Unfortunately, the nuclear-proliferation-for-profit crowd has a long history of trying to suppress public dialogue about nuclear safety rather than support their own positions with facts presented openly. Scientists who offer contrary facts and opinions soon find that they have themselves become "radioactive," as one whistleblower described it to me.

If you’re having trouble making sense of the Litvinenko story, you have plenty of company. British and U.S. sources have produced a Dagwood sandwich of vague, conflicting and inaccurate information, with a side order of anxiety. To recap, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy, died recently of poisoning from polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope. Surrounding these facts is a massive cloud of rumor, speculation and, one suspects, more than a few lies. The case is important to understand because, more than a murder, it is a public health crisis and a harbinger of things to come. The Litvinenko poisoning occurred in London, but experts warn that it is just a matter of time before the U.S. suffers a radiological attack, possibly a massive one.

It's sometimes hard to tell if the British government's handling of a radiation poisoning case is inept or just poorly reported, but it certainly could be improved. The difficulty of the UK's response to a  radiological attack on an individual demonstrates, on a much smaller scale, the kind of challenge Americans would face if terrorists used radioactive substances to inflict mass casualties in the United States.

By the time British government authorities publicly identified polonium-210 as the likely cause of Alexander Litvinenko's death, thousands of people had been exposed to cross-contamination as they passed through each of the places visited by the former Russian spy, and possibly his assassin, before he fell ill on November 1. It is unclear if doctors failed to quickly diagnose the cause, or if officials intentionally withheld the diagnosis for investigative purposes.

So far, though, investigators report finding traces of radiation at a dozen locations, among them Litvinenko's home, the Park Lane Hotel, the Millenium Hotel, a sushi restaurant, offices of fellow Russian Boris Berezovsky, and two currently grounded aircraft. British authorities say that only low levels of contamination have been discovered and the threat to public health is "minimal." But,  monitoring and sampling can only determine how much contamination remains. How much was there originally may never be known.