The attention of forensic pathologists has been drawn to the criteria essential for the recognition of radiation death or injury in the hope that such cases will be better recognized and that some false claims of radiation damage might be prevented at the local level. The results of experiments on parabiont rats, one of which had been irradiated with 1000 R of 250 kVp x-ray, the other shielded, are reviewed. With controls and related special studies the total is over 3000 pairs equally divided as to sex. Much information on the relative sensitivity of different tissues and organs to tumor induction is available and is being statistically analyzed. These experiments have provided further evidence of the effectiveness of parabiosis in assuring survival after 1000 R x-radiation and have enabled us to learn of the types of problems that might be expected in the way of late effects in heavily irradiated individuals should they be enabled by effective therapy to survive the acute phases of the radiation syndrome. Additional evidence has been brought out that carcinogenesis in some hormonally dependent tissues and organs is not so much a direct effect of radiation as it is a summation of this effect and …