AW: AW: [ RadSafe ] AW: Gasteiner Heilstollen for holiday!?

[Rainer.Facius at dlr.de]

John (and Roy):

 

My comment "already in 1979" referred to the fact that in the 70s 'theoretical' radiation biology was dominated by more or less advanced but still essentially A-biological refinements of ancient physical target theory. Microdosimetry as a further sophistication (a very useful physical tool to study microscopic patterns of energy deposition as functions of radiation quality and hypothetical target size) dominated radiation biology in these days. Interpretation of linear or linear-quadratic dose effect relations was based on microdosimetric reasoning. Further concepts were sublethal or potentially lethal damage, where damage almost exclusively meant DNA breaks (yes, there was a small pocket of resistance around Tikvah Alper, the great lady, who although being physicist understood more of radiation biology than the rest of us together). With potentially lethal damage for the first time model builders tried to implement repair kinetics into modelling of dose effect curves, but what in the 'mainstream' of that time was unheard of was the idea of "INDUCTION (stimulation) of repair". Therefore this idea was perceived as visionary by me - perhaps due to my restricted horizon. Partial acceptance of this idea had to wait for at least another half a decade for the first experiments on adaptive response and apparently has even today not yet reached a significant part of the respective scientific community which still worships the idea that a single 'hit' will result in something deleterious many years after, irrespective of the biological system where it occurs. 

 

Best regards, Rainer


________________________________

Von: John Jacobus [mailto:crispy_bird at yahoo.com]
Gesendet: Mo 22.08.2005 22:48
An: Facius, Rainer; jimm at WPI.EDU; rad-sci-l at WPI.EDU; radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: Re: AW: [ RadSafe ] AW: Gasteiner Heilstollen for holiday!?



Ranier,
<...>
I don't consider the statement that radiation "may
result from the induction of repair enzymes" to be all
that surprising, whether it was made in 1979 or
yesterday. 

--- Rainer.Facius at dlr.de wrote:

>
> "It is suggested that the shape of the dose-response
> curve at these very low levels of radiation [at
> Badgastein] may result from the induction of repair
> enzymes." (already in 1979!)
>