answers (was Re: [ RadSafe ] James Salsman, DU, and peer-reviewed literature)

[James Salsman]

Steven Dapra wrote:

 >... how could you possibly come up with all those carefully
 > manipulated quotes?

I believe my quotes, even the few which aren't exactly verbatim,
correctly represent the text from which they are taken.

 > And how did you manage to so cleverly extract those eight words
 > from Durakovic's review paper?

That quote was verbatim.  I note that Durakovic seems to be somewhat
more respected in the pro-DU community than Rokke, Sternglass, Moret,
and others, and I believe that is justified because he has done some
of the best work.  However, I think the prejudice against Sternglass
is absurd:  nobody was able to suggest any serious problems with the
tooth fairy project's scientific protocols:  The best RADSAFE could do
was a question about potential radium contamination which was quite a
reach at best.

 > How did you do what you did with the Miller et al. paper?
 > You wrote:  "Abstract: 'chemical generation of hydroxyl radicals by
 > depleted uranium in vitro exceeds radiolytic generation by one
 > million-fold....'"

Well, that one has more of an interesting story behind it.
Originally MEDLINE had it as "106 fold" instead of "one million
fold" because the original typesetting had 10^6, ten to the sixth.
After I corresponded with Dr. Miller, she did not oppose my
request to have that changed in MEDLINE.  I also fixed a typo
in a confidence interval in the abstract of Dr. Araneta's report
on the huge number of congenital malformations in combat-deployed
1991 Gulf War troops on MEDLINE.  I am still not yet entirely
comfortable about having to go around correcting the mistakes of
medical professionals on the internet.  If you are worried about
whether my copy correctly represents Dr. Miler's results, you can
email and ask her about it.

As for the legal questions, I'll deal with those at some point
in the future.  I would like to know whether you think that a
survey of college students from military families  be used to
determine the extent to which potential exposure to depleted
uranium fumes has dissuaded military recruitment.  I think such a
survey could be made fairly accurate and could be very reasonably
inexpensive to conduct.

John R Johnson wrote:

> I have found that the WHO report on DU is useful reference. Details are at
> 
>... Depleted uranium: sources, exposure and health effects....
> www.who.int/entity/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/en/DU_Eng.pdf

Here is another quote which needs to be read very carefully:

Quoting A. Pfister in Chapter 8, "The Chemical Toxicity of Uranium," of
_Depleted Uranium: Sources, Exposure and Health Effects_ (World Health
Organization, Ionizing Radiation Unit, 2001 --
http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/en/Depluranium4.pdf
-- page 103: "Until more information on the chemical form of uranium and
DU in the environment is obtained, it would be prudent to assume that it
is in a soluble form (ICRP Type F)."

Sincerely,
James Salsman