[ RadSafe ] Re: Radiation Hormesis

[Steven Dapra]

Dec. 31

         We're getting pretty far off the track here . . . supposed to be 
discussing hormesis.  Well, anyway, here goes.  (Comments interspersed.)


At 10:09 PM 12/30/07 -0800, John Jacobus wrote:
>Socialism is not just an expansion of 
>government. 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism 
>and 
><http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587>http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587 
>
>Rather, it is "movement" in which distribution of wealth is distributed to 
>members of the society.  Facism and communism are also examples of the 
>expansion of government, but Communism is an extreme form of 
>socialism.  (It would be interesting to hear what Karl Marx thought of 
>Communism, which is based on a planned centralized government.)  I would 
>think that the muckraking work of Sinclair and Sprago were motivated at 
>pointing out the unbalanced social-economic society of their times, e.g,, 
>at attack on the robber-barons.  Obviously, their goal of a "socialist 
>society" did not arise in part due to the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt and 
>the passage of anti-trust legislation at the beginning of the 20th century 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-trust#United_States_antitrust>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-trust#United_States_antitrust 
>While socialist parties existed through various periods in our history, I 
>believe that our republican form of government (and our periodic 
>police-state mentality, e.g., J Edgar Hoover) prevented them from becoming 
>major political forces.  We also have a sense of "fairness" in our culture 
>that lead to government programs like Social Security, the New Deal 
>programs, the G.I. Bill, etc.

         Redistribution of the wealth requires a large and powerful 
government.  One needs an agency (or agencies) to collect the money, and 
many agencies to hand it out again.  Collecting the money also requires an 
element of coercion to take care of the obstreperous and contumacious, some 
form of a police state (e.g. the IRS), etc. etc.  You get the 
point.  Socialism requires an expansion of government, and government tends 
to expand into all areas of life.  Ask the Scandinavians about their "nanny 
state."

         The "fairness" is not fairness.  It is a culture of buying votes 
and trying to curry favor with certain sectors of society, and it leads to 
a divided society in which every group is fighting every other group for 
its "share" of the pelf.
SD

>Regarding the British history in Iraq, it is important to consider that 
>the British had always had a sense of empire.  After WWI and the collapse 
>of the Ottoman Empire, they were willing to establish a number of 
>"colonies" in the Middle East to administer.  And they will willing to put 
>the effort into such work.  Look at the social structure in places like 
>Jordan, India, Pakistan, South Africa, etc.  Their programs were in part 
>based on a professional executive class that ran the government, a judical 
>class that ran the courts, an military class that ran the military and a 
>commercial class that regulated trade.  The U.S. has a belief established 
>by the Founding Fathers that we should avoid "entangling alliances."  As I 
>see it, the lesson is that we should have recognized the work e.g., 
>commitment of time and rsources, that would be necessary to change the 
>Iraq government.  This was not "well, you have have a democracy in X 
>years."  We should have been willing to take over their military, 
>government, judical system and management of commerce with or without the 
>permission of the people and run it for years and decades, as the British 
>ran Iraq in the 1920s through the 1950s. 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Mesopotamia>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_of_Mesopotamia

         We were not talking about Britain's sense of empire, we were 
talking about whether or not history repeats itself.  I said it did, and 
noted that there were uncanny parallels between the Brits in Iraq in the 
1920s, and the US there today.

Steven Dapra


>Steven Dapra <sjd at swcp.com> wrote:
>Dec. 30
>
>(With comments interspersed.)
>SD
>
>At 11:46 AM 12/30/07 -0800, John Jacobus wrote:
> >No, it does not have to all or nothing, and that is the point. Ours is a
> >nation of laws, some of which may or not like. Nevertheless, our society
> >functions. It is easy and "fun" to take shots at regulators, but they are
> >performing a government duty that was given to them by Congress and the
> >Administration. If you feel overburden, then maybe you should seek
> >employment elsewhere.
>
>I don't consider it "fun" to take shots at regulators. I try to
>confine myself to stating the facts. Technically you are correct in saying
>the regulators are performing a duty that was given them by
>Congress. Congress does not perform adequate oversight over the agencies
>it establishes, and hence lacks even an adequate understanding of what the
>regulatory agencies are doing. The Executive branch is interested in
>gaining more and more power, so naturally it is pleased at the duties it is
>itself performing.
>SD
>
> > (I think it is interesting that some of the comments indicate that much
> > of the problems began in the 1970s during the Nixon administration and
> > his attempt to establish an all-powerful Executive Branch.)
> >
> >"The Jungle" may be a work of fiction, but it is based on fact. The fact
> >that Upton Sinclair was a socialist
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
> >has nothing to do with the facts that these conditions existed. Of
> >course, maybe citing that he and Spargo
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spargo
> >are socialist is to divert attention from the fact that what they fought
> >for has made us a better society. (It is a common tactic to give a person
> >a label, e.g., liberal, to disparage the person making the argument. It
> >reduces the amount of thinking required.)
>
>As Socialists, Sinclair and Spargo wanted to increase the size and
>power of government. Hence, the muckraking novels that they wrote. The
>authors had good reason to believe their tales would lead to government
>regulation. My chief objection is to *Federal* regulation. States and
>municipalities should have stepped in and done the regulating, not the
>Federal government. The Feds have no Constitutional mandate to perform
>such regulating. (Qualifier: Spargo's book may not have been a novel. I
>do not know.)
>SD
>
> > Obviously, issues such as child labor and unsafe drugs are old
> > issues. But are there new
> > issues. TryNickel and
> > Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Consider
> > the current mortgage issues, one of the points of this book is that
> > housing and not food is a significant problem for the working
> > poor. Maybe we need a really good muckraker (socialist or not) to throw
> > some light on the awarding of no-bid contracts the the Defense Department
> > handed out. I think many have become too complacent and wrapped in our
> > own lifestyle to see how some of our fellow Americans are doing.
>
>I can easily go along with what you say about the problem of
>complacency.
>SD
>
> > I am a firm believer in reading history. However, history does not
> > repeat itself, historians do. Rather, history lays out the existing
> > conditions of the times, and the consequences of the choices made.
>
>History *does* repeat itself. Read a history of the British
>mis-adventures in Iraq in the 1920s. There are uncanny parallels between
>what happened to the Brits in Iraq then and what is happening to the US
>today. ("Inventing Iraq" by Toby Dodge; Columbia U. Press)
>SD
>
> > Back to your question, even though the subject line does not indicate it
> > as such. Animal testing has certain flaws, but it has its place in
> > medicine
> > http://whyfiles.org/064angio_cancer/3.html
> > and scientific research, and certainly has a long history.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing#History
> > However, one of the biggest corundum is how to effectively evaluate
> > cancer risks in humans, not animals. Some suggestions included the use
> > of biological markers to identify alterations in cell cultures, but it
> > think that this avoids the use of animal and may not be an effective
> > means to evaluate risks to humans. With regard to regulations of risk,
> > efforts such as the Delaney Clause
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaney_clause
> > was one attempt to bring science into the regulatory process. In this
> > case, it was more than a regulation factor as the DeLaney Clause was a
> > legislatively law, that only can be changed by legislation. (Am I right 
> Syd?).
>
>One of animal testing's flaws has to do with the wisdom and
>prudence of extrapolating its results to humans. Read Edith Efron's book
>and the references cited therein. The fact that animal testing has a "long
>history" proves nothing.
>SD
>
> >I would also like to point out the radiation exposure regulations are NO
> >based on animal studies. Current regulations are based on the Hiroshima
> >and Nagasaki studies.
>
>True again. You would probably acknowledge that there are some
>legitimate differences about the applicability of the H and N studies to
>occupational, medical, and low-level (background) exposure.
>SD
>
>Steven Dapra