[ RadSafe ] Salsman's citation for Basrah cancers

[Steven Dapra]

Jan. 19, 2007

(See RADSAFE, Jan. 17:)

Steven Dapra (SD):
Do you [James Salsman] have a citation (other than Hindin) for those alleged
excess Basrah cancers?

James Salsman (JS):
Sure, I have plenty.  Here's one from a Mount Sinai Pathologist:
   http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/files/nuclear/fasy_jun_14_03.pdf <

Eric Daxon:
The citation is an undated presentation (not a published paper) that appears
to have other presentations embedded in it.  The data were taken when Saddam
was still in power and there are several limitations the most important of
which are a lack of exposure assessment (levels of uranium exposure were not
measured in neither the parents nor the children), the lack of a control
group (comparable measurements were not made in other cities, and census
data were used for the denominator as opposed estimates of the populations
in the cities at the time.  The discussion of biological plausibility that
DU was the cause does not include a discussion of dose.  The logic used
could be applied tom many other toxins - most notably mustard gas.

Comments from SD about the presentation:

         The presentation is not dated, however one of the early pages is a 
photograph of the head table with a date of Jan. 14-16, 2003, and a sign or 
banner stating that this was a "Symposium for Peace."  The Mt. Sinai 
pathologist (last name Fasy) appears to have prepared this presentation, 
which looks like a slide show or (more likely) a Power Point 
presentation.  I looked at the nuclearpolicy.org website and it has a link 
to some slides by Fasy.

Most of the presentation is tables of statistics with no source material 
for them; and photographs of deformed children.  (Rather unpleasant to look 
at.)  Near p. 34 the presentation acknowledges that there was not 
independent measure of exposure, and that there was no control city for 
Basrah, the city that was studied.

         Near p. 44 we find the only citation in the presentation.  It is a 
paper titled "Radiation Risk Of Low Fluences of Alpha Particles May Be 
Greater Than We Thought."  (Zhou, et al., PNAS 98:14410-14415; 2001)

         Around pp. 45-50 the author gives some superficial facts about 
uranium chemistry.  Around p.53 a slide acknowledges that some of the 
neural tube defects may be caused by a folic acid deficiency.  Presumably 
this is a reference to some of the deformed children.

         Technically, JS's "citation" is a citation.  Because the 
presentation has no citations for any of its data, it is worthless.  And of 
course, the presentation admitted itself that it has some limitations  no 
control city, for example.  That's a significant deficiency, wouldn't you 
say, James?

         If you are reading this, James, you said you had "plenty" of 
citations.  How about one that is somewhat scholarly?  (A word of warning 
to RADSAFErs.  If you have a dial-up modem this presentation has a lot of 
color and pictures, and is very slow and cumbersome.)

Steven Dapra
sjd at swcp.com