[ RadSafe ] Incidence vs death question, was: Exposed " -had lower incidences of all cancers - "

[Flanigan, Floyd]

Granted, I cannot claim to speak from personal experience when it comes
to Shipyards, but I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with
many people from that sector. To the best of my recollection, none of
them ever related anything about either the selection process for
workers involving any kind of family cancer history screening for
screening applicants, nor did any relate anything about workers being
removed from the "yards" after being diagnosed with cancer. I have
personally worked with several cancer patients, some who died while
working nuke. Mostly in the D.O.E. world. None of them were asked to
leave their positions post diagnosis. So, from what I can relate, no.
The two selection/exclusion factors from your post are not, in my
experience, true.

Floyd W. Flanigan B.S.Nuc.H.P.

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of Keith Welch
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:01 PM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Incidence vs death question, was: Exposed " -had
lower incidences of all cancers - "

Folks,
I am not an epidemiologist and have no experience in that field.  But 
recently, partly due to the posts here, I have been wondering about 
this.  Maybe I just haven't thought it through well enough.  It seems on

its face that using cancer incidence rates would be preferable to 
mortality, due in part to the issue of changes over time in cure rates, 
but also because it would seem to help correct for the healthy worker 
effect (incidence rate is not as affected by the availability of health 
insurance or treatment as mortality rate) - and possibly the "rich 
victim effect", which I have not heard many people talk about, but 
assume must be confounding; the difference in cure rates in different 
socio-economic classes.  I would suppose that could probably be dealt 
with by careful cohort selection.  At any rate, I've heard that the 
shipyard worker study was flawed due to the following: (1) screening for

nuclear workers at the shipyards disqualified people with family history

of cancer, and (2) removal of people from nuclear worker status (and 
therefore, presumably from candidacy for the study?) in the event they 
were diagnosed with cancer during employment.  Are either of these based

in fact?

Keith Welch
Jefferson Lab

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