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

[neildm at id.doe.gov]

I do not recall any screening for (1), and can state certainly that (2)
was not the case in at least two cases of my knowledge.  

Dave Neil
Ex-105 nuclear shipyard worker

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of Keith Welch
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:01 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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