[ RadSafe ] German professor with ideas... uranium smoke etc

[Bjorn Cedervall]

> Do you, Dr. Cedervall, support the empirical quantification> of the extent of reproductive harm of uranium smoke and its> uranyl ion?> > James Salsman, as Ben Fore---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have not followed the recent uranium thread - therefore a yes or no from my side
would be irrelevant - I need the larger context to provide some detailed response to that.
 
More generally though:
 
If we talk about hypothetical or real damage to a fraction of germ cells (say 20 %)
- it is very unlikely that it would mean anything for the next generation
as selection always is _against_ what does not work. Natural selection can never
be for something (a genetic feature) that statistically doesn't work. Most mutations
(that occur in vast numbers in every generation) are in some sense (environmental
and genetic context) "bad" but they disappear thanks to the force of natural selection.
 
For the general question of causality ("A causes disease B") I prefer to see
all the nine Hill's criteria fulfilled. Add to that: there should be no methodological
problems (like selection bias etc). This means that I want to see the
epidemiological evidence as well as that from experiments and underlying
theory.
 
Epidemiology has among some become a strange science which sometimes seem
to live in its own world without consideration of what is possible taking the laws of
physics, chemistry and biology into account.
Some of these scientists seem to have it as their mission in life to create as many
headlines worldwide as possible without any hesitation that should have been
caused by statistically shaky data. "This is good/bad for you" (most often bad)
has this way entered the entertainment business.
 
My personal reflections only,
 
Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers at hotmail.com
 
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