[ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 769, Issue 1

[Harrison, Tony]

Had he picked controls from Fallujah who DID NOT have babies with abnormalities, he could have made a nice case/control study out of it.  It's not likely that he'd have seen an effect from uranium, so I guess that explains why he didn't do that.

I think he's mostly comparing the quality of pre-natal care in Sweden to that in Iraq.  Significant difference!  I'm shocked!


Tony Harrison, MSPH
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
Laboratory Services Division
303-692-3046


Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2011 10:02:52 -0700
From: "Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe at ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 764, Issue 3
To: "The International Radiation Protection \(Health Physics\) Mailing
	List"	<radsafe at agni.phys.iit.edu>
Message-ID: <20111009170553.113A4471CC78 at agni.phys.iit.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 12:47 AM 10/7/2011, Busby, Chris wrote:
>     Uranium and other contaminants in hair from the parents of 
> children with congenital anomalies in Fallujah, Iraq
>Samira Alaani, Muhammed Tafash, Christopher Busby, Malak Hamdan and 
>Eleonore Blaurock-Busch Conflict and Health 2011, 5:15 (2 September 2011)
>http://www.conflictandhealth.com/content/5/1/15
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The chemical analysis in this study may be okay, but the logic 
surrounding the so-called effects in this paper is fatally flawed. 
Traces of uranium are in food and water, and everybody has some 
uranium in the body. However, it is one of the least toxic of the 
heavy metals.

It. is not surprising that there may be significant differences in 
traces of uranium in people who live in different parts of world.

Guilt by selective association is not science. I do not believe that 
this paper could ever be accepted by any major epidemiology journal.

In one of the classes that taught at UCD I had the students read 
"Deadly Deceit" by Jay Gould and Benjamin Goldman (1990) so that 
could recognize the faulty one-dimensional logic of the dedicated 
anti-nuclear activists such as Busby.

Otto

**********************************************
Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
Center for Health & the Environment
University of California
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
E-Mail: ograabe at ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 752-7754   FAX: (530) 758-6140
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