RE: Uranium Miners' Compensation

["Paul Ziemer" <ziemer@purdue.edu>]

Steve Depra shared the Albuquerque Journal article on Uranium Miners'
Compensation.  A portion of the article read:


	Who is influencing Richardson?

	"The National Institutes of Health took over studies of DOE weapons
workers in the early 1990s. That switch was fueled in part by "Dead
Reckoning: A Critical Review of the Department of Energy's Epidemiologic
Research," a study published in 1992 by Physicians for Social
Responsibility, a national nuclear-disarmament and environmental group.   .
. .

	"A leading contributor to "Dead Reckoning" was David Michaels, an
epidemiologist and Geiger colleague at CUNY. He took a leave of absence a
year ago to become Richardson's assistant secretary for environment, safety
and health."  (Geiger is H. Jack Geiger, study co-author)


Just for the record, I would like to point out that the decision to move
analytical epidemiological studies from the DOE to Health and Human Services
(Centers for Disease Control) was made following the August, 1989, report ot
the SPEERA Committee (Secretarial Panel for the Evaluation of
Epidemiological Research Activities).  Hence the decision was not fueled by
the report mentioned in the article.  On the other hand, it is true that the
Physicians for Social "Responsibility" (my quotes) had been an agitator for
getting the DOE out of the epid study business.  Indeed, they were never
really satisfied with the move to HHS/CDC either.  After all, it was just
another federal agency, and the budget for the studies still had to go
through the DOE.

The CDC has generally done a good job in managing the studies over the the
past several years.  Unfortunately, it appears that it makes little
difference how the results turn out.  Polical rather than technical
considerations continue to play a major role in the ultimate decisions on
how to deal with "risks" to the workers or the public.

Paul L. Ziemer,Ph.D., CHP
Head, School of Health Sciences
Purdue Unversity
W. Lafayette, IN 47907

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