Re: Risk estimate and comparison

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

Pills and people killed:

I think that there is a principle difference between effects that are 
irreversible (like DNA mutations) and other cellular events. Therefore we 
can not compare the effects on an equal basis. Take alcohol in yoghurt for 
instance - add up the ethanol molecules consumed by people eating yoghurt 
for 300 years and you will probably have buckets of ethanol. Now consume 
this at once and observe the effects...
This is very different from the 1 to say 7 (depending on the type of cell 
and biological context) irreversible mutational events (each one dependent 
on one distinct event on a molecular level) that may trigger and convert a 
normal cell to become a tumor cell. I know that this still is a biological 
simplification for many tumors that go through a successive progression with 
immunological mechanisms and other events that may counteract the tumor 
proliferation. But for some cases, like with the eye tumor retinoblastoma, 
one single event like a chromosomal break due to say an alkylation reaction 
or an ionization is enough and you get the tumor.

My personal opinion (that probably is shared with most molecular biologists 
in the field),

Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

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