Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

Thank you Franz.  I would only add that the scientific method itself
promotes open-mindedness in that scientists look for measurable documentable
evidence to confirm or deny hypotheses.  "Open mind" absolutely does not
mean giving equal weight to everything that anyone says, including nonsense.

Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate


>At 11:00 25.04.2000 -0500, you wrote:
>>Hi Sandy,
>>
>>I respectfully suggest that "absurd" is too strong a word. I know Mr.
Mangano
>>personally. He is very careful with his studies and contentions. Something
>is happening
>>to infant mortality around nuke plants.
>>
>>    A study by Mangano on Salem (NJ) County, shows higher infant
>mortality, low infant
>>birth weights, and certain immune diseases all higher than national
averages.
>>
>
>Yes, we had this nonsense - I repeat: "nonsense" - already many years
>before in Europe. We had the Sellafield story, where someone found that
>there is elevated childhood leukemia (I think it was this kind of cancer)
>in the vicinity of Sellafield in England. The significance of the incidence
>was doubted and it was very clearly demonstrated that there are many more
>areas in England, far away from any reprocessing plant or nuclear power
>plant, where incidence of childhood leukemia is higher than the English
>average. Of course!!! In order to generate an average you have to have
>areas with lower than average and areas with higher than average.
>
>We had the case of a German NPP where activists claimed that crayfish had
>died in a river because of the impact of the NPP. Maybe it is not a
>coincidence that crayfish is in German "Krebs" and cancer is as well
>"Krebs". That probably the increasing pollution of the river and sure a
>virus disease had caused this was no argument for the activists.
>
>We had the case of activists claiming that tritium emitted from the
>Karlsruhe reprocessing pilot plant had killed the trees in the surrounding.
>The fact, that we had in the late fifties and early sixties tritium
>concentrations in precipitation and in air, which were higher by orders of
>magnitude and that the trees were not reported to have died, did not
>disturb the activists.
>
>I have heard for decades from activists that a mass of plutonium of the
>size of an orange distributed around the world would kill every living
>creature (including man). I have since decades argued that there have been
>tons of plutonium distributed evenly and finely around the world due to the
>nuclear tests and that not only mankind but also animals still live. The
>next time I hear again the stereotype claim, that a mass of plutonium of
>the size.....
>
>I read all the time about the deadly plutonium and that it is the most
>deadly element existing. I say all the time that radium-226 is far more
>radiotoxic (about 500 times if I take the numbers from the limits for
>instance in water) and that one drinks and eats it all the time and that we
>still live. What do I read "next day"? I read that plutonium is the most
>deadly element existing.
>
>Why trying to educate people? Why trying to spread a little knowledge about
>radioactivity? Everybody acts according to "I have made up my mind, do not
>disturb me with the facts!". Mass media earn their money (see my recent
>comment on the 15 000 dead from Chernobyl).
>
>
>>Please strive to keep an open mind on these matters.
>
>
>I cannot accept this pledge. I do not understand how somebody like me and a
>large number of RADSAFErs should not have shown extensively that we have an
>open mind. Yes, a minority do not look like that, but maybe they have been
>so frustrated by the constant attacks of uneducated people, who have not
>the slightest scientific background, but try to make money by the political
>way, to sell "illusions" and "good conscious of having done something for
>the planet" and being part of warriors (yes, they call themselves even
>openly as the Greenpeace Warriors!!! appealing to the low instincts of
>mankind) who help the good to win against the life threatening bads and who
>safe our world. We have studied these questions for many years, we have
>worked for many years in the field, we have acquired knowledge, but then we
>have to hear from certain groups that we are a bunch of idiots, paid by the
>nuclear lobby and too silly to understand what is going on.
>
>I think you have to ask others to keep an open mind.
>
>>
>>Peace,
>
>I used to have in my office a Chinese proverb hanging on the wall:
>
>"If you are always smiling you will not get anything except wrinkles in
>your face."
>
>Franz
>
>
>Franz Schoenhofer
>Habicherg. 31/7
>A-1160 Vienna
>Austria
>Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
>Fax.: same number
>mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
>e-mail: schoenho@via.at
>
>
>Office:
>Hofrat Dr. Franz Schoenhofer
>Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
>Radiation Protection Department (BMLUW I/8 U)
>Radetzkystr. 2
>A-1031 Vienna
>AUSTRIA
>
>phone: -43-1-71172-4458
>fax: -43-1-7122331
>
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