Re: Testimony of Steve Wing to US House of Representatives

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net>]

Otto,
    If that were the case,  than one could  never do a controlled study on
radiation effects. Everybody and everything on earth is, to some degree,
exposed to ionizing radiation. Anyway, didn't RERF use populations from
other areas of Japan (not affected by the bombs) as controls?

jjcohen@prodigy.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Otto G. Raabe <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Friday, July 28, 2000 12:22 PM
Subject: RE: Testimony of Steve Wing to US House of Representatives


>At 08:15 AM 7/28/00 -0500, Bruce Heinmiller wrote:
>>Am I misreading the passages below?  Wing appears to be arguing that doses
>>were underestimated and that this underestimates risk.  But any radiation
>>risk coefficients that I've ever seen have dose on the denominator, and
that
>>underestimating dose would thereby overestimate risk per unit dose.  Can
>>someone help me out here?
>*************************************************
>July 28, 2000
>Davis, CA
>
>Here is Steve Wing's dosimetry logic concerning risk factors from the
>atomic bomb survivors:
>
>The survivor data is analyzed by RERF using relative risk between dose
>groups. There are no outside controls. The lowest exposed persons (less
>than 0.01 Sv) become the de facto controls. The cancer rate in these lowest
>exposed people is considered the background rate. If these people who are
>listed as below 0.01 Sv were really exposed to much higher doses, as Wing
>believes, then their cancer rate is not the true baseline, but is elevated
>above normal baseline rates. Hence, when the risk at say 0.2 Sv is
>considered, it is being compared to a bad baseline that has a higher than
>normal cancer rate. Therefore, the increased cancer rate in the 0.2 Sv
>group is being masked and appears to be much smaller than it really is
>compared to truly unexposed persons.
>
>I hope this helps....
>
>Otto
> *****************************************************
> Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
> Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health (ITEH)
> (Street Address: Bldg. 3792, Old Davis Road)
> University of California, Davis, CA 95616
> E-Mail: ograabe@ucdavis.edu
> Phone:(530) 752-7754, FAX:(530) 758-6140
> *****************************************************
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