Re: congressional testimony by Steve Wing

[Steven Dapra <sjd@swcp.com>]

July 31

	In his posting on July 31, Dr. Rudy Nussbaum objected to Dr. Otto Raabe's
criticisms of Dr. Steve Wing, apparently because Dr. Raabe did not
"convincingly refute the substantive statements by Dr. Wing".  Perhaps Dr.
Raabe did not do this because Wing's statements and claims, especially
those about Oak Ridge workers, have already been refuted to the point of
surfeit.

	The Wing et. al. paper "Mortality Among Workers at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory:  Evidence of Radiation Effects in Follow-up through 1984," was
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
[265(11):1397-1402; 3-20-91].  In their conclusions, Wing, et. al. claim
that "[t]he all-cancer dose-response estimates reported in this study are
an order of magnitude higher than those reported from analyses of the
mortality experience of the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, Japan."  

	A critique of this paper, written by Dr. Daniel J. Strom, was published in
Nuclear News (July, 1991; pp. 67-74).  After thoroughly dismantling Wing
et. al., Dr. Strom adds "one last caveat," to wit: "[t]he Wing et. al.
paper is, after all, only one study.  It is not consistent with other
studies, and at best adds only a small amount to our knowledge of radiation
effects in people."

	An additional assessment of the Wing, et. al. paper will be found in
Health Physics [62(3):260-64; March 1992].  Here, Howard M. Prichard, HP
Associate Editor, comments on the findings in light of Dr. Ethel Gilbert's
analysis of the Wing, et. al. paper.  Dr. Gilbert's letter follows, and is
itself followed by a reply from Wing and his co-authors.

	Six months later, this is followed by a letter ("More on the Oak Ridge
Mortality Study") by John A. Auxier, a health physicist at ORNL [Health
Physics, 63(3):362; Sept. 1992].  On page 363 of this issue of HP, Wing and
four of his co-authors provide a brief reply to Auxier.

	I think that for Dr. Raabe to have begun refuting Wing's claims would have
constituted re-inventing the wheel.

	Steve Wing has an unusual concept of epidemiology.  He appeared in
Albuquerque, NM in October, 1994 at a conference titled "Women, Health and
the Environment:  Action for Cancer Prevention."  The purpose of this
conference was to blame all cancers (and in particular breast cancer) on
radiation and chlorine.  During a panel discussion, Wing endorsed the use
of what he called "popular epidemiology," which he defined as someone
picking up his clipboard and going door to door quizzing his neighbors
about their health.  (I attended this conference, and sat in on this
workshop.  Wing also has an unusual way of handling data and presenting it
to Congressional committees.  For details on this see my letter in the
Health Physics Society Newsletter [26(12):6; Dec. 1998].)

Steven Dapra
sjd@swcp.com



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