Re: thyroid disease article -Graves disease and Nasal Radium Irradiation

[RadiumProj@cs.com]

In a message dated 11/21/00 10:53:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
frantaj@aecl.ca writes:

> > When the media learned that Bush's wife, Barbara, had been diagnosed with
>  > Graves' disease just eighteen months earlier, a very rare husband-wife
>  > incidence, some conspiracy theorists hinted that the White House water
>  > might be a factor, a possibility laughed off by the Bush administration. 
>  <SNIP>

As I recall, in addition to President and Mrs. Bush both being diagnosed with 
Graves' disease [hyperthyroidism] within a relatively short period of time 
back in the late 1980s, the Bush's dog at the time also developed thyroid 
disease.  Anyone expert in PRA have the odds that a husband-wife and their 
dog all get hyperthyroid disease within a year or so of each other? 

This is a very important issue and not to be treated casually. In Mrs. Bush's 
case, her Graves' condition went undiagnosed for a very long time [despite 
her access to the finest medical care] until her symptoms became rather 
severe. She began to develop exopthalmos [protruding eyes, a very late 
symptom of advanced Graves] and finally received a proper diagnosis. She 
wrote in her autobiography published about 1994 as I recall,  that before her 
diagnosis of Graves disease  she suffered a long period of severe mood swings 
and deep depression that caused her to consider herself a stone around the 
neck of the President and to consider both divorce and at time driving her 
car into bridge abutments.

Untreated nonmalignant thyroid disease, especially Graves, is a very serious 
matter and it is very important that the medical profession not dismiss the 
potential harm from either hyper or hypothyroidism as is so commonly done. At 
the time of the Presidents' Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments 
[ACHRE] deliberations back in 1994-95, ACHRE reviewed the use of nasal radium 
irradiation [NRI] in a human experiment conducted on 600 Baltimore 3rd 
graders from 1948 to 1953 by Johns Hopkins Hospital. Despite ACHRE's judging 
that NRI had the highest risk of cancer mortality expressed over the lifetime 
of a treated individual of any of the 4,000 human radiation experiments 
reviewed by ACHRE, and NRI represented the only experiment that exceeded 
their arbitrary threshold for medical notice and followup recommendations 
[one excess cancer death per 1000 individuals treated, expressed over the 
lifetime of a treated individual], they recommended no notice and no-followup 
because they falsely claimed that there was no point to medical notice in 
1995 because "most of the risk will probably already have been expressed" 
[i.e.: they were suggesting based on general opinion,  that anyone likely to 
have died of head, neck, or brain cancer would already have died and 
therefore why notify anyone else in the study group of possible health 
problems subsequently!!!] When I discussed these pending ill-conceived 
recommendations to do nothing with Dr. Eli Glatstein, a respected radiation 
oncologist, former Chief of Radiation Oncology at the NCI,  and the most 
senior medical member of the ACHRE, before the ACHRE final report to the 
President was issued, I asked him why the ACHRE had not also considered the 
fact that NRI treatment of children had been found in a well designed case 
controlled epidemiological study to result in a "highly statistically 
significant" excess of Graves disease [Relative Risk = 8.6 vs. an untreated 
control group] in about 700 NRI treated children followed up about 23 years 
post irradiation on average, conducted as a Ph.D. Thesis at Johns Hopkins 
[see Sandler, 1979;  and Sandler, 1980 in the Radium Experiment Assessment 
Project Annotated Bibliography at the REAP website]. Dr. Glatstein's comment 
in Sept. 1995 at the time was that if anyone had any form of thyroid disease, 
when it became severe enough they would seek medical treatment. Apparently, 
even President and Mrs. Bush especially despite their access to excellent 
medical care did not have timely diagnosis of their Graves disease condition 
and the health effects it was causing.

Stewart Farber, MSPH
Consulting Scientist
Public Health Sciences
Director - Radium Experiment Assessment Project [REAP]
172 Old Orchard Way
Warren, VT 05674

[802] 496-3356
email: radiumproj@cs.com
REAP website: http://www.delphi.com/carsreap
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