Re: Radioprotection of plants & animals

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, Bjorn Cedervall wrote:

> I have read a draft report that deals with radioprotection of other species. 
> It is easy to reject all this as "crazy" and stop right here but I think 
> that it is time to look at what's going on. After all people in more than 20 
> countries are involved already. It is time to sort out the central issues 
> and ask questions.

	--This sounds completely phony to me. All effects of radiation
that I can envision would kill only a small fraction of the animals
involved, so it would not affect the population as a whole. If one is
sympathetic about killing individual animals, he should be much more
concerned with the number of cattle, pigs, chickens, etc we kill for food,
or the mice, rats, etc we kill in our research studies or fumigation
programs, or the way some animals kill others. Any conceivable radiation
effects would be trivial by comparison.

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