Re: Hormesis and LNT

["Fritz A. Seiler" <faseiler@NMIA.COM>]

Hi All,



Well, Joan, I agree with the tenor (or should I say soprano? Alto,

perhaps?) of your mail.  However, I disagree with your last statement,

if it is not meant as a parody.  These days you never know for sure!

:-)

        Anyway, your statement is the logical LNT trap that Joe Alvarez

and I also fell down into, oh so many years ago!  Fortunately, we

realized relatively soon that this is a fallacious argument cooked up by

the Linear Mafia.  It is easy to show this argument to be wrong: Let us

assume that the excess risk function goes steadily down toward zero as

the dose approaches small values but then assumes a J-shape, so that you

are dealing with a hormetic cause-effect function.  Now decrease the

dose below the point called Zero-Effects-Point (ZEP), where the excess

risk is indeed  zero.  Below that dose the excess risk goes negative as

in the Shipyard Worker study to a value of - 0.24 +- 0.03 (Relative risk

0.76 +- 0.03). Now that is not at all hard to measure, is it?  Also look

at Bernie Cohen's radon/lung cancer data which are hormetic and well

measured below the ZEP.

        As you can see, the LNT Mafia's argument only works if the

effect goes monotonically to zero as the dose goes monotonically to

zero.



Best regards, Fritz



Joan Stovall wrote:



> Of course, they cannot very well test the risk model at low doses and

> low exposure levels.  Why?  The necessary sample size increases with

> the inverse of the square of the resolution they desire.  Soon, the

> sample size will become larger than the entire population they are

> studying.  Of course, they cost of performing such a study would

> spiral out of control.



--



 " The American Republic will endure until the day Congress

 discovers that it can bribe the Public with the Public's money."

                                       Alexis de Tocqueville

                                       Democracy in America



***************************



Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.

Sigma Five Consulting

P.O. Box 1709

Los Lunas, NM 87031, USA

Tel.    505-866-5193

Fax.    505-866-5197

e-mail: faseiler@nmia.com



***************************





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