LNT clarification

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

There has been lots of speculation and generic commentary here about LNT.

I'd like to try to cut to the chase.



First, the only significant question is whether LDI (low dose irradiation)

is harmful or not.  All of the data and argument about the higher levels is

not at issue.  The NCRP, ICRP and BEIR reports focus on the high-level

radiation because they have lots of data and they can speak with confidence.

But there is no disagreement about the higher levels.



Second, John Jacobus insists I tell whether I "practice what I preach."

This is irrelevant.  It may show whether I am hypocritical, but it says

nothing about whether I am right.  Nicolai Tesla, the eccentric genius,

believed that germs follow an LNT model--the next one you pick up might be

the one that kills you.  He diligently practiced what he preached.  He wore

gloves and wiped off doorknobs with great bunches of nakpins he carried for

the purpose.  He was sincere in his belief, but he was wrong for the same

reason that radiation LNTers are wrong.  The body abounds with germs and

with radiation.  Adding one more is not signficant.  Whether you get sick

depends on the state of your body's defenses.  I have been using the term

"immune system" as a popular shortcut to include all the body's

anti-mutagenic systems.  There is the use of anti-oxidants to prevent the

initial damage. (Nearly all "radiation-induced damage" is caused by free

radicals.  The radiation very seldom directly impacts the tiny nucleus.

Generally it damages by ionizing atoms in the cell which then go on to make

the mischief.  Thus damage by radiation occurs the same was as from

metabolism.  But for each mutation caused by radiation, several million are

caused by metabolism.  Thus the effort to reduce the number of radiation

impacts is inconsequential.  And anything that improves the effectiveness of

the body's defenses--preventing the damage, enhancing the repair processes,

or eliminating the damaged cells through apoptosis, or cell death, decreases

the number of residual damaged cells by affecting not only those cells

damaged by radiation, but the much larger number damaged by routine

metabolism.  This decrease has been repeatedly measured in the laboratory.



For the record, I do act on my belief in hormesis.  I take a number of

deadly poisons every day--selenium, boron, manganese, copper--because I know

they are beneficial at low levels although lethal at high levels.  And I get

vaccinated even though I know that a large number of those germs could kill

me.  But I cannot get a doctor to administer LDI because of the ruling

presence of LNT.  But I have been to radon spas and drunk the water until my

breath measured one mrad/hour.  I have worked hard to get LDI for friends

with "terminal" cancer.  I succeeded in one case, and he's well, but the

other two died, treated by "conventional best practice."  But this does not

prove I am right.



All the generic speculation as to whether hormesis exists and is effective,

and whether it is impossible to determine the effects of LDI, do little to

resolve the question.  Science has a straightforward procedure in these

matters.  We have experimental papers, written by credible scientists in

prestigious laboratories, reported in peer-reviewed mainstream journals,

that claim they have demonstrated in replicable, statistically-significant

data that LDI is beneficial.  The only proper response to this situation is

to accept those results and that conclusion, or to demonstrate that these

papers contain specific fundamental flaws that invalidate the conclusion.

This the NCRP, ICRP and BEIR reports consistently refuse to do.



The only studies they have attempted to refute are Bernie Cohen's many radon

studies.  But their criticisms are generic speculations that this type of

study tends to have certain limitations and weaknesses.  Interesting but not

definitive.  No one has shown that these generic limitations exist in

Cohen's study to such an extent as to invalidate his conclusions.  They

dismiss his reports, saying "They have been widely criticized." But they

have not been refuted.  They have not been invalidated.  And thus they still

stand.



Note that they have not even tried to prove that LDI is harmful.  As I've

quoted more than once, their case is:



"Few experimental studies, and essentially no human data, can be said to

prove or even to provide direct support for the concept……It is conceptually

possible, but with a vanishingly small probability, that any of these

effects could result from the passage of a single charged particle, causing

damage to DNA that could be expressed as a mutation or small deletion.  It

is a result of this type of reasoning that a linear nonthreshold

dose-response relationship cannot be excluded." [emphasis added]



I've been told "I don't read these hormesis reports, because these people

have already made up their minds."  The state of their mind is irrelevant.

The data and the conclusions must be refuted, and they have not been.  In

most cases, the reports are not even cited by NCRP et al, though the reports

have been officially submitted.  This is not honest, competent science.



If you believe that practicing what you preach is important, let me tell you

about the news conference accompanying the release of the BEIR-VI report on

radon.  A media representative asked: "I would like each member of the

committee to say what he has done about the radon in his own home."  After

much embarrassed fumbling, with each member urging others to go first, Roger

McClellan of the committee said, "Well, I don't smoke, so I don't think I'm

in danger."  Finally the chairman, Jon Samet, said, "Well I tested my

house."  The media rep said, "And...what did you find and what did you do

about it?"  Samet muttered a few indistinct phrases, and then said that he

didn't think he had much of a problem.  These are the people who tell us

that radon is killing 21,800 people each year in the US, and presumably a

comparable proportion of the other 96% of the world's population.  Yet they

are in no case sufficiently concerned to spend the $15 necessary to

determine whether this "important public health problem" exists in their own

home.



What does that tell us about their sincerity and honesty?



We have to stop generalizing about this problem and look at the data.  Even

the data of Sternglass, Wing, Stewart and others who tell us we're killing

people--even their own data shows that nuclear workers and downwinders have

greater longevity and less cancer than the unirradiated population.  They

have to torture the data to make it lie.  People get upset when I say that

our policy is based on dishonest science.  But when I ask why they do not

comment on the draft documents during the public comment period, they tell

me  "Oh, that won't help.  We all know how it's going to come out."



Ted Rockwell



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

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.