Re: Mechanisms are Needed to Explain Cohen's Data

A couple of comments:

LNT is not a mechanism - it is more of a hypothesis and description of an

extrapolation.

Mechanisms are phenomena like damage - as a result of ionizations (often

clustered), signal transduction on a molecular level, DNA repair, expression

of genes related to metastasis and so on. For the full tumor effect (someone

eventually dying from it) anything from one to 8 or 10 events may be

necessary. Therefore the LNT hypothesis needs a definition that is relevant

to this context (number of events) - otherwise this discussion may go on for

ever without any meaningful conclusions emerging.

The discussion would benefit from a clear distinction between observation

and interpretation (as a few other Radsafers already pointed out with

different wordings). We don't need a semantic excercise to understand this.

For instance - is there any information related to socio-economic groups for

the data discussed? (hypothesis: differences in lifestyles)

My personal ideas only,

Bjorn Cedervall bcradsafers@hotmail.com

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