Re: LNT

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 1/14/02 5:32:06 AM Mountain Standard Time, liptonw@dteenergy.com writes:



> I fail to understand how whomever "wins" this debate will affect anything other than the egos of those involved.


Au contraire,as a colleague of mine used to say!  If LNT is ditched, the standards can be redone to be reasonable and a great deal of mooney can be put to better use.  I don't think it's an "ego" thing at all.


 At the risk of repeating myself too often (However, if no one's listening, am I really 

> repeating myself - let's debate that!), we have no one but ourselves to blame for any overly restrictive standards.  When generous research funding was available, it was expedient to promote LNT as a means of procuring more than our fair share.  Well, strange bedfellows always look a lot worse the morning after!  It's too late to change this, however. 

This is almost un believably small-minded.  The LNT was initially presented as a reasonably conservatiuve "working hypothesis."  It was as necessary to research the health effects of ionizing radiation as the health effects of exposure to tuberculosis or yellow fever.  It has taken a perfectly reasonable number of decades to accumulate epidemiological evidence of a threshold, and evidence (like Bernard Cohen's) that contradicts the LNT.  


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com