Apology? RE: LNT (Gangrene x-ray therapy)

["Jim Muckerheide" <jmuckerheide@cnts.wpi.edu>]

John,

Perhaps I have assumed that when you provide the most egregious misinformation that misleads people about the possible validity of the LNT, you do this intentionally, as we have experienced with the more knowledgeable NCRP/etc. people. It is difficult however when hard evidence as been provided to you and you seem to choose to ignore it. With the limited time I've had in recent weeks I've not kept up nor taken time to provide more sound scientific sources.

 

However, to take just a few minutes, I'll note again more specifically that:  In about June of 1896 the renown J.J. Thomson reported that "the rays" were not bacteriocidal, i.e., bacteria were NOT affected by radiation exposure, with specific comparison to the recently discovered effects of UV radiation on bacteria! However, numerous experiments and applications starting in 1986 showed that infections were cured with radiation exposure. An item by an editor in Dec 1896 said (paraphrase from memory) "it seems bacteria in vivo are 'coated' ('engulfed?') by some agent" vs. the of direct affect of radaition on bacteria. (Of course, in 3-5 years X-ray equipment had improved so that instead of bone x-rays or cancer therapies using 30 min to 2 hours exposures, they could be done in a few minutes. At higher doses bacteria were effected.) But infections were cured at low doses, leading to such extreme conditions as active gangrene. You disparage the papers as "old" but ignore what they!

 found before your more-profitable phamaceuticals eliminated them from general use.

 

Regarding some specifics:

 

-----Original Message----- 

From: Jacobus, John (OD/ORS) [mailto:jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov] 



Jim,

I asked you if you had any information on radiation treatment for gangrene,



<No you said: "I suppose you can prove that"

 

and you provided an interesting article that I had not read.  I thank you



<Presumably of hundreds if not thousands.>

 

for that.  You asked me to provide comments and I did.  What is with the

nasty rhetoric?  I said that the process, if you want to call it that, is

like the teletherapy treatment of tumors.  Rapidly dividing cells, bacteria





<As previously told to you, they have nothing in common.>



rather the patients own, are being subject to ionizing radiation to destroy

them.  It is not hard to understand.  My comment about low dose compared to



<Not hard to fail to understand?>



teletherapy was meant to convey the idea that the response, in this case

infection control, occurred at lower dose than tumor control.  Obvious, the

physiology of the infection is different from that of a tumor bed. 



<Outlandish conclusion/misinformation.>



If you are suggesting that the radiation boosted the immune system, consider

the description of Case 3.  Prior to irradiation, the WBC was 12,500,

Neutros: 72% (9,000); Lymphs: 28% (4060).  Normal values are WBC:  7,000;

Neutrophils:62% (4500); Lymphocytes: 30% (2100) Basophils 0.4% (30)

Monocytes: 5.3% (375).  Obviously, the body was fighting the infection prior

to the use of radiation to "knock down" the infection.  It would have been



<Your point is irrelevant. You aren't measuring the effectiveness of the immune system, just that there's a response to illness, which is true just before you're dead also. I've provided various refs that show the molecular responses to radiation that indicate the differences. You can't pretend the paper should be considered in the absense of what we NOW know about the immune and other response capacities of the fundamental biology of life.> 



interesting to see additional blood values during and after the

irradiations.  It is obvious that a number of pages are missing from this

article, as sentences are incomplete going from one page to another.  



<I said that of course. You could ask for or retrieve the full paper (only one person asked, and one retrieved it that I know of, but I provided all of the relevant materials to demonstrate the actual effect (to the unbiased)..>



But, all-in-all, it is an interesting read.



<More than interesting if you had any real interest in understanding biological/health effects of LDR.>



Again, please do not bombard me with snide comments, 



<don't provide erroneous info, that you should know better about>



and I think your comments about the NCRP meeting are inappropriate and offensive.



<You seem to forget that we've had to deal with these people extensively in the last 7 years, starting with their refusal to participate in any more science sessions because they were caught "misrepresenting?" :-) specific studies and results in front of a large audience (of "engineers" and "managers" - both biology and epi) and then finding the same people telling the same lies a few months later at Los Alamos. Their lies depend on the specific audiences. What they say at an HPS meeting is less outrageous than they thought they could get away with with "engineers" and "managers," but still pretty outrageous because few HPs, including "biology" researchers, know much about fundamental biology (as it affects immunology, medicine, etc., etc.), and they are even more outrageous talking to Congress/politicians (who they know will not read BEIR reports etc.  They "cooked the books" in UNSCEAR and IAEA reports, etc., etc., etc. 



<There's not much point anymore in "misrepresenting" that they have any integrity, as we did when some of the more constructive people in the institutions, ncluding HPS, were trying to move the institutions to constructive response to the science. But that ended in 1999, with their support (along with HPS etc.) of DOEs lieng about the "long-known rad health effects that have and are killiing DOE workers," etc., and the Airlie Conf in Dec. What a travesty of preordained dishonesty that was to posture for the politicians while having done 'damage control'. They had channeled the new DOE research money away from positive research (as done with many $Billions before that), with a only a small chance of eventually finding some constructive results in a decade or more - and that may be more by accident than intent. The "10-year plan" will succeed in rounding out the careers of many who were otherwise contributing to questions about the validity of the LNT model. We advised DOE and C!

ongress that if the money went through DOE ER it would have nothing to do with biology and medicine - and look what we have - crap "research" hitting cells with one alpha particle and announcing 'bystander effects!' - like how did we know that beneficial effects were promulgated from low doses for a century!?



<So your misinformation just parrots their disinformation. That hardly counts, and not really where we need to direct the challenges to the failure of scientific intergity.. Look to the BEIR Committees, etc., and don't expect much consideration for the "non-science" papers showing "greater effects than we thought" on behalf of the funding agencies from the Columbia "researchers," etc.>



<If anyone is actually interested in the early refs, let me know. We'll have this more documented in a month or so.>



<Regards, Jim>





-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

3050 Traymore Lane

Bowie, MD  20715-2024



E-mail:  jenday1@email.msn.com (H)     



-----Original Message-----

From: Muckerheide [mailto:muckerheide@mediaone.net]

Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 8:07 PM

To: Jacobus, John (OD/ORS); RadSafe

Subject: Re: LNT (Gangrene x-ray therapy)





 From: "Jacobus, John (OD/ORS)" <jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov>



> Jim,

> This is very interesting (after I was finally able to download and read

the

> pages.)  I guess this shows that if you have enough time and resources you

> can locate lots of arcane information like this.  I will definitely put a

> copy in my files of "old radiology stuff."



As usual, I "prove" it, you ignore it.  No surprise.



> I noticed that the doses were on the order of 150 r which is fairly low

for

> teletherapy. 

??



>Considering the infection to be like a tumor, I would suspect

> that as the infection was reduced and vascular flow returned, the

infection

> would not suffer from the anoxic conditions you see with tumor masses.  It

> would be interesting to have seen changes in immune response as the

> infectious mass, for lack of a better term, was reduced. Once again, we

see

> that rapidly growing cells are more susceptible to ionizing radiation.



As we know today, this isn't what's happening. You really should consider

reading those biology papers.  Though not expecting acceptance, at least you

wouldn't be so (consistently) wrong. :-)  But then you buy NCRP's

disinformation.



> And thankful for the developments in antibiotic therapy.



Of course.  NIH suppressed(es) radiation therapies for them!



> So, are you coming to the NCRP meeting?



Depends on how strong my stomach is. It's a lot like having to watch the

zookeepers feeding the hyenas.

. . .

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