RE: " U.N. Studies Chernobyl Aftermath "

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

Jim,

I tend to agree with Bill.  If people trust you, they will believe you.  Not

in the facts you present, but in admitting we do not know for sure.  Saying

"Studies say that this level of exposure will cause this number of cancers,"

we should be saying "While studies show that this level of exposure MAY

produce this many cancers, we do not know how accurate this is because our

numbers come from . . ." 



I do agree with your statements about how the public thinks every trivial

event is a disaster.  I blame this in part on the news and with society's

belief that no pain, no mistakes and no inconveniences should exist in their

world.



"Get a grip on it!"



-- John 

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist 

3050 Traymore Lane

Bowie, MD  20715-2024



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



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

From: Jim Muckerheide [mailto:jmuckerheide@cnts.wpi.edu]

Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 5:07 PM

To: William V Lipton; maury

Cc: Franta, Jaroslav; Radsafe (E-mail)

Subject: RE: " U.N. Studies Chernobyl Aftermath "





Hi Bill,

 

Unfortunately your philosophy can't be sustained. It goes against everything

a technological society knows and does. It's essentially a theological

position.

 

"Trust, not dose" leads you to promise perfection and be guilty and culpable

when we aren't perfect. Actually because the philosophy is so extreme, it's

even based on promulgating the lie that any dose is too much (any "error" is

a failure), so even trivial events are "disasters" (as you see from some of

the medical misadministrations that do/will/must occur). The result becomes

to withholding public benefits to satisfy a biased premise (that rewards

only those who promulgate the false perception of public "risk").

 

But in the real world, low doses aren't significant (the level is critical

to the "debate" since even of the LNT were true there would be no

significance to doses that are lost within the variations of background

radiation.) But in biology and hazards terms, we have succeeded in being

essentially "perfect" because we don't expose people to undue adverse

effects (with minimal hazards and risks in moderately high doses from

medical therapies), with few/negligible actual consequence "errors." Yet we

have misled the public/politicians to expend millions of times more public

resources on an activity that has essentially NO adverse effects (all

occupational PLUS public deaths of about 2/year over decades), while great

hazards and consequences (thousands of deaths/year) effect specific workers

and the public from activities that could be ameliorated at a cost of a few

dollars to a few hundred dollars/year per death avoided.

 

Since most people in this business know this with certainty, I'm surprized

there isn't more consideration of the moral dilemma. OTOH, I've gotten more

recognition of that from people who chose to leave the profession, with

disappointment in the lack of attention (if not outright hostility) among

their peers and superiors in thier jobs and professional societies

(especially also in academics!?) I wonder about people like Robley Evans or

Harald Rossi appearing at the gate of heaven, then seeing Ed Radford, K.Z.

Morgan etc. facing a life's personal culpability for the consequences of

their actions!? :-)

. . .

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