Re: 16th Anniversary of Chernobyl accident

[Tim <tstead@ntirs.org>]

Lest we not forget that many lives were saved due to

the increased vigilance of international aid agencies

sending doctors to the region that diagnosed and

treated some common illnesses that otherwise would

have been fatal...had it not been for Chernobyl.



I'm not saying that a nuke plant popping its lid will

have a net NEGATIVE loss of lives in every case, but

one could argue that this has occured with Chernobyl

thus far...



"Bethca aint gonna see dat anywhere"(sic) ;)



Tim



--- maury <maury@WEBTEXAS.COM> wrote:

> Bill, I imagine Jim Muckerheide. will respond to the

> questions you raise, but

> I'd like to insert a few thoughts of my own. I

> really hope that you will have

> the time to go through a lot of the reference

> material provided by Muckerheide.

> Those references will provide good answers. I have

> tried in good faith to read a

> lot of the literature on Chernobyl because the whole

> accident is so intimately

> associated with a gross abuse of science for

> political and monetary ends. Thus

> far I believe the only deaths attributed to the

> event were about 30 killed in

> the initial explosion and about 70 more who died as

> a direct result of the

> containment and cleanup efforts after the explosion.

> 

> The intensive follow-up studies by UNSCEAR led to

> the estimate in UNSCEAR Report

> 2000 of the 1800 thyroid cancers in youngsters. In

> addition, that numerical

> estimate is expected to grow a bit more, but to my

> knowledge, no cancer deaths

> have yet been found that can reasonably be

> attributed to the explosion or its

> aftermath. I'm confident that you and I would agree

> that surely it is possible

> that a few deaths have or will occur. But how might

> we single out and identify a

> few individual cancer cases in the US specifically

> attributable to one of the

> test shots in the Pacific?

> 

> A major problem in all of the work after Chernobyl

> has been the absence of good

> data in the former Soviet Union to permit before and

> after comparisons. Serious

> valid questions have been raised concerning the

> simple existence of Russian

> screening data prior to Chernobyl. In your very

> first reference, the authors

> cited before and after frequencies, but the "before"

> data are questionable. Then

> more detailed assertions are made such as, "... more

> aggressive at presentation

> ..." and so on; there is a problem with 'more

> aggressive than - compared with

> what?

> 

> Bill, the confounding of money, politics, and

> science with Chernobyl is simply

> humongous (if you will forgive my slang). It has

> been made into a giant money

> machine by means of a huge victim industry. The

> immediate surrounding

> governments have collected tremendous sums of money

> from the rest of the world

> for remediation, and so on. A variety of groups have

> been formed to collect

> money for the "victims" and their families. How much

> of the money gets beyond

> the administrative expenses of the groups is not

> known. Then you have further

> promotions by groups who simply wish to denigrate

> anything nuclear which

> produces childish slogans like "mobile Chernobyl"

> and tooth fairy projects.

> Years of scientific work by UNSCEAR scientists and

> technicians have concluded

> that there were about 100 fatalities.  But  these

> other groups who have obvious

> vested monetary and political (power) interests are

> claiming 30,000 fatalities,

> untold numbers of deformed children, and millions of

> people who are ill from

> radiation. I think you will agree that these latter

> groups seem interested in

> transporting a mobile Chernobyl straight into the

> land of the tooth fairies for

> all of the money and political support they can

> muster. And they do it on each

> anniversary of the event - especially on the 5, 10,

> and 15 year milestones. (See

> the Radsafe archives surrounding April-May 2001).  I

> think one of Muckerheide's

> references contains a detailed expose of some of

> these distortions.

> 

> Bill, at one point recently, two non-scientific

> agencies of the UN itself had

> joined the clamor for funds and assistance to remedy

> the horrifying Chernobyl

> disaster. This got so bad and so completely false

> that UNSCEAR finally lodged a

> formal protest with the Secretary General of the UN.

> Jeez! Talk about the right

> hand not knowing what the tooth fairies were up to

> .... Anyway, that foolishness

> was stopped. You might have noticed an earlier post

> about the upcoming 16th

> anniversary (26 April) of the Chernobyl explosion -

> it will be interesting to

> see what happens in the world press again this time.

> 

> Please forgive my hot air, but the Chernobyl episode

> has become a tremendous

> distortion of a serious scientific and engineering

> endeavor. Mistakes can be

> fixed, but dishonesty acquires a long life of its

> own.

> Sincerely,

> Maury Siskel               maury@webtexas.com

> ===========================================

> "R. William Field" wrote:

> 

> > Jim,

> >

> > I am not sure I accept your claim that there were

> no thyroid cancer related

> > deaths related to the Chernoby accident.  Did I

> read your post correctly?

> >

> > It is my understanding that approximately 1,800

> thyroid cancers have been

> > diagnosed in individuals who were children at the

> time of the accident

> > (could someone verify this estimate?).  It is also

> my understanding that

> > following Chernobyl there has been a higher

> incidence of differentiated

> > thyroid carcinomas which are much more aggressive

> than the common type of

> > thyroid cancer.  I  would expect that

> approximately 10 - 15% of all the

> > thyroid tumors would be classified as

> differentiated thyroid carcinoma.

> > Approximately 10% of differentiated thyroid

> carcinomas result in death

> >

> > A few papers of interest.

> >

> > World J Surg 2000 Nov;24(11):1446-9

> > Thyroid cancer in children of Ukraine after the

> Chernobyl accident.

> >

> > Rybakov SJ, Komissarenko IV, Tronko ND, Kvachenyuk

> AN, Bogdanova TI,

> > Kovalenko AE, Bolgov MY.

> > Department of Surgery, Institute of Endocrinology,

> 69 Vyshgorodskaya

> > Strasse, 254114 Kiev, Ukraineraine.

> >

> > The results of treatment of 330 children (< 14

> years) and adolescents (15-18

> > years) with thyroid cancer who were operated on at

> the Institute of

> > Endocrinology after the Chernobyl accident in 1986

> were analyzed. The number

> > of young patients increased after 1986 (1981-1985,

> 9 cases; 1986-1990, 37

> > cases; 1991-1995, 177 cases; 1996-1998, 116

> cases). Most of these children

> > and adolescents were younger than 8 years at the

> time of the accident

> > (84.2%). More than half of the children (58.1%)

> lived in areas receiving the

> > highest radiation exposure. These thyroid cancers

> developed after a short

> > latent period, were more aggressive at

> presentation, and expressed regional

> > (57.3%) or distant (14.5%) metastasis. Solid

> papillary cancers were present

> > in 93.1%. Coexisting thyroid conditions were

> common (thyroid hyperplasia,

> > 25.1%; nodular goiter, 18.8%; chronic thyroiditis,

> 10.2%). Most patients

> > were treated by total thyroidectomy with

> intraoperative visualization of

> > recurrent laryngeal nerves and parathyroid glands.

> When lymph node

> 

> -----------------------------------  snipped

> ---------------------------------------

> 

>

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