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Leave me out of this!!
To the list:
Somehow, in simply pointing out that my papers were published in
peer-reviewed journals, I have become associated with the ongoing dispute between the
radiation hormesis supporters and their detractors. How this happened is
possibly explained by the fact that my posting is reproduced over and over as Long
and Jacobus go at each other.
I do, however, want to comment on two remarks from Dr. Long that also keep
recurring on my screen as these remarks come around on a seemingly daily
basis. The first is:
"However, the spin from the editor who refused rebuttle of Dr Barrish's LNT
assumptions,
gave bogus fear to the flying public, including my patients."
My reaction to this direct quote from Long is the following: Long previously
stated that the editors of the Journal of the American Board of Family
Practice rejected a letter to the editor from him that would have commented on my
paper. As stated in my original message, I had nothing to do with this
rejection. The quote reproduced above implies that the editor produced some "spin"
which "gave bogus fear" to readers of that journal. Factually, there was no
editorial comment on the paper either before or after by the editors of that
journal. The paper appeared, period.
So what Dr. Long is actually saying is that the editors of JABFP, by not
allowing him to comment on the paper in print, allowed my discussion of LNT to
give "bogus fear" to the flying public. I'm not sure how much of the flying
public reads the JABFP, but a reading of the paper will show I made the
statement "the risk of very low-dose radiation remains unproved and might, in fact,
be nonexistent" (page 196). This followed a paragraph discussing the
controversial use of LNT in making quantitative risk estimates. I later prefaced any
risk estimates with a warning that the LNT model was assumed.
And if a possible increased fatal cancer risk of 1.00001 (page 197) is
fearful, I compared it to driving 3,000 miles in an automobile, spending 1 hour in
a canoe, or riding 130 miles on a bicycle! (page 197). I'm sorry if some of
Dr. Long's patients (who apparently read JABFP) were frightened by that
comparison. I trust he helped them overcome these fears.
Also, Long writes:
"I hope Dr. Barish will update his article, as he seems inclined to do
(below)."
I don't see how he infers my intentions to update that paper from anything I
posted here on Radsafe. The conclusion of my JABFP paper states that the
risk to ordinary travelers is "minuscule" (page 199) Why would I update it?
The paper also does, quite correctly, remind readers that there are
recommended fetal exposure limits published by the NCRP and ICRP that might be
exceeded by airline crewmembers or very-frequent flyers. It references a
calculation by the United States Federal Aviation Administration in which the authors
(Friedberg, et. al.) state an increased risk of 1.0003 associated with the 1
mSv dose limit during pregnancy. I do remind the readers (remember they are
family-practice physicians, this is not a public magazine) that "current
statistics show that about 600 of every 10,000 children are born with abnormalities
that have serious health consequences." (page 198) Would the possible 0.03%
increase implied by the FAA use of LNT cause "bogus fears"? Apparently Long
thinks so. If that's the case, let him convince the NCRP and ICRP to raise
the recommended dose limit for pregnant women. I assume the FAA and its
European counterparts will follow those recommendations.
Please, gentlemen, if this thread continues, snip me out of the future
postings!
Robert Barish, Ph.D., CHP
_robbarish@aol.com_ (mailto:robbarish@aol.com)