[ RadSafe ] Healthy Worker Effect - Test Time?

[howard long]

The Taiwan "Study" (J Am Phys & Surg 9:1, pp6-11) is at least as impressive as was John Snow's observation of more disease on one side of a London street than the other having a different water supply.This at least calls for a test, "taking off the pump handle", exposing another population to 0.4 Sv over 10 years, to reproduce very low cancer and fetal abnormality rates..
 
Are ambulance chasers like the TV lawyers soliciting anyone with or without trouble who ever was near a brake lining (asbestos), had heart trouble (aspirin family), etc, ready to block this science?
 
Howard Long
 
 
 John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com> wrote:
I agree, but I misread your comments. 

What you suggest is the what is usually done, or
should be done. However, that is often not. There
was a recent "study" of people who lived in apartments
in Taiwan that were made with Co-60 contaminated
steel. The comment was that the cancer rate of these
individuals compared to the general population was
low. Again, there are probable a number of
confounding factors that enter into the statistics,
and the best way to do the study would be to use a
cohort of apartment dwellers in buildings without the
contaminated steel. Further, if you look at the
Japanese atomic bomb studies, the cohort is those who
probably received little or not radiation exposure,
but were in the cities at that time.

http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq8

--- John_Sukosky at dom.com wrote:

> I agree that since many factors differ between the
> worker
> population and general population, interpretation of
> these
> results is limited to calling it a "healthy worker
> effect".
> 
> That's why I asked why a comparison cannot be made
> to
> non-nuclear power plant workers employed during the
> same
> period in order to account for the degree of the
> healthy
> worker effect. Wouldn't that adjust for the major
> confounders between the worker population and
> general
> population? That way we may be better able to
> observe
> an obvious benefit or harm due to ionizing
> radiation.
> 
> John M. Sukosky, CHP
> Dominion
> Surry Power Station
> (757)-365-2594 (Tieline: 8-798-2594)