[ RadSafe ] Do better than John Snow's Work. Medical Ethics?

John Jacobus crispy_bird at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 18 20:53:25 CET 2005


Actually, you did not give the rad-sci(?) link.  Here
it is  http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/index.html

--- howard long <hflong at pacbell.net> wrote:
> Thank you for this serious response to my tongue in
> cheek proposal.
> It deserves a better answer than I can give, so I am
> including the rad-sci list in hopes that someone
> like Muckerheide will point out the retrospective
> studies already done.
>  
> I do fear that lawsuit for imaginary damage is the
> main obstacle to a properly controlled study.
>  
> Howard Long 
> 
> Gerald Nicholls <Gerald.Nicholls at dep.state.nj.us>
> wrote: 
> Howard Long wrote:
> 
> "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?"
> 
> It seems to me that Snow's work on the spread of
> cholera in 19th
> century London is far more scientifically impressive
> than the Taiwan
> study. Snow proposed that cholera was transmitted by
> contaminated water
> in 1849 (in conflict with the generally then held
> idea of inhalation of
> vapors) and was able to prove his theory in 1854
> during a particularly
> tragic outbreak of the disease. The authors of the
> Taiwan study have
> documented their observations and pointed out the
> need for further
> study, but not proved their case. One of
> recommendations is to design
> future experiments so that hormetic effects can be
> studied. 
> 
> You suggest a study in which you would give a
> population 0.4 Sv over 10
> years. If the population exposed was 10,000, so as
> to achieve the 4,000
> person Sv population dose estimated in the Taiwan
> study, and you had
> 10,000 matched controls, the researchers would have
> to track the health
> and radiation doses to 20,000 people over 10 years,
> a difficult and
> expensive proposition. And, you don't need to
> envision ambulance
> chasers and the like seeking to block this
> "science," you just have to
> look as far as you nearest review board and its
> resident medical
> ethicists. 
> 
> Doing the study retrospectively using available
> health and demographic
> data might be possible. It would also avoid the
> major ethical pitfalls,
> probably cost less and the results would likely be
> available in less
> than 10 years.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Gerald P. Nicholls
> NJ Dept. of Environmental Protection
> 609-633-7964
> gerald.nicholl at dep.state.nj.us
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+++++++++++++++++++
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort." Herm Albright

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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