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

[John Jacobus]

I guess the thing that has always bothered me is that
there is no control matching between the general
population and the irradiated apartment dwellers. 
Even in this country you see differences in cancer
distributions between more and less densely populated
areas, age, sex, etc.  Is it possible most apartment
dwellers are under 50, which would bias the data?

The numbers seem fast and loose.  Of course, being
skeptical is not permitted.  You must accept whatever
is fed to you.

--- 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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