[ RadSafe ] Re: uranium trioxide gas exposure patterns (was:...RE:Gardner Sellafield cluster)

[John Jacobus]

By the way, the article Mr. Surveyor refers to, "The
missed lessons of Sir Austin Bradford Hill,"
Carl V Phillips and Karen J Goodman, Epidemiologic
Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations 2004, 1:3 (4
October 2004), which is an on-line journal, is at
http://www.epi-perspectives.com/content/pdf/1742-5573-1-3.pdf

--- John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I read your comments with interest.  Could one make
> the conclusion that if the numbers are small, that
> one
> could not conclude there is a proof that of a
> beneficial radiation effect in this and other cases?
> 
> If not, why not?
> 
> 
> 
> --- Ivor Surveyor <isurveyor at vianet.net.au> wrote:
> > 
> > >James Salsman  quoted from a paper by  P.
> > Gustavsson, M. Talbäck, A. 
> > >Lundin, B. Lagercrantz,
> > >P.-E. Gyllestad, and L. Fornell in "Incidence of
> > cancer among
> > . . .
> 
> > I would like to make one other point,  The
> > assignment of a causal 
> > relationship in medicine is very difficult, and in
> > this process correlation 
> > is only one of many factors to be decided. Robert
> > Koch about 120 years ago 
> > addressed this problem.  As did Austin Bradford
> Hill
> > in a well known 
> > address to the Royal society of Medicine in 1965.
> > Recently Phillips and 
> > Goodman (Epidemiol Perspectives and Innovations
> > 2004;1:1-11)  make the 
> > point that the Bradford Hill criterion is not " a
> > cook book " recipe for 
> > causation.  Scientific judgment is required.  I
> > suggest that the balance of 
> > judgement is against a causal role for DU in human
> > disease.
> > 
> > Ivor Surveyor [ isurveyor at vianet.net.au ] 
> 

+++++++++++++++++++
"Embarrassed, obscure and feeble sentences are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure and feeble thought."
Hugh Blair, 1783

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


		
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