Re: e-mail addresses, JCAHO, and the Tr

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Dr. Goldsmith,

I don't know whether I didn't make myself sufficiently clear, or you have a
different purpose in your response, but your response misses my point about
wasting public resources. If you had responded to the text of my comments it
would have limited misperceptions. > 

> Dear Radsafers:
>         I get a bit uncomfortable when scientists get involved in 
> what public funds should not be expended for; its not that they do not

Not all of us can hide behind being "scientists" to avoid responsibility for
the misuse of science and the misuse public funds for radiation protection.
Most of us who deal with implementing regulations and spending radiation
protection monies are not conducting "science". We mostly fail to apply
science to comment on regulations that we are then stuck with, no matter how
illogical and costly, that we must address. 

> have a stake in some positive decision.  What bothers me a bit is 
> the energy they put into saying that putting money into collecting 
> relevant data on real populations is "wasted". 

This misrepresents the original statement. I said funds SHOULD be used to
collect/verify relevant data on real populations. 

I also said that the "waste" is in the vastly greater costs for public
"radiation protection", eg, rad releases and rad waste management, to limit a
few mr/yr to <1 mr/yr, or equivalent, at costs passed thru to the public of
$100s Billion (not some $10s Millions for research), for no public health
benefit. (Plus of course funds for "research" that can not scientifically find 
valid results, pandering to and using public fears to justify "studies".
That's really a separate matter of defrauding the public.) 

>         Let us take a for instance: the effects of exposure of populations
> of residents near the Chernobyl reactor, and particularly the estimated
> 800,000 persons sent to try to control and clean up the mess caused by
> the fire and explosion.  Is it wasted effort to try to follow-up these
> populations, to try to identify biological indicators of exposure ?  

Absolutely not! Nor has it been stated or implied (as above). And such
research is strongly supported, with the caveat that the science and funding
not be simply manipulated by bureaucratic funding interests. 

> I have been involved in the relatively small fraction of these people who
> have immigrated to Israel, and I can tell you that the possible health 
> consequences of their experiences, 

What data indicates health consequences, at what doses? Have you communicated
with the Russian/international research projects on Chernobyl populations? 

>including the psycho-social impact is 
> of great importance to them.  

Of course "psycho-social impacts" are a direct product of fabricating public
fears without basis by those who use public fear to garner public funds and
bureaucratic authority and power without foundation. Dr. Sohei Kondo, in "Low
Level Radiation Health Effects" (1994) states that he was compelled to write
the book in hearing of the 400,000 abortions and the trauma of moving families 
due to exposures that are trivial when compared to the doses at which no
consequences were evident in the Japanese survivor population, especially for
in utero doses (even without recognizing the large influence of the high dose
rate to weapons-exposed populations vs. low dose rate exposures from
Chernobyl, or chronic exposures), and for the lack of adverse effect to other
populations exposed to very much higher doses than the general publics
surrounding Chernobyl. 

>The costs to some of the governments in 
> compensation and in relocation and in disruption of agriculture and 
> forestry is bringing these countries to the brink of insolvency.  

These costs are precisely the "wasted" monies in direct response to the
fabricated public perception of radiation health effects that cause massive
expenditures at levels of exposure that are many orders of magnitude less than 
demonstrable levels of any adverse health effect from radiation. Consider the
public health protections that could be made if such $100s Billions were not
wasted on "radiation protection" of no public health consequence. 

>Yet the 
> resources devoted to the efffective epidemiological study of these 
> populations are miniscule by comparison.  

Agreed. Research monies should be expended to study the Chernobyl populations
and others that can establish, question, or verify known radiation health
effects relationships. However, "epidemiology studies" are notoriously willing 
to "study" populations that can never demonstrate effects, at very high costs, 
while choosing to ignore significantly exposed populations that do not show
effects. 

Government agencies can seek $ Millions by conning gullible politicians and
creating public fear to do "studies" down to a few thousand people exposed to
"releases" from facilities at far less than 100 mr/yr, with no ability to
identify exposed groups, implying that a possible correlation could be found
when any competent statistical analysis can demonstrate that no correlation
could ever be found. Yet they don't study people exposed to 100s or 1000s of
times greater incremental radiation exposure in naturally-occurring or other
sources (including such explicit sources as radon spas, German water works
with radon >700,000 pCi/l, etc). They even spend time arguing that such
studies can not be valid - blatantly inconsistent with the technical basis for 
justifying studies of small populations to indeterminate doses sold to
gullible and technically illiterate politicians. > 

>         This might not be so discouraging if one could be
> persuaded that no more Chernobyl's will occur, but that leap of faith 
> doesn't quite come off.  

This is irrelevant to the point.

>At the same time, we do have a chance to add
> to our scant knowledge of health reactions from "low level"  exposures 

Knowledge is not "scant", it is massive, though the "inconvenient" data is
generally blatantly ignored! Substantial effort is being applied, too slowly,
to the data of the Chernobyl population; but more significantly to the several 
large cohorts of much more significant Russian worker and environmental
exposure populations (10s to 100s of rem), especially the Techa River and
Chelyabinsk populations! 

>and
> to even define some of the biological reactions at the cellular, organ, 
> person, and population levels.  

Such work has been done for over 60 years, and is getting done by serious
biology, with results generally proving adaptive repair mechanisms (the debate 
is on precise mechanisms rather than whether repair obviates the "linear"
nonsense (see UNSCEAR Jan 1994, approved Mar 1994), picking up from the
committed radiobiology work suppressed by the government bureaucracies as the
results become inconvenient. Eg, the Center for Human Radiobiology at Argonne. 
Set up to be "an immortal organization" for the life of the radium ingestion
population, it compiled all the radium ingestion population work in one place. 
The data, even substantially obfuscated by the scientists to satisfy the
funding bureaucracy, demonstrated 80 cancers in >4000 cases - many
symptom-selected, even exhumed - with zero cases at <1000 rad (use a QF=3 to
20 to convert to rem!) (See HPJ Vol 44 Suppl 1, 1983 from Intl Conf Lake
Geneva WI Oct 1981). 

Dr. Robley Evans observed at this meeting that the data continued to confirm
the result demonstrated (HPJ 1974 "Radium in Man"), that the linear response
is disproven by the data and competent science, (one measure is 1/200,000,000
for Gofman's linear model, 1/220,000 for the "full range" model and "between
these" for the BEIR (1972) linear model (BEIR V now closer to Gofman's 1972
junk science). This program was defunded by the bureaucrats in the 1980s with
thousands of cases, representing all recorded US cases first exposed from 1900 
to 1950, still alive! 

RERF working on the Japanese data feels the similar threat of defunding if
they make the lack of health effects below 50 rem evident. Many others have
had to examine the actual data through the limited public access RERF provides 
to document the actual dose-response relationships. (see papers by Shimizu,
Mine, Kondo, Hattori, Luckey, and others that document the lack of effects). 

Such government obfuscation and suppression affect the data from uranium
miners vs. radon, and many other sources of large individual and population
exposures, including medical exposure of healthy populations (see the papers
by Nobel Laureate Dr. Rosalyn Yalow, do you need sources?) 

Finally, many scientists, including even the bureacracy-selected BEIR and NCRP 
members, have indeed (timidly) acknowledged when pressed by the knowledgeable
science community that the science does not support massive public protection
costs that are being imposed, but they are constrained by bureacratic
retaliation. However, such statements and even language in the reports are
lost in the process the bureaucrats use to foster public fear and write
regulations and propose additional rquirements and costs for goevernment
programs. The failure to so acknowledge such truth is to be complicit in a
campaign to defraud the public for the benefit of the bureaucracy and its
massive sources of funds. Such actions by confidence men 

>"Those who do not learn from history...." 

Amen. In this case not learning from history is by malicious intent!

>         If "safe" as used in radsafe means what it usually does, then 
> people need to know that their real biological risks are kept low as well
> as  those for their families,  

That is a given, and except for a few cases per year, almost all from medical
misadministrations, people are kept very safe from unsafe radiation exposure.
In addition, people are kept "very safe" from totally safe levels of exposure, 
at massive cost. Even conservatively using linear models, the public
expenditure can be demonstrated to reduce <<1% of population dose to <<<1% of
population dose, which makes no difference to public health, even before
considering that scientific data proves that populations exposed to 10s to
100s of times have no adverse health effects (except potential 2nd trimester
foetal doses from the massively dose rates of x-rays at <10 rem). 

>and that their anxieties about the events
> they have experienced are taken seriously and rationalized by valid 
> information.  

Except for the use of "valid information", we who have spent our careers and
personal commitments to achieve public and occupational radiation protection,
and the government and institutions using radiation, with some exception in
the medical community, peoples anxieties and concerns have been taken very
seriously. 

>This requires more input from epidemiological analyses than 
> is usual in the regulations and in radiation risk assessment.

$100s Millions have been spent on radiation epidemiology, before but
especially since 1970, of which most substantial results have been suppressed
and ignored. The $10Million US Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study, of about 70,000
workers, completed in 1987, showed nuclear worker mortality at 74% of
non-nuclear shipyard workers (limiting hiding behind a "healthy worker
effect"). The study was never published; and never produced as a formal
report. It was "made available" by DOE with a 2-page press release in 1991 or
1992 after repeated complaint about suppressing these results. 

What about ignoring Sir Richard Doll and Peter Smith (Science 1981) reporting
that, although the 1950s report that British radiologists had 75% excess
cancer vs other medical counterparts, the British radiologists starting
practice after 1921 (when improved rad protection practices were implemented), 
had NO excess cancer relative to their medical profession counterparts, with
mean lifetime exposures estimated at 500 rem!? Also recognize that a great
many of the radiologists in practice before 1921 had received many thousands
of rem exposures in WW I service, like Dr. Marie Curie at the frontlines in
France (more than 20 years after starting her enormous exposures during the
work separating radium; returning to her work at the Curie Institute til her
death in 193? at age 64!) 

What about the High Background Radiation Area in China (Science 1980)?
including 5 years of individual dosimetry, even quantifying various organ
doses, with local radiochemistry, that shows no adverse effects from doses 3
tiimes background! 

There are hundreds of substantive epidemiological studies that are completely
ignored by those recruited by government to work on forming the basis for the
regulations and programs, and by those who desire to obtain public funds (or
extract private funds). It is imperative that such work be funded and
conducted, as long as it is focused on the knowledge and data that can
establish valid radiation dose and health results! 

The failure to honestly deal with "Radiation, Science, & Health", and to take
the science seriously, has resulted in massive public expenditures ($ 100s
Billions, just consider waste management programs and standards) for no public 
health benefits; not counting the cost of constraining benefits of nuclear
science and technology applications to the public in medicine,research, etc.
The basis for these government bureaucracies and results are to be reexamined. 

There are many more sources that need to be compiled. Such materials are being 
organized to support NCRPs reexamination of the basis for the linear
hypothesis;  and recommendations within HPS to initiate an effort to consider
the basis for radiation protection standards. I appreciate identifying any
such sources. You can note "Radiation, Science, & Health" (RSH), and note any
interest in RSH efforts and data. 

>               John Goldsmith, Epidemiology Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences
>                  Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva Israel

Regards, Jim Muckerheide