Re: do we _need_ radiation?

[makay@reed.edu (Michael A Kay)]

A few years ago, there was a picture on the cover of Time mag. of the 
sec of the treasury sitting in a gold throne at Fort Knox. Dr. Don Luckey
of the University of Missouri Medical School Department of Biochemistry,
and the person who coined the term Radiation Hormesis, wrote to the government
to see if they would set up a labarynth room with walls, ceiling, and floor of
a few feet of gold for an experiment to see if radiation was necessary for
optimal functioning and growth of single celled organisms.

Needless to say, without the political pull of the Sec of the Treasury, we
were turned down cold. 

I agree that the experiment you describe is just begging to be done. Unfortunat-
ely, the number of mice that would be required to show a small deleterious 
effect from lack of ambient radiation is about the same that would be
required to show a deleterious effect from small positive doses of radiation.
In essence, it has to be a mega-mouse type experiment to yield results
at a scientific level of certainty (p < 0.1). 

When I was at the University of Missouri Research Reactor Facility, I routinely
irradiated pounds of tomato seeds in our 10 Kilocurie Cobalt-60 source at
levels from about 100 to 100,000 rads. Kits of seeds from all dosages along
with control seeds were made available to any group that wanted to do the
experiment. Time and time again the results were reported back to us with the
seeds in the first irradiated group being more productive, growing taller,
producing more leaves, setting more fruit, than the controls. These were
always referred to as anamalous results because they went against the
"Everybody knows that all radiation is harmful." myth.

There are two books by Dr. Luckey on Radiation Hormesis and Hormesis with
Ionizing Radiation that show the linear extrapolation from high doses
model does not fit the experimental data for plants, lower animals, mammals, and
for the limited data, humans. The inability of the "scientists" to accept
data that contradict their beliefs (almost as in religious beliefs, not
scientific beliefs) is hard to understand. But it is very real. The inadequacy
of the linear dose response model based on high doses is being accepted all
over the world before it is being accepted here. Of course, there are many
vested interests involved in clinging to the status quo long after the quo
has lost its status. Think of all the regulators, scaremongers, and others
who prey on public gullibility having to get real jobs.

Best of luck in finding funding for your experiment. I hope you can convince
the powers that be it is worth funding.

Michael Kay, ScD
makay@reed.edu