Re: do we _need_ radiation?

[John Goldsmith <gjohn@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>]

On Wed, 15 Mar 1995, Michael A Kay wrote:

> 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
> 
I believe that Dr. Rex Huff when he was at the Donner Laboratory did some 
work on this problem and gave some sort of report in 1953-1955 at one of 
the Clinical Research Meetings in Carmel CA. Look for it in library.
                  John Goldsmith,  Gjohn@bgumed.bgu.ac.il