Re: NIH Incident

[mozley@darius.pet.upenn.edu (P. David Mozley, M.D.)]

The doctor does not have to be suffering from a case of venereal disease to
diagnose and treat it.  The issue has not been why pathological anxiety and
other symptoms of brain dysfunction were so palpable on the headline news
(CNN).  The questions in this forum have been related to how much of the
story this person has told have been verified.  If there were other
questions to be asked regarding the affected individual, they would most
appropriately address what to do about the brain dysfunction.  The surgeon
does not ask why the bullet is in the chest.  It is only important which
operation will be performed to deal with it.  Similarly, this person states
she can not sleep, has no appetite, is weepy all the time, can't
concentrate, can't stop obsessing over the incident, etc.  These are not
problems unique to womanhood.  This is a constellation of symptoms
manifesting brain disease, pure and (not so) simple.

Mozley


>I have been reading with interest the comments about the contamination
>victim's anxiety. Let me point out that, while we may regard the quantity of
>P-32 and its dose implications as medically insignificant and see the
>'deliberate' nature of the incident and the loss of control of regulated
>material as the salient features, none of us males in the discussion will
>ever have any idea what it is like to be pregnant, let alone pregnant and
>exposed to a potentially harmful substance, and are, therefore, uniquely
>unqualified to judge whether she should be fearful in this situation. (It is
>my personal obeservation that the majority of comments have been from male
>Radsafers.) It is not difficult to understand how Dr. Ma might find reason
>to be anxious about her health and that of her unborn child, even though our
>profession's best estimate is that no observable harm should be expected.
>The fact that she is an educated woman doesn't mean that her education
>included health physics; she may have received most of education about
>radiation from the same place as the rest of America: a popular press
>educated in science by Beekman's World. Alternatively, her education may be
>sufficient to understand how little we know about internal dosimetry for the
>fetus. While we may see her fear as unnecessary, her fear is still very real
>to her.
>
>It has been my experience that internal exposure incidents in the workplace
>generally involve small amounts of radioactive material and inconsequential
>doses, but the unusual nature of the contamination event triggers a strong
>response from management and the radiation protection staff. The victim
>usually doesn't understand that the staff's reaction is to the unusual
>incident, not the magnitude of the doses involved. Thus, the HP staff
>reaction can inadvertently create the anxiety in the victim concerning dose
>that we see as unwarranted. My question is: has the hoopla (NIH
>investigation, all the bioassay, NRC investigation, FBI investigation, press
>attention) created a sense of alarm that didn't need to exist? How can we
>deal effectively with investigating the events of the incident without
>upsetting the participants in the incident?
>
>Bob Flood
>Unless otherwise noted, all opinions are mine alone.
>(415) 926-3793
>bflood@slac.stanford.edu