Re: Helicobacter pylori

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Thank you Dr. Siegel. Note that while it's entertaining, it's also distressing 
to see the general lack of knowledge about radiation and health effects. Then
consider that some in HP are then "explaining" such radiation health effects
to the public! 

Education on radiation effects and biology in curriculums under Federal agency 
funding/direction for >20 years, since "fear of radiation" became government
mantra for funding and regulatory authority. Knowledge of people like Dr.
Brucer, and Norm Frigerio, and Robley Evans, and Bernie Cohen, and Wade
Patterson, and Leonard Sagan, and Jerry Cohen, and Zbigniew Jaworowski, and
Gunnar Walinder, and Victor Bond, and Lauriston Taylor, and Sohei Kondo, and
Myron Pollycove, and, ...and hundreds with knowledge radiation biology,
medicine, and science, have been systematically denigrated (seen as threats to 
the "radiation protection mission") by the Fed agencies and their well-funded
rad protection "policy" bodies. 

Many "believe" that low radiation doses are harmful, and have so little basic
science  training and experience (reading regs and BEIR reports for
"technical" training instead) that they only BELIEVE, and can't use data or
science. But "they vote", so in a democracy, the truth also has one vote. But, 
new initiatives, esp HPS! its new policy statement and related efforts are
making changes. HPS and others societies must dust off the literature ignored
for 30 years on radiation effects, and work suppressed, along with the
explicit new biology, slowly from being well-suppressed by funding agencies. 

The few saying the emperor has no clothes are being heard. HPS is taking back
responsibility from the destroyers of programs and careers of scientists,
managers, and HPs who dared to speak up in any substantial ways. Many are
getting up and saying aloud what could only say in the hallways for years. 

Those who don't know the data and the science should look more carefully at
the message and the messengers. From Kondo, to Jaworowski, to Walinder, to
UNSCEAR 94, the potential world of a productive and constructive use of
radiation for human benefit, still needing fundamental HP and rad protection,
but with responsible standards and creative, managerial solutions, not blind
minimization of radiation at any cost to the detriment of benefits to society
in the use of radiation. There are many new opportunities to be developed,
instead of reductions and cutbacks and layoffs. 

Anyone interested in supporting such new initiatives, contact people in HPS
like Bob Thomas, Al Tschaeche, Bill Mills, Wade Patterson, Joe Alvarez, Fritz
Seiler, and others, who will work with scientists and analysts in other
societies, from ANS to ACNP/SNM, AAPM, etc., and with the science contributors 
from Europe to Japan and hopefully China where real confirmatory work in
biology, medicine and epidemiology is actually being done. (This is as opposed 
to the US where the only work supported is where public fears can be fostered, 
and no potential effects can be found, to support massive gov't "cleanup"
funding by the local publics and their representatives - while 500,000 to
2,000,000 children exposed to nasal radium applications [at 2000 rad local,
200 rad to the brain, except for children who had 2 or 3 treatment series
instead of only one] are NOT being studied, or even notified, nor are the
military airmen and submariners who were the subject of "human radiation
experiments" while a "Fed case" is made about use of tracers in nutrition
studies ?? ). 

(I must note also that I have directly experienced some medical doctors, who
are not familiar with the data and evidence (which is intentionally NOT
readily available and used in education), who are as bad about advising people 
about radiation and its consequences as untrained HPs, or John Gofman for that 
matter!) 

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com
=================================
> The following selected references (by no means is this a complete list) may
> help some of you understand what this is all about.  It is somewhat
> entertaining to watch non-physician health physicists speculate about the
> merits of a diagnostic test that involves a substance they have been taught (or
> have been teaching) is of great danger!!
> 
> Barry A. Siegel, M.D.
> Division of Nuclear Medicine
> Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
> 510 S. Kingshighway Blvd.
> St. Louis, MO 63110
> PHONE:  (314) 362-2809
> FAX:  (314) 362-2806
> INTERNET:  siegelb@mirlink.wustl.edu
> ********************************************************************************