Re: Re[2]: UKRAINE CHERNOBYL AFTERMATH NEWS ON INTERNET (fwd)

["Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>]

I did not mean to down play the seriousness of the Chernobyl accident
in my previous post.  I was criticizing the propagation of unsubstantiated
claims about health effects.  Public heath is a serious business and
a great deal of harm can be caused by stress induced by claimed health
risks both real and false.  So it should be important to limit the
exposure of the public to false claims.

Yes people may be getting sick.  If there were a million people
in the immediate area of Chernobyl at the time of the accident
ten years ago, of the order of 100,000 of them will have died
by now without the accident.  A significant percentage of those will
have been cancer deaths.  It is very easy to create anecdotal
"evidence" that people died because of Chernobyl.  It is much
more difficult to prove it.

Are there any studies of Chernobyl out there in recognized, peer
reviewed journals?  I honestly don't know because I haven't
taken the time to look.  The stuff I've seen in the papers appears
to be anecdotal, and does not reference controlled studies.  Numbers
are pulled out of thin air like there are 1,000 times the number
of childhood thyroid disease as before the accident.

Numbers like that make me skeptical.  If I remember right the leukemia
rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors was only doubled.  I'm
sure someone out there will correct me if that is wrong.

Dale Boyce
dale@radpro.uchicago.edu