Re: Error OLD X-RAY SHOE-FITTING MACHIN

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Al Tschaeche wrote:

> FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV wrote:
> > 
> > The nicest summary of the shoe fitting fluoroscope I've ever seen was in
> > the Health Physics Society Newsletter June 1996 p6 written by Dade
> > Moeller. 
>
> If hormesis is real, wouldn't it be  a good thing to do a study of all
> of the people who used the fluroscopes to see if they are healthier than
> those who didn't?  Who would have money for such a (useless perhaps)

I lost my dosimeter!?  :-)   (It's an untenable study, and who could say
prostate cancer isn't affected?) 

But there is a case of wondering about the hysteria/costs for 15 mr/yr cleanup 
when there's no indication of interest in pursuing potential problems from
this source (when we are spending >$100 million on the non-problem at just
Hanford, much less other sites. But public fears can be fostered and $$ can be 
made at Hanford (and other sites - wasn't there just recently an announcement
of more jobs with more $billions in another cleanup program here?) 

> exercise?  By the way, whatever has happened to the idea that a study
> should be done of the thousands of Navy, and other, people who had
> radium stuck up their noses?  

It's the 560,000 to 2.1 million children (prelim CDC data, I think the upper
end has been revised up) who had this procedure (est 2,000 R local/treatment
series; 200 R to sections of brain and other structures - from failing memory, 
there's data available for anyone who wants it) that should be being pursued. 

An early prelim study of a little less than 1000 treated adults showed
indications of brain cancer and other effects; but a European study showed no
effects, BUT with doses about 1/6 those in the US (throwing fear into rad
science policy).  The issue about the military group is that the "Human
Radiation Experiment" group refused to consider them experiments, being the
only group that met the criteria for notification, etc. But recent report
based on the Groton Ct Dr's journals has confirmed it with a statement (by the 
Navy?) that "we can no longer deny" that these were human experiments. 

The "bioethicist" Chair of O'Leary's HRE campaign is at Johns Hopkins; and
Johns Hopkins is a central agent in doing radium treatments on children, and
not just for indications of adenoid problems, but wholesale by the busload of
taking shildren from their classrooms (recent info has indicated her
involvement with JH Pub Affairs working on 'damage control' about this work
last year. (Sen Lieberman, CT, with hearings, instigated the CDC to pursue
this; unfortunately the report in HPJ on this got no interest from HPS!?)
Johns Hopkins is also home to Samet and Howe, speaking of conflicts. 

Children with continuing indications of problems received multiple series of
treatments. Our "radiation research" policy people have known this for a long
time; but $100 million for studing Hanford doses is more in line with policy
objectives of maintaining public support for massive spending.  

>Also a study of the Taiwan people who have
> been living in cobalt-contaminated condos for the last 10 years or so? 

Work has been going on for months oriented to the dosimetry. I don't know how
the 'health effects' will it be managed. Hopefully _not_ by getting US funds
from DOE or NCI to fund govt-approved 'researchers' that can only find
positive effects, as with IARC, Russia, RERF, even efforts in China through
NCI. 

> Seems like we could find jobs for several hps for these studies.  

But there are so many more "jobs" in cleaning up dust in the desert! While
killing the golden goose. Getting paid well by the shovelfull for digging your 
own, and society's, grave. All to get/keep current funding, our children will
have the wars in the next century over oil, food and other resources, and face 
real environmental degradation, as the conflicts of the developing aspirations 
of the growing, urbanizing, populations of the world collide with constraints
on cost-effectively getting the energy, food, and environmental protection
that must come from using nuclear energy and many nuclear technologies,
including food irradiation, etc.  that are explicitly constrained by the LNT
and research restriction policies of US federal agencies and the profession
and industries who are well paid, and don't want to rock the boat. (OTOH, look 
where 20 years of this is getting you recently.) 

When will we even get to do the real biological and medical science by
changing radiation protection research policy in order to allow science to
follow the thousands of research results that indicate stimulatory effects of
radiation in biology and epidemiology to be investigated for applying
beneficial effects, (including the Japanese medical work on using low-dose
radiation to suppress existing tumors through immune system response, and to
result in 90% 5-year survival instead of 36% 5-year survival in Hodgkins
lymphoma). Even nuclear medicine is suffering from the years of accepting
large regulatory costs to reduce mrem while patients and practioners are using 
and finding no effects from many rem procedures and routine annual exposure of 
practioners. (My Tl-201 stress test was 20 mr/hr external, affecting a "Civil
Defense" instrument at 30 feet, continuing for days; the brochure says 1
million procedures/year, no effects. Does anybody get a faint odor here?) 

Radiation research policy suppresses work on negative results; as it
suppressed work at Oak Ridge in the 60s, Norm Frigerio through the 1970s, and
suppressed research on uranium miners to clarify doses and responses; and
suppressed following the massive evidence and rejection of proposals to do
confirmatory work in biology, biochemistry, and nutrition,  by Don Luckey in
the late 70s and 80s, and other biochemists and biologists. And ignored the
other great _scientists_ (of HP and elsewhere) in the physicists like Robley
Evans, Lauriston Taylor, Bernie Cohen, Harald Rossi, and Frigerio, the
biologists, Gunnar Walinder, Zbigniew Jaworowski, Sohei Kondo, and MDs, Victor 
Bond, Marshall Brucer,  etc, etc, etc. (See, eg, Walinder and Jaworowski from
UNSCEAR and ICRP about how data was not considered and work not pursued by the 
controllers of UNSCEAR, ICRP, etc). NCRP acted to constrain reporting of data, 
and reporting of selected data, in UNSCEAR 1994.) 

Consider also the Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study (Matanoski, Johns Hopkins,
$10M for 10 years; has had new DOE funds for a year, still no report, busy at
rework, now with Samet (from nowhere) as the new Head of Johns Hopkins
epidemiology (bringing gov't funds)?? Also the failure of Art Upton, _Chair of 
the NSWS Technical Panel_,  to consider NSWS in BEIR V, of which he was chair
("it wasn't published", hmmm...  used RERF 'unpublished' work, that itself
disagreed with other presentations of the RERF data (see Kondo, Shimizu, and
others. 

And consider that this NSWS _best_ worker data (the only good dosimetry, with
minimal confounding and internal exposures and failure to wear dosimetry among 
the weapons plant workers and researchers, etc etc), with 70,000 carefully
matched nuclear and non-nuclear shipyard workers, were _not_ included in the
IARC 'study' to compile "_all_ the worker studies" resulting in "the best
assessment" (and if this is the best?!) to create a "linear response", which
comes from only one cancer (leukemia) with _no_ effect except for 6 observed
vs 2.8 expected at >40 rem!  Without this data point (6 deaths) the other 113
leukemia deaths show _no_ response, except possibly a slightly negative trend
(see the plot of the IARC data in Mario Schillaci's article in the LANL
Science #23 1995 report to see the ludricrous presentation of the data that I
presented in the 9/95 NN article. Note that at the NCRP meeting Gilbert
carefully did not report that the study showed a linear response, but Sinclair 
summarized that "it shows the linear response" (_the BEST evidence of a linear 
response at low doses_?? -- while ignoring the data). 

And all of this this is no "secret" since the many people involved (not most
HPs) and others have talked about these real losses in research programs and
people losing funding and tenure and nice appointments and honors, at many
meetings for many years (though in the hallways and not at the podium), and in 
the pages of the HPS Newsletter for 30+ years. It is courageous of many who
are so dependent to have spoken out so strongly and frequently, at great
personal cost; and the many others who say so only in the most careful and
deferential though critical way, sometimes only reading 'between the lines' in 
the face of their funding agencies and their grant controlling supporters. 

By the way, this research and work to provide human benefits are where the
real jobs of the future are, as thousands of new functions and facilities
provide the role for HP and radiological engineering/design to achieve
appropriate balance in costs and benefits, in assuring actual safety and
health, (instead of paperpushing and ALARA, and making nuclear and radiation
science and technologies objects of fear, "making jobs", and uneconomic
"losing jobs".  

Looking around now, the swing to "losing" has overtaken the effect of "making" 
by these methods. Consider the many discussions here about jobs and tasks that 
add massive costs (some rad protection-direct, but mostly through the effect
on other functions, from researchers to maintenance workers, to building
unnecessary storage space, and low-level-waste designs sufficient to hold the
world's most dangerous and deadly bacteria), and even to directly eliminate
nuclear technologies by ratcheting up costs and switching technologies by
"responding to public perceptions" (while creating those public perceptions),
as though that is the mission of these jobs. 

This is not limited to just the science of the LNT, but as many have stated,
(eg Marvin Goldman as HPS President in the Feb 95 Newsletter; and the HPS
Position Statement on risk by 5 HPS Presidents -- and we can be sure that Dr.
Otto Raabe the incoming President won't disagree --  though the statement is
pretty weak yet in the face of the political pressure from the vested
interests), even with the LNT we are spending $$Billions to reduce exposures
that are <<1% of the _variation_ in background, to <<<1%, while no evidence
can be found for adverse radiation effects at multiples >10 times background. 

This is not to mention medically-exposed persons, and the study of radium dial 
painters with no effects below 1000 rad, (another program killed by DOE
starting in 1983), and then with only a few bone cancers and nasal carcinomas
above 1000 rads, with NO OTHER adverse effects (except a slight increase in
breast cancer in the young women who worked also at studio desks exposed to
luminous paints for hours/day). 

Note also that the SMR for the dial painters was significantly LOWER for 20
years following initial exposure. 

Yet we treat radium as a (costly) _threat_ at 5 pCi/l and spend $billions for
meaningless "cleanup" of "contamination" (beyond the justified,
cost-effective, effort to readily eliminate significant inventories by simply
burying). 

I'd like to hear from more of those who want to support the RSH mission to
cause objective scientific re-examination of the technical bases for the LNT,
AND to change current invalid and public policy and its massive costs for NO
public health and safety benefits, to show some concern for the taxpayer and
ratepayer and patient (and your children) if not for the profession. 

> Al Tschaeche

Thanks Al.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com
Radiation, Science, and Health