Re: de minimus -Reply

[William Prestwich <prestwic@mcmail.CIS.McMaster.CA>]

Dear Joyce,
	Your point is well taken and not silly at all. The lack of
precise usage (and I am frequently guilty) can be at the root cause
of some of our problems. For example, the human radiation experiments
generally under discussion were NOT human radiation experiments-they were 
tracer studies. This purposeful distortion is one of the semantic traps
that the neo-Luddites have used to advantage so often. Another is the
statement that I have so often heard quoted to the effect that it is 
scientifically proven that there is no safe level of radiation. The most 
precise reply to this is codswallop. We have been trapped by our 
development of continuous risk estimates. The point is that safe is in 
this context a binary, or logical concept. A thing is either safe or it
is not safe. Safe and dangerous are complementary. Something that is not
safe is dangerous. This oft uttered pronouncement is equivalent to "any 
level of radiation is dangerous", to which I vehemently reply-balderdash.
This is not a criticism of the LNT, but the again purposeful imprecision 
which equates a binary and unscientific concept of safe with an absolute 
zero risk.
Bill Prestwich.