Re: BEIR VII Committee Formed

[muckerheide@highway1.com (James Muckerheide)]

Donald A. McClure DX-DO P940 7-3243 wrote:
> 
> I hope Mr. Cohen's data and papers can be considered during this go around.
> I someone working on this issue?
> 
> don
> 
>  |Donald A. McClure,  Los Alamos National Laboratory,  DX-DO|
>  |Los Alamos, NM 87544, Voice 505/667-3243, FAX 505/665-3359|

Don, BEIR VII is low-LET, BEIR VI (in progress) is high-LET (incl
radon). However, in the BEIR VII 'workshop' last spring Warren Sinclair
made gratuitous pejorative remarks about Cohen's study anyway in the
opening remarks (again, this was not a BEIR VI meeting!) Jay Lubin
announced later in the 'working session on health effects' (though again
not the subject of BEIR VII) that Cohen's work 'had been refuted'. When
pressed afterward for a reference he referred to the 1994 paper about
"weaknesses in ecological studies" that neither applies to nor addresses
any of Bernie's work then to date; nor did Lubin reflect his further
response in the Feb 95 HPJ paper to these issues. When asked about
Cohen's Feb 95 response to these issues, he dismissed them and walked
off. Note that only a couple of members would even 'care' about the
issue when politicized. Later (after the workshop) he also said to a
statistician in a Federal agency who said he was 'looking into the
validity of Cohen's work', that Cohen's work had been determined to be
not statistically valid, that such questions need not be addressed by
the agency; and that 'he (Cohen) would be destroyed' (by BEIR/NCRP).

Some correspondence has indicated some hope that a member or two of
these groups would stand up to consider the truth, but most seem to
expect that the majority will again not stand up for the issues (after
all, its not in the best interest of their programs and gov't funding,
nor does it directly affect them). Sinclair and others in leadership
will again get to any recalcitrant committee members personally. (Others
on the Committee, even the Chairman, may not even know.  Note that
Zimbrick resigned from BRER. He had indicated beforehand that had been
unable to get an open objective process to examine the scientific issues
establshed. He couldn't fight Sinclair's control of the agenda and who
and what would be allowed in the review and authorship. 

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com