Conspiracy to suppress the shipyard stu

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Dan Strome wrote:
 
> Jim Muckerheide wrote:
> 
> > DOE suppressed the evidence of the Shipyard Workers Study, including 
> its inclusion in the IARC study; and Hanford gets $100 million on "dose 
> reconstruction" and "health effects research" from the release of 
> (8-day) I-131 designed with a "public outreach program" with the sole 
> purpose of promulgating public fear. After all, Hanford gets $1.5 
> Billion/year to "clean up" the site. They tell the Congress that they 
> are protecting Oregon, without pointing out that radioactivity down the 
> river is millions of times less than the operating site, and billions of 
> times less than natural radioactivity down the river. 
> 
> I offer my views on why the conspiracy theory is unsupported.  

Fortunately we have parties to the events, other than the LNT campaigners,
that have records of the facts on the process and results, at the time and
subsequently. 

> 1.  DOE did not suppress the shipyard study (Matanoski, G.M.  Health 
> Effects of Low-Level Radiation in Shipyard Workers. DOE/EV/10095T2.  
> Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy; 1991.).  All 460-some odd 

As Dan knows, it was complete in 1987, chaired by Upton, and not included in
BEIR V, quite intentionally. The 1991 "release" was a 2-page press release on
a contractor report that didn't even have a DOE number (4 years later). BEIR V 
didn't include it because "it was not published". Note however, that BEIR V
included other "non-published" data. DOE constrained its publication (how
actively is to be determined). (When asked by Pollycove about why it wasn't
published in 1994, Pennington said "well, it wasn't in the contract", but the
Oak Ridge contract admins will tell you about the great frustration of trying
to get Matanoski to get the report published to complete the contract, which
dragged interminably. They were not privey to the communications from DOE.) 

And, as Dan also knows, it is still "not published", although with great
committed effort it was eventually included in UNSCEAR 1994 and can be
referenced that way, but the presentation of the results were changed to
obscure the data after the UNSCEAR report was approved in March 1994. 

Note that, again because "it is not published", the data were able to be
intentionally not included in the charter to the IARC (by DOE) to review "all" 
the US, Canada, and UK worker studies, even though this is a much more
rigorous, high-quality, and much less confounded set of worker data than the
early weapons plants. There are 70,000 very carefully matched controls of a
700,000 worker population, in a study costing $10M over 10 years (external
Co-60 gammas with formal badging and recordkeeping compared to the Hanford,
Oak Ridge, etc in chemical environments, with internal contamination, of
people who often were lax in wearing their badges, etc, and for whom earlier
work histories are generally ignored - we know that the workers abused badging 
requirements from KZ Morgan's own own vociferous complaints to Oak Ridge and
AEC mgmt, and the JCAE (and anybody else who would listen), about not having
enough authority over the workers, and lack of compliance, in the 60's and
early 70's. (He finally got an effective "hearing" in the post-Watergate
Congress used to argue for the breakup of the AEC and JCAE, supported by
research interests reacting to plans to cut much of the biology research
justified by the need to set occupational exposure limits)! 

> pages of it are readily available from NTIS (National Technical 
> Information Services (NTIS), 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, VA 
> 22161-0002; (703) 487-4650; Phone orders accepted (VISA/MC/AMEX); 
> http://www.ntis.gov/).  Scientific journals do not publish studies of 
> this size.  

Any study "of this size" requires a paper to be written. With $10 million,
$5000 would normally been found to write a paper, even if . See, eg, JAMA,
JNCI, BMJ, for papers that report on "large" studies. :-) 

>I have a copy of a memo dated October 17, 1991, from Paul 
> Ziemer, PhD, CHP, then Assistant Secretary of Energy for Health Safety 
> and Envrionment (EH-1), distributing a press release on the study to 94 
> people in DOE and its contractors.  

Oh, the "press release" form of "publication"! 4 years later, under pressure,
while still being called "unpublished" in DOE and by its supporters, including 
Upton, the Chair of the study TAP. (He also said in a 1994 public meeting that 
"it was too long ago to remember" why it was not published or included in BEIR 
V.  :-)  

> This does not appear to be an effective strategy for a cover-up.

Pretty effective for Upton/BEIR and DOE; and still today said to be "not
published" and therefore not included in the (dishonest) IARC report which
Sinclair reports as "the best data" (even though the study authors no longer
will). 

Obviously there is no "coverup" of having conducted the study, or even the
results, as long as those results can be kept from being considered in the
evaluation of low-dose radiation health effects, which has been successful for 
the last 10 years. 

> 2.  I've examined the shipyard study.  It contains much discussion of 
> its weaknesses.  The one really remarkable feature of the study is that 

Any study has "weaknesses", but when you consider the very few, extremely
poor, "studies" that are used as "supporting" the LNT, it is unbelievable that 
all high-quality studies get "dismissed" by the multi-$100 Million LNT
campaign. Like Cohen, or Frigerio, or any of the hundreds of substantial
studies of medical, radium, x-ray populations, vs the few (essentially
non-existent), highly confounded, manipulated analyses (called "best studies") 
that are claimed to support the LNT. BEIR V relies almost entirely on RERF, an 
extremely poor, confounded, study for considering low-dose exposure limits. As 
Walinder and others report, even this data is then manipulated (and secret - a 
BEIR V biostatistician reports that they could not get access to the
unmanipulated data for analysis). 

This why numbers of UNSCEAR and ICRP, and now some NCRP and BEIR, members are
beginning to report the processes that overtly acted to ignore and
misrepresent data to maintain the LNT. (See, eg, Gunnar Walinder's book "Has
Rad Protection Become a Health Hazard?" He reports on, eg, UNSCEAR 1977 not
considering Frigerio's study. Frigerio also had AEC/DOE constraints on
publishing the 1973 report and the killing of the AEC low-dose radiation
project contracted to comply with the court's Calvert Cliffs decision on NEPA
compliance. He was able to present it in a Proceedings form only by attending
the 1976 IAEA conference on Natural Radiation Effects (see BEIR III for simply 
dismissing it without considering the original complete analysis and report). 

> it has one of the *unhealthiest* control groups in the history of 
> occupational epidemiology (SMR = 1.11).  This is clearly an uncontrolled 

Funny, the SMR in the 1991 report was 1.00 for total mortality (0.76 for
comparing nuclear and non-nuclear workers). Has another "analysis" has been
introduced by the new work being done by Matanoski?  (Right, the contract was
eventually extended in about 1994, and we still have no published results, but 
there's "new analysis" going on. See Walinder about how "new analysis" is used 
to explain away data that contradict the LNT. He states that "this isn't
fradulent manipulation" because they are just convinced that the LNT is right
so they must adjust the data to fit.) 

The results in Canada power plant workers are similar. Note that if SMR is
done with the appropriate comparisons of healthy age-adjusted persons, not
comparing the debilitated and dead in the general population to the employed,
the "healthy worker effect", especially for cancer, largely disappears. (Note
that the report did not report on "total cancer" SMR at all!  Can anyone
imagine a study of this magnitude that did not include a "total cancer"
value??  How strong were those results?) 

Note that the "healthy worker effect" for cancer is an unfounded proposition
if you start with healthy non-cancerous people as a comparison group. What
would make the worker get cancer (a latent effect) LESS frequently than the
non-worker? 

Then consider that the same EPA and other agencies state that the industrial
work place is *source* of cancer? It's almost as bad as trashing Cohen's work
because its an ecological study, not based on carefully controlled individual
doses and effects, and saying at the same time that one of the most
carefully-controlled case-control studies ever is also junk because 35,000!
controls are unhealthy!? or, more precisely, because it didn't find the LNT.
:-) 

> bias.  The rest of the workers had rather ordinary healthy worker 
> effects (SMRs around 0.9).  The real finding of the study is not that 
> radiation is good for you, but that the control group was remarkably 
> unhealthy compared with the US population.  In general, people who are 
> healthy enough to work are healthier on average than all people put 
> together, since the latter group contains people who are not healthy 
> enough to work.

See above. 
 
> 3.  I can't think of any outfit that would be happier than the DOE to 
> find *good* evidence of a threshold.  A true threshold makes many of 
> DOE's problems go away, including loads of costly lawsuits from 
> downwinders.  I personally certainly would be happy to see believable 

Actually, DOE gets $100 Billions of funding that would go away. 

That's why they use the Hanford downwinders to keep the political process
churned. 

The simple evidence of the numbers of solid studies they have terminated, from 
mouse studies at Oak Ridge and elsewhere, Frigerio's Argonne study stopped
explicitly because the lower high-background cancer rate studies at more
detailed county level would not be continued because the contrary answers were 
unacceptable; DOE killed the Center for Human Radiobiology at Argonne when
Robley Evans and the data stated unambiguously, even after several years of
typical dissembling, that no case from all international efforts on radium and 
related alpha contamination studies found a cancer at less than 1000 rad. See
the HPJ Suppl 44 1983 on the results. 

Rowland (then Program Director) reports also on DOE killing the program in
1983 in his "Human Radiation Experiment" interview (on the web). NIOSH
biostatisticians were reportedly brought in about 1990 to say that in the
remaining population (exceeding 1000 people, still contaminated and being
irradiated) there would not likely be more than one other cancer, so
continuing to follow this population was not justified. Note that these
"results" don't make Radiation Research or BEIR/NCRP evaluations. 

Note also that the "lack of funds" to study and report on exposed radium and
medical and other populations is argued while $100 million for Hanford I-131
1946-1971 with big funds to keep the public churning the political pot, and $
millions for contractors to keep the issue alive, is justified. Justified to
keep $1.5 Billion/year in Hanford "cleanup" funding alive. 

> evidence for thresholds for *all* cancers and heritable ill-health 
> (a.k.a. genetic effects).  In fact, I used to believe that the 
> well-established practical thresholds for bone cancer from radium and 
> liver cancer from thorotrast, and some of Otto Raabe's findings 
> (published in Science in 1980), actually informed us about other cancers 
> like thyroid, digestive, and leukemia *at low doses*.  On close 
> examination, I now believe those findings don't inform us about other 
> cancers.  

Doses to dial-painters go beyond the alpha to bone from radium. They worked at 
studio benches for thousands of hours with glowing radium compounds, and
significant external exposures. And only 30% of the decay product radon is
exhaled, with enough captured in the nasal passages alone from decay of that
radon after arriving at the lung and before being exhaled. Where is the rest?
Yet the radium dial painters have lower cancers, and longer lives, except for
a slight increase in breast cancer, likely from the external exposures.
Recall: High doses can contribute to excess cancer. The high radon area
population in Japan showed significantly lower stomach cancer. There is lower
leukemia at low doses in the Japanese survivors, and many other studies
(though leukemia is too rare to generally show significant reductions). There
is no excess leukemia in the Chernobyl-exposed workers or populations, though
there are leukemia deaths in high-dose workers that are likely attributed to
their high-dose exposure. The statistics are probably "balanced" by reductions 
in lower-exposed workers. 

The IARC "best study" falsely claims to see an increase in leukemia at low
doses. As Pollycove, and many others, have shown, this one cancers of dozens
shows an increase. That is achieved only because there are claimed to 6
leukemias at >40 rem vs 2.3 expected. Of the total 119 leukemia deaths below
40 rem, there is no excess. IARC goes further to discount all the data points
that have lower leukemia (one-tailed test) so that only 33 cases are left!
They use these to project to 5000 cases to find a "significant"  "linear
trend".  Gilbert and others seem to no longer say this reflects a low-dose
effect. (Remember again that these are highly confounded populations and poor
dosimetry and none of this should be taken very seriously.) That doesn't stop
Sinclair and the LNT campaign from touting this, and ignoring more substantial 
work, in fighting to retain the justification for $10s Billions/year,
including Hanford, for "rad protection". I'm sure the "public" is grateful. At 
least until this "con" is exposed. 

> And, by the way, nobody at DOE tells me what to believe.

I doubt they tell Upton what to believe, or any of those who get the
$millions, although some of those who get the contracts and grants and funding 
at the top of the academic and contractor programs are completely in tune with 
the objectives, as most of us are, to what the organization wants. 

As Frigerio said in about 78-79, many of the early trained biologists were
"finding other things to do with their lives" rather than "follow the funding" 
that radiobiology had become; others learned to play the funding game; most
good people found ways of staying involved in their profession without having
to take on the LNT one-way-or-the-other. That's why some at the top of a
couple of professional societies that are more knowledgeable of the underlying 
biology and medicine realities, say that they doubt that 10-15% of their
members "believe" the LNT, but they carefully avoid getting involved. 

OTOH, the costs of the LNT that were trivial in the '70s when we knowingly
passed on these misrepresetations, are no longer; with consequences in spades
for our children until nuclear technologies recover (it took coal 75 years in
England :-)  until the trees were gone! The question is whether the public has 
to wait til the crisis over oil, food, environment, and health come, while we
waste $Trillions on "rad protection". 

It's time for speaking up if you want your profession and your children to
inherit a world without enormous conflict for food, oil, and environmental
destruction. World population is growing by the US population every 3 years;
compounded by the demands of growing affluence in China and beyond. 

We all know that we suppress our personal opinions to results that are
conducive to organization success if we want to "succeed", or we leave. But
the organization leadership evaluates who to employ, who to contract with, who 
to appoint to important committees, and we all make decisions about what
organizations to work for. If being on NCRP is "important" for profession and
program funding, I expect many hold their nose and seek Sinclair's
annointment. :-) 

> 4.  I have heard that Dr. Matanoski's explanation for not publishing the 
> shipyard study in the open literature is "It wasn't in the contract."  
> Anyone who has worked on a government contract knows that when the 
> funding runs out, you're on your own.  If you feel the shipyard study 
> should be published, why not take her explanation at face value?  You 
> might consider writing your Congress members and Senators to request 
> that funding be provided for the purpose of publishing the shipyard 
> study in the open literature, either by Dr. Matanoski or perhaps the 
> Centers for Disease Control, which now does epidemiology of DOE workers. 

See above.
  
> 5.  Remember the Mancuso study of Hanford workers (Mancuso, T.F.; 
> Stewart, A.; Kneale, G.  Radiation Exposures of Hanford Workers Dying 
> from Cancer and Other Causes.  Health Physics 33(5):369-385; 1977.)?  
> With the help of the vast majority of epidemiologists, DOE openly spent 
> a lot of money and effort rebutting that poorly-designed proportional 
> mortality study that was (and is) mostly inconsistent with other 
> epidemiologic findings (the one finding that has stood up is multiple 
> myeloma).  Is DOE's open institutional behavior following the Mancuso 
> study consistent with a conspiracy to cover up a threshold?

This misrepresents history and the case. See Brodsky and others. Mancuso's
contract was terminated when he had found nothing a produced/published nothing 
for years. Only after the contract was terminated did he desperately grab
Stewart and Kneale to follow the success path of others who had become
'unfireable' because they had reported "significant effects". The study was
weak, but the gov't was too far committed to terminating the contract for
cause, and the work was too shoddy and much too public to accept. (If he had
only done it a year earlier. :-) 

> 6.  The Hanford cleanup is ultimately driven by the public, not by DOE.  
> Many if not most members of the public have perceptions about radiation, 
> and believes things about radiation, that I think no one on this 
> listserver agrees with.  Nonetheless, the public drives Congress, and 
> Congress drives DOE.

This is the most disingenous of all. Tell the public a lie and when they
believe you it's their fault. Residing the power of government in the public
is supposed to be as "an informed electorate". If I put my finger to your head 
and say "your money or your life", and you give me your money, then you must
have done it "voluntarily"! :-)  In fact, you must be insisting I take your
money! :-)  

> "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the 
> people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to 
> exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to 
> take it from them but to inform their discretion."  Thomas Jefferson, 
> Letter to William Charles Jarvis (Sept. 28, 1820)

Our mission IS "to inform their discretion".  :-)

> I feel that the FRONTLINE show was a fine answer to Jefferson's call.  
> However, it is not necessary to postulate that DOE is part of a 
> conspiracy to explain the current situation with electricity generation 
> in the USA, or the absence of the problem-laden, ran-out-of-funding 
> shipyard study from the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

DOE is not part of a "conspiracy"  so much as the normal, well-documented,
process of any organization in which the self-interest and bias of the
leadership controls the voluntary participation and self-interest of the
supporting staff and contractors. Employment, contracts, and appointments go
to friends and supporters. That's a simple natural process. It just requires a 
few people who have a few $Billion to "go around" to "succeed". No "great
conspiracy" is required. 

But, when the system is too inbred and rejecting valid data from the outside,
especially when serving primarily self-interest, it gets changed. Ask the JCAE 
:-)  OTOH, DOE and EPA have succeeded in bringing many "into the fold". 

Note that the process of "scientific revolutions" has also been
well-documented (Kuhn and others). I would observe that this was true even
BEFORE the power of Federal funding contaminated the role of science and the
interests of "scientists" (many of whom in the halls of power are not, in the
agencies and their contractors that are dependent on convincing the public
that "all radiation is bad"). 

What will be interesting: As this goes public, the same politicians who were
most vociferous in demanding that DOE and EPA and NRC and FDA attack the
"radiation problem" as posed by the self-interest of the NRDC's etc, will turn 
on a dime to attack those that have "misled" them. Those too closely tied to
the campaign will likely suffer greatly. (What would you do if you suddenly
saw in a mirror the guy holding his finger to your head while you were getting 
out your wallet - and he's standing on a chair :-) 

> The opinions expressed above are my own, and have not been reviewed or 
> approved by Battelle, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, or the 
> U.S. Department of Energy.
> 
> Daniel J. Strom, Ph.D., CHP

Note that the real opportunity for CHP's is to become part of a new organizing 
principle; to become part of an organization that values professionalism in
achieving cost-effective solutions. Instead of "technician" roles of measuring 
and monitoring, controlling and compliance, take "management" roles to get the 
most cost-effective organization solutions to the essential protection of rad
workers and the public. 

Nuclear technologies have been made uneconomic, and even undesireable under
"ALARA" even when economic, because of "radiation phobia" created to make $$
to control radiation. Cost-effective applications of radiation technologies
will be both an enormous benefit to the public, and to the CHP and the
organizations that can contribute, and not just seek opportunities to bleed
the body politic and a gullible public. 

Thanks.

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