Re: Radiaiton Hormesis

[muckerheide@highway1.com (James Muckerheide)]

Kent Lambert wrote:
> 
> Wade,
> 
> Thanks for the reference on mechanisms for radiation hormesis.
> Unfortunately I did not have access to Luckey's works on the subject, (I
> checked with our and several other local libraries).  You were the only
> one to respond.  Apparently many people want to talk about apparent
> radiation hormetic effects, but no one wants to talk about how it works
> (this observation is based on RADSAFE traffic).
> 
> Anyway, my presentation went fine, i.e.,  I didn't get any real hard
> questions.
> 
> Again, thanks for your help.
> 
> Regards,
> Kent
> mailto:lambert@allegheny.edu

I apologise for not having time to respond to your original message. I
was glad to see that Wade had provided some background. 

There is some basic work showing the nature of a biopositive response,
like Ken Bogen's picture of the effect of one stimulated repair
mechanism along with a number of other 'biological models' that show
similar condeptual plausibility. There is also a substantial amount of
work that has been showing the biopositive response of 6 major repair
mechanisms, like apoptosis (used by Bogen), and the p53 anti-tumor gene,
and various physiological responses like cell membrane permeability and
improved cell signalling to manage cell damage. See work by Feinendegen,
Bond, Trosko, Ishii and others in 14 medical and biology research
institutions in Japan sponsored by CRIEPI (see Hattori's summary
presentations of this work in the BELLE Newsletter and ANS sessions in
'94, '95, '96, and '97) and dozens of others in the last 15 years or
so). Myron Pollycove's recent note in the HPS Newsletter in response to
Roger Clarke's erroneous perceptions of biological conditions of DNA
damage refers to the work of Billen (1990) and Ward (1988), and more
recent quantification, regarding the single and double strand breakage
from normal metabolic processes which exceed background radiation damage
by 10's of millions. Planel and his team, and Latarjet, in France, going
back 20-30 years, and Don Luckey at Argonne in 1986 have confirmed that
the small organism is debilitated by the effects of depressing radiation
below natural background levels, and substantially stimulated in many
physiological functions by increases above background.

Any stimulation associated with a trivial incremental amount of damage
produces beneficial effects by effecting improvement on the enormous
background of oxidative metabolic processes. This becomes especially
important as aging takes its toll on these functions, and the
stimulation by low level radiation maintains the more effective
immunological control of the cancer process that is natural (in the
absense of immune deficiencies, eg, as shown for those men getting skin
cancer in their 30's that have the immune function of men in their
70's).  

Don Luckey considers the effect of auger electons from K-40 as localized
stimulation at the potassium sites in the cell, in a process of
'radiogenic metabolism'. Sohei Kondo has done a lot of biology work on
tumorigenesis and the bases for repair and the lack of tumor progression
of damage when stimulated by radiation. Many others have done additional
aspects of the work. However, there has been no support to test small
mammals for the effect os suppressing background. Between a salt mine or
other shielded background, and using K-39 instead of natural potassium,
it has been proposed to be less than $1M. In addition to set up time of
several months, the initial tests could be done in a few months.
Unfortunately, we need the $ for Hanford I-131 health effects studies
and the IARC "meta-analysis"; but we also had to shut down the Argonne
study of the radium population, and the high-dose DOE workers, and had
no money to analyze the confounding factors and additional mining
exosures of the uranium miners. :-)

It is clear that most such work has been severely constrained by
radiation science policy that governs much of the fundamental work. Most
effective work must be done in biology outside of control by rad science
policy. 

Finally, it is also true that it doesn't make any difference. Saying
that we can't decide about hormesis until we can explain it, is like
saying we can't accept gravity until Isaac Newton (at least that's what
the guys who sold nets said to the apple growers since we couldn't tell
whether the apples might fall up :-) 

Kondo's book gives carefull attention to the volumes of data that show
hormetic response. Luckey's 2 books and many articles summarize about
2000 scientific literature sources that show hormetic effects. (Note
that Luckey's expertise is in the arena that uses such work to put
'toxic' elements ib your vitamin pills based on the same kind of studies
and results - so 'we' obviously couldn't listen to him since was
'outside' the rad research establishment - committed to 'rad
protection', not to health effects.)

Only confounded or misrepresented studies show the opposite. Even then
they are not reproducible. They are clearly from the vagaries of poor
data (and worse analysis). The LNT supporters themselves have stated
that the IARC study is "the best (only?) evidence" of low-dose,
low-dose-rate effects. Yet it is shown to have manipulated the data, and
then to misrepresent its own results to "find" 1 cancer that has an
increasing "linear trend". (There should have been more than just one on
the 95% confidence level when looking at dozens of cancers :-) Using the
bomb data is unjustified for the low-dose population, but except by
intentionally manipulating the data, even the bomb data shows the
survivors having longer mean lives than the equivalent unexposed
Japanese population, lower leukemia, and even lower cancer until the
recent "reanalysis" (which Prof Gunnar Walinder, speaking with specific
examples from UNSCEAR meetings, notes in his book "Has Radiation
Protection Become a Health Hazard?"is the continuous process of
"adjusting the data" - which NOT 'fraudulent manipulation' but just the
effect of a belief so strong that data that do not agree with conviction
must be 'adjusted').

I know, more than you wanted, but you got me late :-)

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