Re: FW: Mice and elephants

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


On Thu, 3 Jul 1997, Wood, Michael wrote:

> The following is the response to Bernie's "Mice and elephant" post from
> one of our senior Scientist.  As Paul is not on the list I am posting it
> for him.

> >So I have some questions for Bernie:
> >
> >What sort of biology is it that doesn't take into account genetics,
> >development, and known aspects of the cancer risk process?  What sort of
> >biology is it that doesn't take into account the genetic uniqueness of each
> >sexually reproduced organism on earth?  What needs to be done to get
> >radiation physicists to think like biologists?  Is there any hope?
> >
> >Paul Unrau
> >RB & HP Branch
> >AECL
> >UnrauP@aecl.ca

	From my personal point of view, all that is required is answering
questions like the one I raised. Many thanks for your help on this.
	It still seems remarkable to me that, if cancers were caused by a
single hit on a single DNA molecule, the cancer risk would be roughly the
same for all animals even though the number of DNA molecules varies by
many orders of magnitude. It isn't impossible to understand, but it seems
like a remarkable coincidence.

Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu