Re: FW: Mice and elephants

[Dick King <king@reasoning.com>]

> Contents:
> Re: FW: Mice and elephants (Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>)
>      DOE clearance (mad11@health.state.ny.us)
> files available ("M. Woo" <melissa@zelda.ehs.uiuc.edu>)
> Re: Mice and elephants (Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>)
> Re: FW: Mice and elephants (JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com)
> Re: Cm-244 Alpha Source on Mars Pathfinder ("Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>)
> Re: Cm-244 Alpha Source on Mars Pathfinder (Tad Blanchard <Tad.M.Blanchard.1@GSFC.NASA.GOV>)
> Re: Cm-244 Alpha Source on Mars Pathfinder ("Dale E. Boyce" <dale@radpro.uchicago.edu>)
> Re[2]: Cm-244 Alpha Source on Mars Pathfinder (DREJZ@CCMAIL.CECO.COM (Jim WREN))
> Fwd: Off-focus radiation (Ccja@aol.com)
> SET RADSAFE MAIL POSTPONE ("BEV DeOCAMPO" <BEV.DeOCAMPO@quickmail.llnl.gov>)
> Re: Cm-244 Alpha Source on Mars Pathfinder (DREJZ@CCMAIL.CECO.COM (Jim WREN))
> Re: Mice and elephants (JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com)
> Off focus (peterson@ridgefield.sdr.slb.com (Carl Peterson))
> Int Conf on Isotopes, Sydney, Australia (SSQC17A@prodigy.com (MR GLENN A HUBER))
> Position Announcement (Stuart Rosenberg <stuart@scripps.edu>)
> Pu-238 on Mars Pathfinder? ("Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>)
> EXCESS EQUIPMENT (Adam Weaver <atomwe@concentric.net>)
> Re: Pu-238 on Mars Pathfinder? (RNelson875@aol.com)
> SSRL (R.Ryder@dl.ac.uk)
> Re: Int Conf on Isotopes, Sydney, Australia ("Mike Malaxos" <rss@arach.net.au>)
> Birthday Wishes (Marti Brown <mrbrown@bechtel.com>)
> Siemens EPD Batteries (wharris@tmdeccsmtp.redstone.army.mil)
> position openning (Bruce Busby <bbusby@umich.edu>)
> Reg Guide 8.13 (Keith Welch <welch@CEBAF.GOV>)
> Re: Reg Guide 8.13 (Bruce Busby <bbusby@umich.edu>)
> Re: Pu-238 on Mars Pathfinder? (martindl@hqgate.kirtland.af.mil (martindl))
> Total Dose from Mars Travel (LENTZC <lentzc@aa.wl.com>)
> Bioassay Certification Requirements/Guidance (Amradinc@aol.com)
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 10:06:34 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>
> Subject: Re: FW: Mice and elephants
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 	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.

It's worse than that, when you consider DNA molecule-years.

To a mouse, a mean time to first cancer of ten years is not that big a deal.
If elephants routinely got cancer as Poisson events with a lambda of ten years
that would be One Sorry Species.


And never mind the fact that youth of any species get cancer less than their
elders, even though the cells divide far more.

-dk