Re[2]: New Steve Wing Study

[Ruth Weiner <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

Jim, there IS shock and concern!  My husband and I repeatedly contact our 
members of Congress about various issues like this, and some of the staff have 
been very responsive and sympathetic.  There is also shock and concern within 
DOE among the career civil servants (my husband is a DOE retiree) and at the 
national labs.

The problem is: what to do?  Having worked as a Congressional Science Fellow, I 
can tell you that it's difficult enough to get through to a member of Congress 
or to a responsible member of his or her staff, let alone to try to get through 
to anyone thoughtful and responsible in the Executive Branch. The barriers are 
immense:  even members of the House rarely read their own mail, and virtually 
never respond to it themselves or even read the responses.  Most of us have too 
much work to attend "town meetings" and anyway one only gets a few minutes at 
these.  Any ideas?

Clearly my own opinion and no one else's.

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Transportation Systems Department
Sandia National Laboratories
Mail Stop 0718
P. O. Box 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791
505-844-0244 (fax)
rfweine@sandia.gov

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: New Steve Wing Study
Author:  JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com at hubsmtp
Date:    2/4/98 8:23 AM


Otto, and group,
     
Otto's summary well portrays the background to Wing and this study. But for 
those of us not in the federal establishment, is this study actually published 
and available anywhere?
     
However, it does not seem that the idea that such a supposed "scientific 
study" would be produced by DOE as anti-nuclear propaganda and fed to the 
entire government with videotape disinformation, rather than being published 
and reviewed in the scientific literature for review and comment, has 
generated the adverse reaction that would be expected.
     
This seems especially true in light of Wing's historical known work to produce 
biased results, and claims (JAMA 1991, and personal appearances in his seeming 
attempt to claim John Gofman's mantle) that careful review and assessment of 
the data isn't important as long as the message is in the cause and effective 
in attacking the evil nuclear enterprise that poses a risk to the future of 
humanity. (Note that Wing is a sociologist, not a scientist. At best a 
sociologist with a statistics course, and seemingly well plugged into the 
politically-correct radiation-fear-mongering government funding spigots.)
     
Does anyone know of any other discussions where this is being addressed? Are 
there any discussions within the Federal establishment?
     
Why is there so little shock and concern about what is happening to science 
and integrity, with so little reaction? Has the cadre of competent scientists 
that once made up the labs and DOE/gov't-funded programs been reduced through 
attrition to a few supporters of the 'any radiation is harmful' philosophy? 
though I suppose there may be concern about negative reactions from DOE to 
taking contrary positions?
     
Thanks. Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com
muckerheide@mediaone.net
Radiation, Science, and Health
     
> February 3, 1998
> Davis, CA
>
> Dear All:
>
> Yesterday Steve Epperson posted the abstract of a new study by Steve Wing 
> about risks to radiation workers. Dr. Wing is an epidemiologist at North 
> Carolina who personally believes that the nuclear industry is evil.
>
> In the 1970's it was noted by Gilbert et al. (Rad. Res. 79:122-128, 1979) 
> that there was an apparent association of some extra cases of multiple
> myeloma among radiation workers at Hanford. This was considered a random 
> observation, since it was not found in other studies. Also, remember that 
> if you look at every possible type of cancer, ignore those that are lower 
> in exposed groups, and look only for those that are elevated, it is
> possible that you will find at least one type of cancer that seems to be 
> associated with radiation exposure. That observation is expected by pure 
> chance. Then if you ignore everything else, you could claim that this
> random observation proves that radiation is responsible even at the low
> levels of exposure received by radiation workers. This the the method used 
> by some epidemilogists who really want something to report.
>
> Okay. What Wing did was get money from NIOSH to study myeloma cases at
> Hanford but incorporating data from other laboratories including LANL, ORNL 
> and SRS. In his abstract he notes that there also were confounding
> exposures of the radiation workers to many other agents "including
> solvents, metals, welding fumes, asbestos,....and non-ionizing radiation." 
> However, only exposures to ionizing radiation were quantified well enough 
> for him to include in his analysis!
>
> This was a case control study where all the cases of myeloma deaths were
> matched with control persons who lived to the same age, but did not develop 
> myeloma. When radiation exposure was considered he found: "Total cumulative 
> radiation doses were similar between cases and controls." NO RADIATION
> EFFECT! Well, that wasn't the right answer, so now he started subdividing 
> the data and found that if he only considered people whose exposures
> occurred at ages 45 or older, there was a significant association of risk 
> of myeloma with radiation exposure after age 45 "adjusted for age, race, 
> sex, facility, period of hire, birth cohort, monitoring for internal
> radionuclide contamination, and external radiation received prior to age 
> 45." This observation is the whole basis of his report. He reports an
> increased incidence of a factor of 4.3 for workers receiving doses greater 
> than 5 rem. [Review of the A-bomb survivor data shows a dose of above 100 
> rem delivered instantaneously was required to yield this large an increase 
> in multiple myeloma cases and simultaneously yielded about a seven-fold
> increase in leukemia cases (BEIR V).] 
>
> Wing claims that increased cancer sensitivity in older workers is expected 
> theoretically and found in some other studies. Actually, my reading of BEIR 
> V shows a consistent reduction in risk of radiation induced cancer of all
> types with increased age at exposure! Also, if this is a radiation effect 
> rather than a chance observation, we would expect that other cancer types 
> would be more readily observed, such as leukemia and lung cancer, but
> apparently not.
>
> Wing's results show no overall effect until selectively grouped to achieve 
> an observed level of significance. You can guess that he tried every
> conceivable combination of age grouping to harvest a significant
> observation from the study so that he could declare that his "findings and 
> other studies of nuclear workers have implications for radiation protection 
> standards for workers and the general public."
>
> Finally, the observations by Wing that there is no overall effect, but one 
> remarkably appears when considering exposures of people older than 45,
> suggests that there must be a protective effect for exposures that occur at 
> ages younger than 45. This is because overall he found that: "Total
> cumulative radiation doses were similar between cases and controls." NO NET 
> EFFECT!
>
> Otto