RE: Healthy survivor effect -Reply

["Sherman, Conrad" <ShermaC@ttemi.com>]

Actually, in the case of atomic survivors, the healthy survivor made it
through the rigors of post-blast devastation, food and water shortages,
generally poor environmental conditions extant at the time, etc. which might
have caused less hearty individuals to succumb, and are thus selected
individuals.




> ----------
> From: 	Charles Willis[SMTP:CAW@nrc.gov]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Tuesday, May 19, 1998 1:50 PM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Healthy survivor effect -Reply
> 
> Bill,
> 
> Perhaps someone knows of  a good defense of the "healthy survivor" effect,
> but I
> do not.  The expression is used regularly but so far as I know, it is only
> a "hand
> waving" argument used to explain away observations that do not agree with
> prior
> beliefs.  A "healthy worker" effect seems logical for many effects,
> especially for the
> first years after employment, because personnel practices tend to exclude
> the ill
> and the infirm.  This seems less logical for cancer because employment
> physicals
> usually are not sophisticated enough to weed out the cancer-prone.  An
> A-bomb
> blast seems even less likely to be selective; survival is likely to be
> determined by
> essentially random factors such as distance from the epicenter, structural
> shielding,
> location with respect to the resulting conflagration, etc.
> 
> Charlie Willis
> caw@nrc.gov
>