Re: FWD: A technique to measure DNA damage

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

On Wed, 3 Jun 1998, it was written:

> Dear Radsafers,
> 
> The technique seems to be valuable for detecting base damage, base loss 
> and alkylations (very interesting for mutagenesis studies). It is not 
> for single strand breaks or double strand breaks. Therefore, the 
> technique is probably not of much interest for for studies of radiation 
> survival (models for cell survival of potential for the development of 
> predictive assays for normal and tumor tissue radiosensitivity).

	--In the paper, they use it to study repair, which is of great
interest for radiation health. They give a demonstration of adaptive
response: the half life for repair of damage from a high radiation dose is
cut in half by prior exposure to a low dose. This shows that low dose
radiation stimulates repair processes. How does this square with the usual
claim that any radiation is harmful?