Irradiation of Med Fly

["Mike Malaxos" <rss@arach.net.au>]

A few days ago I requested information regarding the irradiation of fruit
fly quite a few people were kind enough to respond.

B. Cohen wrote: 
		Why should you worry about mutations or any of the other issues
considered? The purpose of the project is to make a large number of males
sterile because females mate only once and if the mating is with a sterile
male, no new medflies are produced. If essentially all males in an
area are sterile, the medfly population is eliminated. That is all that
matters. It doesn't matter whether there are other effects on those
irradiated, as they will all be dead very soon, and they will have no
progeny. 

Of course, if you look at things from the viewpoint of the medflies, the
perspective is very different. But from the perspective of any pest
insects, humans are fantastically terrible murderers.

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, Neil, David M wrote:

> I think he's concerned that they won't all be sterile, and that "Murphy"
> will arrange for some mutation which is bad from a human perspective.
> Notwithstanding the odds against it happening.

On    19th August  B. Cohen replied 

This technique has been used successfully for at least 30 years
in several different parts of the world on many occasions, and no such
problems have arisen. If you start now to change the procedures, you might

Another comment that because the dose rate was around 2 - 4 kRads/minute
the mutation rate would not change much over that range.

B. Cohens first comments initial mutation is not a problem but if I
understand his second comment it could be a problem if the procedures are
changed 	


Can anyone  comment on the last three questions which relate to methods
which allow the use of lower doses to produce the same sterilisation yield.
A lower dose will allow a shorter exposure time and an increased
through-put rates.

Some previous work with RF pre-heating before radiotherapy or chemotherapy
has been said to increased the kill rate for cancer cells. Is it possible
this would also increase the sterilisation efficiency?

Thanks for your help


Best Regards
M.Malaxos
Radiation Safety Services
69-71 Robinson Avenue Belmont
Western Australia.  6104 
Fax 61 89 475 0165
P 61 89 475 0099  a/h 089 255 1214
email rss@arach.net.au
 
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