FW: Nashville Tennessean; Mortality vs. Morbidity Studies-Reply

[Charles Willis <CAW@nrc.gov>]

Jim,

Please do not underestimate the work that has been done on  the biological effects
of radiation.  This effort has been underway for over a century and, lest one think
that the early work was not fruitful, remember that essentially all the ill effects that
are known today were reported by 1911, when Thomas Hunt Morgan (and
separately, some of his students) reported the genetic effects of radiation.  In 1956
the National Academy of Sciences declared radiation to be the best understood
environmental hazard.  

Radiation studies have not been limited to mortality.  Perhaps the most attention
recently has been given to the (presumably) radiogenic childhood non-lethal thyroid
cancers in Belarus and Ukraine.  Skin damage, epilation and cataracts have been
studied.  Radiation has been blamed for thyroid nodules though excess stable
iodine seems a more credible explanation. We even have morbidity studies of the
A bomb survivors.  There is little that can be seen that has not been studied.

The postulated effects that cannot be seen in laboratory animals are something
else; generally, they are not amenable to scientific study and the reports we get are
far from scientific.  "Stress" seems to be one of the favorite charges but, from what
I can see, stress is more likely to be the result of alarmist propaganda than a
radiation effect.  From what is reported, the Russians have a plethora of sources of
stress; e.g, the Russian who was killed in the criticality accident a year or so ago
was said to be suffering from stress because his wife was unhappy about his not
having been paid for six months.  Of course, if you expand the subject to
"socio-psychological effects" you can be sure that there will never be any
meaningful measurements.

I believe we are well advised to limit our concerns to observable effects.

Charlie Willis
caw@nrc.gov
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