Re: Does Size Matter?

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

On Wed, 28 Oct 1998 mephillips12@magnox.co.uk wrote:

> 
>      For years there has been a question which has bugged me, to which I
>      have never received a satisfactory answer.
> 
>      The dose response curves that we use rely to a large extent on data
>      from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Absorbed dose is expressed in
>      Gy, ie J / kg. Japanese people, (Sumo wrestlers excluded), are (and I
>      apologise for any racial stereotypes :-) generally small compared to,
>      say, a North American raised on a diet of MacBurgers.
> 
>      For equal whole body doses, do large people have a greater morbidity
>      than small people (to quote another thread running at this moment, if
>      big people have more cells the LNT hypothesis would suggest that they
>      are more prone to radiation induced cancers)?
> 
>      Does it imply that the dose response derived from bomb survivors would
>      underpredict the response to a more obese population?

		--The paradox goes much deeper than that. A 30 gram mouse
has about the same cancer risk in a given radiation field as a 75,000 gram
man. There is no evidence that elephants have higher risk than these.
Also, young people have as many cells as old people, but they have a much
higher cancer risk.


Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


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