New Yorker editorial

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

Dear RADSAFErs,

I encourage you to read the editorial ("Talk of the Town" -- Comment) in
this week's (1/11/99) New Yorker.  It is uses TCE and silicone implants as
examples, but has direct bearing on the arguments surrounding the LNT
theory.

Unfortunately it is not available on the Web, and I can't type in the whole
thing, but here are some teaser quotes (in context):

"...the difference between what 'might be' and what 'is' -- which in
scientific circles is all the difference in the world -- does not appear to
amount to much among the rest of us.... we want science to conform to a
special kind of narrative simplicity: to begin from obvious premises and
proceed, tidily and expeditiously, to morally satisfying conclusions."

"...in the face of some twenty-odd studies [ on health effects of silicone
breast implants] to the contrary, the courts and the public clung to a
conclusion [of adverse health effects] with no particular merit other than
that it sounded as if it might be true."

"In the narrative we have imposed on science, that act [implanting largely
untested silicone] ought to have consequences, just as the contamination of
groundwater by a profit seeking multinational ought to cause leukemia.  Our
moral sense said so, and, apparently, that was enough.  Of course, if
science always made moral sense we would not need scientists.  We could
staff our laboratories with clergy."

"Science, tempting though it is to believe otherwise, is not in the business
of punishing the morally retrograde, nor is it a means of serving
retribution on the wicked and the irresponsible."

For silicone breast implants substitute low-level ionizing radiation, for
Dow Corning substitute the nuclear utilities and the DOE, and you have a
powerful argument for rethinking the LNT theory.  In fact, this editorial is
a powerful weapon in the war against junk science.  It is also noteworthy in
that it absolutely does not pander to "perception" and it is beautifully
written.

Clearly only my own opinion

Ruth F. Weiner
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov

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