Nasal Radium Irradiation - Boston Globe Feature Article Question Response

[RADPROJECT@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/31/99 3:47:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, Holloway3@aol.com
writes:

Per the post to radsafe by S. Farber:
<< 
 <<  A recently published update of the Hagerstown cohort [Yeh, 1997] based on
a
 Ph.D thesis at Hopkins School of Public Health which is being kept out of
public
  view,   >>
 
 My mother-in-law watches the news with an equally suspicious eye.  According
 to her, this or that story is "being hushed up".  Of course that is just her
 speculation and there are really no facts to support it.  I wonder if you can
 offer any evidence to support your implication of sinister intent.     
  >>

The thesis by H.C. Yeh [Health Effects After Childhood Nasopharyngeal Radium
Irradiation] was submitted to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health dated
June 1997.  From August 1997 forward there was intense interest in Maryland in
the subject of Nasopharyngeal Radium Irradiation [NRI] due to a news release
issued by the Radium Experiment Assessment Project in August 1997 about the
disconnect between the US Government having determined that veterans treated
with NRI, were the only human radiation experiment out of 2,400 reviewed
deserving of medical notice and followup, and  should be considered for
priority medical care and inclusion on the VA's ionizing radiation registry
vs. the governments handling of NRI experimentally treated children in
Baltimore, which was being totally ignored.

Vets per the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments'
[ACHRE] own calculations faced a risk of cancer mortality due to brain, head,
and neck cancer 10 times lower than children treated with NRI in an experiment
conducted by Johns Hopkins on 582  third-graders in Baltimore from 1948 -
1953. However, the Government's Interagency Working Group [IWG] in its March
1997 report: 'Building Public Trust - Actions to Implement the Recommendations
of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments" [ACHRE} had ignored
the subject of experimentally treated children in Baltimore, mentioning only
veterans deserved priority medical care and inclusion on the VA's ionizing
radiation registry. The ACHRE Final Report had dismissed the cancer mortality
risk to veterans because they claimed it failed to reach their arbitrary
notification threshold of 1 cancer death per 1,000 people treated vs. a
calculated risk to children of 8.4 cancer deaths from brain, head, and neck
cancer per 1,000 -- the only human radiation experiment of 4,000 reviewed to
exceed ACHRE's threshold for medical monitoring and follow-up. ACHRE, headed
by Dr. Ruth Faden of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, had determined
that despite the large risk of brain, head, and neck cancer mortality [8.4
times their threshold] there was no reason to notify experimental subjects or
their families because as they put it: "most of the risk [ie deaths] have
probably already been expressed."