Re: Nasal Treatment with RF?- vs. Nasal Radium/X-rays "Historic"

[RADPROJECT@aol.com]

I wish to thank Bill Field for his many thoughtful contributions to various 
radsafe threads. My only thought in replying to his original comment on this 
thread [to which he replies in the copy below] was to be sure readers 
realized that many of the individuals treated with either NRI or x-rays were 
treated in the not so distant past.

It is also clear than x-ray treatment of tonsils and adenoids exposed those 
treated for a benign health condition to a wider field of exposure albeit at 
a much reduced total exposure than the NRI treatment. X-ray treatments to the 
head and neck of young children have been recognized following numerous 
published studies of their effect on thyroid cancer [since the 1950s] and 
thyroid disease, and responded to in NCI/NIH health advisories to physicians 
and the public in the 1970s.

NRI treatments [vs. x-rays] exposed local tissues in the nasopharynx to a 
uniquely elevated dose [minimum 20 Gy] with rapidly declining doses with 
distance, making NRI use in children and young adults a unique outlier in 
terms of any medical treatment used to treat a benign condition. This 
extremely non-homogeneous dose delivered by NRI treatments make risk 
estimates to the brain and other structures in the head and neck for NRI vs. 
risk factors derived from  x-ray treatments for tinea capitis for example, 
very difficult if not impossible. This is why NRI exposure to a best estimate 
of one-million children from post WWII into the 1970s such a unique 
biomedical opportunity and issue which has been and continues to be ignored 
and misrepresented by the US CDC and major medical institutions  vs. existing 
epidemiological data about its malignant and non-malignant health effects.

BTW, on this point I had mentioned in posts some time back that a Ph.D. 
thesis had been completed and awarded in June 1997 at Johns Hopkins School of 
Public Health titled "Cancer Incidence of Childhood Nasopharyngeal Radium 
Irradiation" authored by H.C. Yeh. This study of schoolchildren documented a 
highly statistically significant "Adjusted Relative Risk" for combined and 
malignant brain tumors in treated children of 30.9 vs controls [Based on 3 
malignant and 4 benign brain tumors in the treated group of 650 treated 
individuals tracked vs. 0 cases in the control group]. 

At the time of my earlier post about 6 months ago on the point about the 
actions of Hopkins on this issue at the time,  I mentioned that Yeh's thesis 
was available for order from the UMI Thesis Service in Ann Arbor, MI.  
Following some national news coverage about the NRI issue in late July 1999 
including a report from the VA that submariners who had received NRI on 
entering the sub service displayed an excess head and neck cancer rate of 
about 46% [although declared "not statistically significant"] Johns Hopkins 
took the unusual step of declaring Yeh's 1997 Ph. D. thesis as being "not 
available without permission of author" and asked UMI to attempt to recall 
out earlier copies of Yeh's thesis which it had sold openly as it does 
routinely with every Ph.D thesis awarded  in the US since 1861. I received a 
call from UMI asking me to return my copy [although they generously offered 
to provide me another thesis of my choice! or a refund]  and a library in 
Warren, VT which had purchased another copy for me at my request,  also got a 
call from UMI asking to return their purchased copy, obtained in Sept. 1998, 
at the request of Hopkins.

Readers can draw their own conclusions about why Johns Hopkins, one of the 
premier Public Health Schools in the nation, would wish to keep from the 
scientific community a   two year old published Ph.D. thesis documenting 
excess health effects from a medical procedure they developed and popularized 
in human radiation experiments during WWII on submariners and aviators, and 
widely extended to the civilian population after WWII.


Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Director - Radium Experiment Assessment Project
172 Old Orchard Way
Warren, VT 05674


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===================================

In a message dated 11/30/99 6:28:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, FIELDRW@aol.com 
writes:

<< Subj:     Re: Nasal Treatment with RF?- vs. Nasal Radium/X-rays "Historic"
 Date:  11/30/99 6:28:25 PM Eastern Standard Time
 From:  FIELDRW@aol.com
 Sender:    radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
 Reply-to:  <A HREF="mailto:radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu";>radsafe@romulus.ehs.
uiuc.edu</A>
 To:    radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu (Multiple recipients of list)
 
 Stewart,
 
 As a person who received x -ray "therapy" to my head to shrink lymphatic 
 tissues in the area of my middle ear (procedure in 1964), I prefer to think 
 as those kind of procedures as being "historic" or "in the past".  My 
therapy 
 was prescribed by a local (Lancaster, PA) hearing loss conservation" program 
 for schoolchildren run by the State of Pennsylvania.  I indeed hope such 
 "therapy" is in the past. My only point was that x-rays were also used to 
 shrink tissues (tonsils, etc.) in children (the children were not always 
that 
 young) and that that the procedure should also be acknowledged.  You do an 
 admirable job representing the radium exposed individuals, please try to 
also 
 remember the x-ray exposed individuals.  Far too little follow-up research 
 has been done on this cohort of individuals as well.  The adverse non-cancer 
 outcomes from these kinds of procedures are not well understood or the 
 resulting damage appreciated.
 
 Regards, 
 Bill Field
 College of Public Health
 Department of Epidemiology
 University of Iowa
 mailto:bill-field@uiowa.edu
 
  >>
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