OT: Surprise! Radiation is _good_ for you!

Like most "science" articles in the English language media, this picks up an eccentric claim from eccentric people, and puffs it as if no alternative explanation could exist.

The Taiwanese case is particularly entertaining. 10,000 people move into a new block of flats in 1983 and 16 years later only five of them have developed cancer. Computing the age-specific cancer rates for the

10,000, 170 of them would have been expected to develop cancer, which is pretty much what you'd expect from the population as a whole

Sadly for the story, cancer is predominantly a disease of old age, and most of those 170 would have to have been elderly. What are the chances that the people who moved into the new flats had the same age- distribution as the population as a whole?

In general the people who move into big blocks of new flats are youngsters at the start of their career, rather than elderly people moving into a place where they don't have to cope with stairs. The story is rather less than credible.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

There have been health statistics dating back to the 1960s that show health benefits at low radiation levels, curving up to cancer and then prompt damage at higher levels.

John

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That's a good response, Bill. But, I think you should not debunk it without further support. After all, you do not know the parameters of the study. What if the new block of flats was specifically targeted at the elderly?

Just a thought.

Cheers, John

I will believe her "verifiable facts" when she sucks down a milligram of plutonium.

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So, in other words, you don't have any facts or figures to refute the facts and figures reported in the article?

Thanks, Rich

t...

Yes, I do.

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Then I'd say, go ahead and present them, rather than the childish crap you posted.

Thanks, Rich

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m u

You complaining about childish crap? That's funny.

Weird as it may sound, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually cured some folks of cancer! Of course, they had to be at just the right distance, etc... to receive the proper dosage.

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Apparently, you either didn't read the article, or blanked out these paragraphs: "Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron -- all poisons.

"They get flu shots. They'll drink copious amounts of coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the '70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine -- an offer Nader never accepted.) "

And isn't Nader one of your idols?

Hope This Helps! Rich

Then they would have had a lot more than 170 cancer cases in 16 years. And Taiwan - as a rapidly industrialising country - would have been building the flats as dormitories for industrial workers for the new factories.

Not a good one.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

some - controversial -

purport to show

It's entertaining that the - clearly sceptical - Wikipedia article mentions the Co-60 contaminated appartment block in Taiwan, and discounts the Anne Coulter version of the story on the basis of later

- and more thorough - research, listed as reference 35 to the Wikipedia article. Sadly, that page won't load for me at the moment.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

t...

No. He's exhibiting a perfectly rational disdain for Anne Coulter and journalists like her, who tout fringe science without realising that it is fringe science.

richard Henry thus did better than John Larkin, who cited the Wikipedia article on radiation hormesis

without noticing that it was clearly sceptical about the whole idea, and listed a follow-up study (reference 35) of the Co-60 contaminated Taiwan appartment block that Anne Coulter clealy never found ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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ch

Presumably because Nader doesn't do childish crap.

He's certainly got a lot more going for him than Anne Coulter.

It looks as if Nader could have swallowed half a gram of caffiene without risking much more than a sleepless night.

Professor Cohen could have pretty much guaranteed that he'd get lung cancer by swallowing around 27 micrograms of plutonium.

if the data from beagles is anything to go by.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Ah, so it's simply personal.

Why does that not surprise me?

Thanks, Rich

If you are willing to extrapolate from some test-experiments to real- life bomb victims, you can concoct this kind of claim. Proving it to be a valid would take a lot of work, none of which would be approved by any medical ethics committee.

And the published work on which you are relying had to mean what the authors - and Anne Coulter - thought it meant.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

This report might be interesting. It references the "for fee" article you mention and is later than it. It focuses on low dose rate, moderate dose situations (LDRMD):

"The recent epidemiological studies analysed here provide some evidence that cancer risks associated with LDRMD exposures to ionising radiation may be greater than those published by BEIR VII and the ICRP.

"...

"Probability-of-causation calculations play an important role in the adjudication of claims of compensations for cancer diseases after occupational radiation exposures. The computer code IREP made available by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

is widely used for these calculations. The IREP includes a DDREF, which lowers the probability of causation for low-dose-rate exposures. Use of such a factor in these calculations is questioned by the new epidemiological studies."

I note that the US computer software used in calculating court-ordered payouts by businesses to individuals for harm caused seems to set an arbitrary line in the sand regarding LDR exposure. As that value is used in IREP, a DDREF value of greater than one implies that chronic or low doses are __less__ carcinogenic per unit of dose than acute or higher doses. Which the above study questions, or at least suggests that the algorithm may need meaningful revision.

At least the article is available to read.

Jon

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And here I'd taken mpm's comment to be a sort of gallows humor suggesting that standing __under__ the bomb would cure you of cancer while being too far away would not do much. (A case of where the cure is worse than the disease.)

Jon

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Here it is:

-- Joe