|
FYI
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael C. Baker
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 12:51 PM
Subject: Fwd: Gunnar Walinder's book is
available Gunnar Walinder's excellent book HAS RADIATION PROTECTION BECOME A HEALTH HAZARD has been co-published with Medical Physics Publishing in Madison, WI. The regular price is $39.95 shipping included. You can order it on MPP's toll free line 800/442-5778, on MPP's web site http://www.medicalphysicorg or by e-mail mpp@medicalphysics.org. The following summary has been added to the first printing in Sweden. Summary from HAS RADIATION PROTECTION BECOME A HEALTH HAZARD Gunnar Walinder, Professor of Radiobiology, U.of Stockholm, Sweden 1. I have found no rationale of distinguishing cancer risk assessments from those applied to other hazards. Generally speaking, cancer is not more nor less a stochastic event than the so called deterministic effects (Cf. the fetal brain damage, pp. 21-23 and Figure 8). 2. On grounds of principle, we can not acquire any knowledge about the multi-iterative cancer development in a mutually adaptive human body in cases where the acting agent is non- dominant. This fundamental ignorance applies to carcinogenesis as well as to its opposite - hormesis. 3. The current pretensions to knowledge about the low-dose radiogenic cancer should be rejected. In particular, we have to realize that the dose-response relationship at very low radiation doses (non-dominant doses) can not be comprehended through or based on simple mathematical expressions and, least of all, on an equation of the first degree. The LNT hypothesis is deeply unscientific. 4. More often than not, countermeasures against the possible effects of very low radiation doses will imply more harm than benefit. For example, people who were evacuated to Kiev from low- contaminated, rural areas in the Ukraine, would probably run a greater cancer risk than what would have been the case had they remained in their native districts. (The age-adjusted cancer rate in big cities - like Kiev - is about 20% higher than that in rural areas). 5. Sooner or later we will be forced to abandon the current radiation protection doctrines, not only with regard to cancer prognoses but also within the administrative work. The main reason for this conclusion is the 'categorical imperative': we must not let radiation protection become a health hazard. __________________________ Michael C. Baker Environmental Technology Group Los Alamos National Laboratory Mail Stop J594 Los Alamos, NM 87545 mcbaker@lanl.gov (505) 667-7334 (phone) (505) 665-8346 (fax) (505) 996-3519 (pager) __________________________ |