[ExI] How dangerous is radiation?

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 1:43 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I think it would be difficult to get large numbers of people to agree to
>> be exposed to radiation for a study, so we must rely on accidental
>> exposures.
>
> > Use animal experiments.  This isn't anywhere close to human-specific
> mechanisms being tested, so the results transfer readily.
>
Mice are very short lived animals so a skeptic would say that if cancer
didn't show up in a couple of years it was just because there wasn't enough
time for the cancer to develop. And the longer lived your experimental
animal is the more expensive the experiment and the longer it takes to get
any results. The only data we have on the effects of radiation on long
lived animals is with the Human animal.

For example, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who received 2000
millisieverts of radiation were 7.9 times as likely to get Leukemia as the
general population of Japanese, If they received half that amount of
radiation (1000 millisieverts) and the LNT theory was true  you would
expect them to be 3.95 times as likely to get that disease but instead they
were only 2.1 times as likely; and if they got 200 millisieverts they were
4% LESS likely and with 100 millisieverts they were 17% LESS likely to get
Leukemia. Somebody please explain to me how these NONLINEAR results are
consistent with the LINEAR No Threshold theory.

The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who received more than 100
millisieverts were more likely to develop solid cancers than the general
population of Japanese, but those who were under 100 millisieverts were
not. Somebody please explain to me how the existence of such a THRESHOLD is
consistent with the Linear NO THRESHOLD theory.

None of the data spurts the Linear No Threshold theory,  and yet the UN and
the NRC and the WHO and just about every other organization you can name
operates under the assumption that the LNT theory is true and makes policy
accordingly.

  John K Clark






  John K Clark











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