From: russ@pmafire.inel.gov (Russ Brown)
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 15:53:10 GMT
Organization: WINCO
Subject: Re: The BEIR V Report in "Deadly Deceit, Low-Level Rad/High-Level Coverup"
Summary: Context, context, context..................................
Followup-To: 
Organization: WINCO
Keywords: Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation

In article <1992Dec28.140639.17475@odin.corp.sgi.com> dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) writes:
>
>
> the following review of the National Academy of Science's Committee on the
> Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BEIR V report, issued in 1990,
> inside of the Appendixes of "Deadly Deceit," indicates there may actually be 
> some movement inside the BEIR Committees towards an acknowledgement of the
> true costs of almost fifty years of the continued development of nuclear
> technology.  first some excerpts, then an observation about the possible
> changing point-of-view being presented by the committees that publish the 
> BEIR reports:

DD    According to BEIR V, a comprehensive survey of cancer incidence and
DD    mortality near nuclear installations in England--carried out by the
DD    United Kingdom Office of Population Censuses and Surveys--found

BV    "significant overall excesses of cancer mortality due to lymphoid,
BV   leukemia and brain cancer in children and due to liver cancer, lung
BV   cancer, Hodgkin's disease, all lymphomas, unspecified brain and central
BV    nervous system tumors, and all malignancies in adults."[233]  

BEIR V did provide a summary of a wide range of low-dose studies in
Chapter 7.  It did not, of course, endorse the "findings" as gospel. 
_Deadly Deceit_ (a bit of irony in the name, now that I think about it)
neglected to complete the quotation, which said, 

  "malignancies in adults; however the mortality rates in the control areas
  were lower than expected, and there has not been a general increase in
  cancer rates in individuals living in the vicinity of nuclear
  installations.  Moreover there were no consistent, positive, or 
  statistically significant trends in cancer rates with distance from the
  nuclear installations."

In other words, the referenced study did _not_ find an excess with
reference to national rates, but only with reference to a control
population.  Note the case-control methodology, while widely used, is
considered a bit of a joke by many in the field.  It assumes that
populations matched for superficial demographic factors should have
equivalent cancer mortality/incidence characteristics.  Small sample
studies only aggravate its inherent weaknesses.

DD   Thus, the BEIR V report's many citations of rising rates of mental
|    retardation, leukemia, and mortality associated with nuclear plants and
|    bomb-test fallout further support our hypothesis that the risks from
|    small doses of environmental radiation have been severely
|    underestimated by government agencies.  We suggest in Chapter Six that
DD   this tendency may even have led to outright falsification of data.

Notice how DD converts the out-of-context quote to an endorsement of its
crack-pot position.

The Acknowledgements (p. vii-viii) section of DD states,

  "This book rests heavily on the insights and guidance of Dr. Ernest
  Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiology at the University of
  Pittsburgh Medical School..."

This is a rare bit of candor.  Dr. Sternglass is famous for, among other
things, attribution of a decline in SAT scores to bomb testing.  A
Denver Post reporter checked the data and found that Sternglass had only
reported those downwind States with a few points year-to-year drop and
had _excluded_ an equal number of downwind States with increases.

It is difficult to understand this sort of intellectual indecent
exposure.  But maybe both the authors (many of whom do publish in
pathetically peer-reviewed journals) and their readers actually believe
what they write and read, respectively.  I find the words of Norman
Mailer a bit closer to the mark,

 "The desire for success lubricates secret prostitutions in the soul."

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"Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens."
                                                   -Friedrich von Schiller-  




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