Therefore, no one knows whether radiation's carcinogenic effect will endure for the entire lifespan of the youngest irradiated group, or not. Many experts today assume that it will. We, too, use that assumption in this book. The A-Bomb Study is a biomedical resource of unique value. We will refer to it in later chapters also.
Some physicians seem incredulous.
Funded by the governments of the United States and Japan, RERF controls all the databases of the A-bomb survivors. The cases committed in 1940 and occurring by 1945 look clinically just like all the other cancers occurring in the years 1940 through 1944. The presence of the cases committed in 1940, therefore, has to be detected by epidemiology. Radiation-induced cases could develop very quickly in individuals who have already accumulated several carcinogenic lesions in a vulnerable cell. Because luck plays a role, it is not possible to predict which individuals will develop the extra cancers when a group of people receives radiation.