Another Candidate For The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time?

March 30, 2024/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

I have written a long series of posts, now 32 in number, titled “The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time.” Go to this link if you want to read some or all of those posts. The fraud in question in those posts is the intentional alteration of pre-existing temperature (or, in one case, sea level) records to create a narrative of dangerous climate change that, without the alterations, lacks support in the raw data. In the most recent post in this series, number 32, I remarked, “No other scientific fraud in world history comes close to this one in scope or significance.”

The climate-data-alteration fraud is hugely significant because the altered data provide the fundamental support for the ongoing multi-trillion-dollar effort of the Left to transform the world energy system, and ultimately the entire world economy. As the least expensive and most reliable forms of energy production get restricted, billions of people stand to see their lives impoverished to the extent of tens of thousands of dollars per year each. Is it remotely possible for any other fraud to come anywhere close to this one in significance?

As unlikely as it may seem, now along comes a second plausible candidate for the title. This fraud goes by the common acronym of “LNT,” which stands for the “linear no threshold” hypothesis of causation of diseases, particularly cancer, from environmental factors. The LNT hypothesis is the basis for huge swaths of enormously costly regulation, probably the large majority of environmental regulatory cost outside the sphere of “climate.” In a March 7 article in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, a guy named Edward Calabrese makes the case that the LNT hypothesis has been advanced by means of intentional fraud since its inception nearly 100 years ago. The title of the article is “Cancer risk assessment, its wretched history and what it means for public health.”

The LNT hypothesis theorizes that if a chemical or phenomenon (e.g., radiation) is established as dangerous at some dosage, no matter how high, then it must also be dangerous at small dosages, no matter how tiny. That conclusion follows if the relation of dose to danger is linear, with no threshold below which the danger goes away. A tiny dose may have a tiny danger, but as long as the dose/danger relationship is linear without threshold, then there is no safe dose.

Calabrese’s article provides a thorough history of the origins of the LNT hypothesis, and how it was advanced and promoted by the suppression of definitive contrary evidence. By the 1970s the LNT hypothesis had the backing of the National Academy of Sciences, and had been adopted by the EPA as the basis for regulating hazardous chemicals and radiation. The EPA continues to use the LNT approach in its regulatory efforts today, even as evidence accumulates that it is wrong and has been based on fraud from the outset. 

And thus the LNT hypothesis is the fundamental reason why nuclear power plants are so expensive and difficult to build; why no long-term solution for storage of spent nuclear fuel can be found; why EPA constantly proposes new regulations lowering allowable levels of emissions of chemical substances like mercury or PCBs; why pesticides and herbicides like glyphosate become the subject of multi-billion dollar liability disasters; and so forth.

The LNT hypothesis may at first seem intuitively likely to be true. For example, it is established that large doses of radiation can induce mutations that can lead to cancer. So why then couldn’t a single item of radiation, like one alpha particle or a single gamma ray, induce the mutation that initiates the disease? But Calabrese points out that the LNT hypothesis presumes that mutations are rare, and that the body has no capacity to repair ongoing mutations. What research has revealed is that, far from being rare, mutations are extremely common; and the body has a large capacity to repair them. Thus a small external source of mutations, like background or low-dose radiation, is easily dealt with, and if anything helps to stimulate and exercise the body’s natural repair system. Only when an external force causes very extensive mutations exceeding the body’s capacity to repair — i.e., when some threshold is crossed — does the external force increase the risk of cancer or other disease. From Calabrese, page 16:

[T]he most dominating cause of evolution is our metabolism which induces millions of mutations per day in each cell, with 99.99999% being repaired each day. If our repair systems were not so exceptionally good, life would not exist. Our metabolism produces about 200 million times more genetic damage events per cell per day than that induced by background radiation. There is no contest between the two. What this means is that our body is our biggest enemy; it also means that it is also our best friend. The body’s great repair mechanisms evolved not to prevent and repair damage from background radiation but to fix the damage that our metabolism induces each day. Thus, the body’s repair systems are designed by nature to protect our bodies against ourselves, with background radiation being a very tiny and insignificant factor.

So how did the LNT hypothesis gain such enormous sway, and become the basis for extensive and destructive government decision-making for decades? Calabrese points out that, by contrast to the threshold hypothesis, the LNT hypothesis has the potential to induce great fear in the public, and thus to stimulate large opportunities for funding and career advancement:

[T]he experts got the radiation and chemical mutation idea wrong from the start but they convinced many that they were correct and created debilitating fear in the population at the same time. We also learned that one of the reasons that these great scientists created such fears was to advance their careers and to get a constant flow of government grant monies.

Calabrese’s article is long (18 two-column single-space pages) and goes into detail of the names involved, the particular pieces of evidence suppressed along the way, the manipulation of members of committees to get to desired outcomes, and so forth. It has a lengthy bibliography, including references to multiple prior articles of his own where he has been piecing together and building the story of the LNT fraud for years. If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend this article.

Meanwhile, our government and its “experts” merrily go forth regulating on the basis of the LNT hypothesis, and imposing enormous costs on society for no benefit. From Calabrese’s Conclusion:

[The scientists who promoted the LNT hypothesis] were driven by ideological and self-serving professional biases that would lead to both falsifications of the research record and suppression of key scientific findings, all to establish the LNT model for hereditary and cancer risk assessment, replacing the threshold dose-response model. This troubling history has now been revealed in a long series of peer-reviewed publications by the author and summarized in a broad conversational manner in this Commentary. This troubling history remained hidden from regulatory agencies around the globe since its inception. These groups simply and uncritically accepted a flawed and corrupt history, assuming that it was accurate and reliable. Yet this path of historical ignorance led the US EPA, and other national regulatory agencies, to accept a dishonest foundation upon which to base and frame cancer risk assessment, terribly failing in their public service mission.

As of today, there is no evident retreat by EPA or other U.S. regulatory agencies from the LNT model. Fear sells, and they have no ability or incentive to self-correct.

Is this fraud even greater than the climate data alteration fraud? I still vote for that one as being the more significant. But reasonable people could disagree.

Reasons to hope the Ukraine nuclear plant will come through OK

By Dr. Jay Lehr |October 17th, 2022|Energy|131 Comments @ CFACT

In March of 2022 Russian troops took control of the 6-reactor site of Ukraine’s nuclear energy plant at Zaporizhzhia. They caused minor damage in the battle but raised fears of a wider catastrophe. In the following paragraphs I will explain why that is highly unlikely.

While the Russians have blamed Ukraine for launching attacks against their forces at the reactor site endangering the reactors; the Ukrainians have accused the Russians of deliberately putting the reactors at risk by stationing troops on the grounds. Russia has told the Ukrainian operators that the reactors now belong to Russia, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has asked to visit the reactors to confirm they remain safe. The news media is filled with speculation about what might happen to the reactors and how that might affect Ukraine, Europe, and the world. Here are the facts.

The reactors at Zaporizhzhia provide as much as 20% of Ukraine’s electrical energy –5700 MW when all reactors operate at full power. Electrical energy powers most of the nation and is also vital to fight a war which is one of the reasons Russia wanted to seize these plants – to deny this power to Ukraine and possibly to take it for themselves. At present, only two of the six reactors are operating online.

Do we need to worry about a stray shell hitting a reactor and causing a meltdown? It is quite doubtful. A direct hit on a reactor building with a large high-explosive shell will be blunted by the reactor containment structure which absorbs most of the shell’s energy.

The reactor has multiple layers of protection; the containment, a few meters of reinforced concrete, is only the outermost layer. Within the containment is the reactor pressure vessel that holds the fuel – this is made of tough steel designed to hold in the high-pressure reactor coolant. Unfortunately, holding in a high-pressure liquid isn’t quite the same as standing up to high-pressure gas (i.e., an explosion) on the outside, so we don’t know exactly how much of an external shock the reactor vessel or pipes can take. On the other hand, the force from an explosion drops off relatively quickly with distance from the site of the blast, meaning that a miss won’t have nearly the power of a direct hit.

The third barrier is the fuel construction itself. Uranium fuel is formed into small pellets encased inside metal capsules and placed into a tube made of an alloy of zirconium (a tough metal with a high melting temperature). If the reactor loses cooling, the fuel can still suffer thermal damage or melt – but it provides additional protection against damage from the physical shock from any shells that might penetrate through the containment structure.

The Zaporizhzhia site currently has two operating nuclear reactors and is located just under 300 miles from the nearest NATO nation – Romania – and about 400 miles from Turkey and Bulgaria; were any radioactivity to be released, it would disperse considerably before reaching the borders of any NATO members. What might reach one of our allies would almost certainly not cause any deaths. This is not speculation – this is our experience following the Chernobyl reactor accident and the aftermath of Fukushima. Ironically, the nearest nation to this reactor site and the most likely to receive the highest radiation exposure is Russia, which is only about 160 miles away.

In 2006 the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency conducted a careful examination of health records in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and other, more-distant nations, concluding that fewer than 100 deaths (as of 2006) had been caused by radiation exposure from Chernobyl. Calculations of future cancer deaths showed that several thousand people might die of cancer over a period of 50 years (1986 – 2036), but the cancers that appear soonest after exposure and most likely to be caused by radiation (leukemia and other blood cancers) had not increased in the nations hardest-hit by fallout from this accident.

Considering the different reactor and containment designs (in particular, Chernobyl lacked any containment whatsoever), this suggests that the meltdown of newer, better-designed reactors with containment is similarly unlikely to cause health issues to anybody a few to several hundred miles away.

But a better example would be the Fukushima meltdowns, which occurred in reactors with containment structures. The reactor accidents were not initiated by an explosion in the reactor core (as happened at Chernobyl). In the case of Fukushima, the WHO and the IAEA concluded that there will likely not be a single death due to radiation exposure, either in the short term or over the next several decades. A meltdown at the Zaporizhzhia site is much more likely to resemble what happened at Fukushima; the fact that even the Japanese in the vicinity of the Fukushima reactor site are expected to be unaffected suggests that our NATO allies are almost certainly safe as well.

It is hoped the IAEA is granted access to the site to confirm that the reactors are still being operated safely. We can hope that the Russians and Ukrainians find it in their best interests to demilitarize the area and withdraw all troops from the reactor site.

Author

• Dr. Jay Lehr

  CFACT Senior Science Analyst Jay Lehr has authored more than 1,000 magazine and journal articles and 36 books. Jay’s new book A Hitchhikers Journey Through Climate Change written with Teri Ciccone is now available on Kindle and Amazon.

 

50 Million Dead: The Price of Woke Radiation Science

by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris | Dec 14, 2021 | Healthcare, Politics @ America Out Loud

A life-giving medical procedure that would likely have prevented 50 million cancer deaths over the past four decades has been impeded by overcautious woke federal regulators who admit that no science backs their position. We are speaking about the use of low levels of radiation for the prevention and treatment of many major diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and COVID-19 pneumonia. Here’s the background:

The discovery of X-rays and radioactivity in 1895/1896 triggered a flood of studies and applications of radiation in medicine that continue to this day. They started with imaging fractures/organs and progressed to treating diseases by exposing areas to radiation from external and internal sources. By definition, low-dose treatments stimulate damage control (or adaptive protection) systems that remedy diseases. 

But, in 1946, much of this beneficial science was derailed. It was in that year that the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was given to Dr. Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe.

By contrast, toxicologists have long used actual experiments to establish dose-response models and determine what exposure to various kinds of radiation (or chemicals) actually poses cancer (or other) risks for humans.

Low doses are generally benign, they have found. In many cases, low doses even help animals and humans ward off disease, safeguard bodies against certain chemicals or diseases, or actually cure cancer and other diseases. Higher doses can cause problems and therefore must be calculated and regulated. For example, via a process called hormesis, low levels of radon exposure can protect against cancer; 80 milligrams of aspirin are thought to prevent strokes, and trace amounts of selenium help our bodies counteract the harmful effects of mercury in our blood.

However, despite this evidence, government agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have followed Muller’s straight-line Linear No Threshold (LNT) model for decades. Besides giving rise to what many say are overly restrictive and even unnecessary regulations, the LNT model has actually harmed patients, by greatly precluding the use of radiation in curative medicine. It has also made nuclear power far more expensive than necessary by imposing unrealistically severe regulations. 

But, as we wrote about in “Fraudulent Science Behind Radiation Regulations,” our January 8, 2019, America Out Loud article, Muller’s experiments were flawed and, eventually, he knew it yet continued the deception regardless. In that article, we wrote:

“Muller’s story appears to be one of unbridled ambition, self-serving manipulation, a scientific community that failed to demand accountability, and a Nobel Prize committee that inadequately evaluated the findings which lead to the award. The implications of these actions have been incredibly damaging.

“They resulted in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences adopting the LNT in 1956 for all regulatory programs relating to radiation. This convention was subsequently adopted worldwide.

“The deceptions continue to justify over-regulation and deprive patients of potential cures, without any acknowledgment or change by the scientific community or government regulatory agencies.”

Recognizing the enormous harm caused by regulations that are based on the LNT model, three petitions were filed in 2015 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) asking it to end the use of the LNT model. In particular, the petitions for rulemaking (PRM) requested that the NRC amend its “Standards for Protection Against Radiation” regulations and “change the basis of those regulations from the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation protection to the radiation hormesis model.” The petitions claimed, and rightly so, that the LNT model is scientifically false and does more harm than good.

The three petitioners were highly qualified experts in the field: Dr. Mohan Doss of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Dr. Carol S. Marcus of Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles and Dr. Mark L. Miller of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. They wanted the NRC to revise its rules to avoid overreactions to what are essentially nonexistent threats. These petitions included considerable evidence demonstrating the cancer-preventive and therapeutic benefits of low-level radiation, completely contradicting the LNT model. Writing in New York Times (“When Radiation Isn’t the Real Risk,” September 21, 2015) George Johnson explained:

“There is more here at stake than agonizing over irreversible acts, like the evacuation of Fukushima [which, the senior author of this article warned, correctly, was huge mistake—far more people died from the stress of the evacuation than even could have died from the radiation]. Fear of radiation, even when diluted to homeopathic portions, compels people to forgo lifesaving diagnostic tests and radiotherapies.

“We’re bad at balancing risks, we humans, and we live in a world of continual uncertainty. Trying to avoid the horrors we imagine, we risk creating ones that are real.”

Remarkably, instead of properly addressing the merits of the petitions and the evidence submitted in 2015 by Doss, Marcus, and Miller, the NRC quoted woke advisory bodies and, on August 17, 2021, merely dismissed the evidence and the petitions. In “NRC Rejects Petitions to End Reliance on LNT Model” published in the November 2021 Journal of Nuclear Medicine, the scandal is further described:

“The NRC contends that by overestimating radiation risk, adherence to the LNT model protects the public and radiation workers…It is our contention that unless NRC’s policies comply with scientific evidence, they are as likely to endanger as to protect, and they directly contribute to avoidable early deaths.

“Following ICRP [International Commission on Radiological Protection]and NCRP [National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements] recommendations, the NRC concedes that no evidence supports the LNT model. Nevertheless, the NRC defends it, ignoring the fact that it was disproven at its 1940s birth in favor of a threshold model, as well as by data from the Life Span Study (LSS) of atomic bomb survivors (considered to be the gold standard for estimating radiation effects in humans) and the International Nuclear Workers Study.

“Ever-expanding experimental and observational (epidemiologic) evidence demonstrates a threshold of radiation dose and/or dose rate below which harm disappears and the net effects on health after the organism responds to protect itself, are beneficial “

Like the original 2015 petitioners, the authors of the commentary in last month’s Journal of Nuclear Medicine are highly qualified individuals: Dr. Jeffry A. Siegel, Ph.D., Nuclear Physics Enterprises, Orlando, FL; Dr. Bill Sacks, Ph.D., MD, US FDA (retired, diagnostic radiologist), Gaithersburg, MD; and Dr. Bennett S. Greenspan, MD, MS, North Augusta, SC.

The evidence in support of rejecting the LNT model continues to mount. For example, in 2015, a patient in hospice with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was treated with ionizing radiation to her brain using repeated CT scans. Improvement in cognition, speech, movement, and appetite was observed. These improvements were so momentous that she was discharged from the hospice to a long-term care home.

Based on this case, Dr. Jerry Cuttler and his team conducted a pilot clinical trial to examine the effect of low-dose ionizing radiation (LDIR) in severe AD. Dr. Cuttler is former President of the Canadian Nuclear Society and a member of the American Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific Advisors.

The objective was to determine whether the previously reported benefits of LDIR in a single case with AD could be observed again in other cases with AD when the same treatments are given. In this single-arm study, four patients were treated with three consecutive treatments of LDIR, two weeks apart. Qualitative changes in communication and behavior with close relatives were observed and recorded. Quantitative measures of cognition and behavior were administered pre and post LDIR treatments.

Minor improvements on quantitative measures were noted in three of the four patients following treatment. However, the qualitative observations of cognition and behavior suggested remarkable improvements within days post-treatment, including greater overall alertness. One patient showed no change.

Low Dose Ionizing Radiation (LDIR) may be a promising, albeit controversial therapy for AD. Trials of patients with less severe AD, double-blind and placebo-controlled, should be carried out to determine the benefits of LDIR. Quantitative measures are needed that are sensitive to the remarkable changes induced by LDIR, such as biological markers of oxidative stress that are associated with AD.

Sadly, this work has always been hindered by the fallacious belief that even the smallest amount of radiation could lead to cancer. Proof of the fact that there is not a Linear No Dose Threshold for radioactivity has been proven over and over by Dr. Cutler and his colleague Dr. Edward Calabrese. Yet, government regulators continue to block more widespread use of radioactive therapies, a travesty of the first order. Readers are encouraged to make donations to “Help Sue NRC to End the Use of the LNT Model,” a new GoFundMe campaign to raise money for a lawsuit to end the use of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation protection regulations. Bennett Greenspan, MD, MS, Chairman of the XLNT Foundation, writes on the petition web page:

“We believe the NRC denied the petitions illegally and we have a certain amount of time to sue and to force the NRC to reconsider the petitions based on the best available science. Please click here to support our lawsuit with a generous donation. The lawsuit will be launched after $150,000 has been raised in donations.”

It’s about time politically-correct federal bureaucrats are held to account for the millions of unnecessary deaths their actions have caused.

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical engineer/project manager, science and technology communications professional, technical trainer, and S&T advisor to a former Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.

We should learn what lessons from Fukushima?

Lesson #1: People died from forced evacuations, not from radiation 

Dr. Kelvin Kemm

A decade has passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the name Fukushima is etched into history. But few people know the truth of what happened. The phrase, “the lessons learned from Fukushima,” is well-known. But how do people implement them, if they don’t know what happened, or what lessons they should actually learn?

It was after lunch on 11 March 2011 that a giant earthquake occurred 72 kilometers (45 miles) off the Oshika Peninsula in Japan. It registered 9.0 on the Richter Scale, making it the largest ’quake ever recorded in Japan. The undersea ground movement, over 30 km (18 miles) beneath the ocean’s surface, lifted up a huge volume of water, like an immense moving hill. Meanwhile, the ground shockwave travelled toward the land at high speed. It struck Japan and shook the ground for six terrifying minutes.

The shock wave travelled under 11 nuclear reactors, including two separate Fukushima complexes: Fukushima-Diani and Fukushima-Daiichi. (Diani means ‘Complex 1’ and Daiichi ‘Complex 2’.) All 11 reactors shut down, as they were designed to do, and no doubt all the reactor operators breathed a great sigh of relief. It was premature.

The mound of sea water was still traveling. As the water “hill” entered shallow water, nearer the land, it was lifted up into a towering wave as high as 40 meters (130 feet!) in places. Then, some 50 minutes after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station. Some kilometres away, when water struck the Fukushima-Diani nuclear power station, it was “only” 9 m (30 ft) high, which was not as devastating as at Daiichi. Diani did not make it into the news.

The water jumped the protective sea walls at Fukushima-Daiichi. The sighs of relief from a half hour before turned into concern and dread. Over at the Fukushima Diani power station, 12 km (7 mi) to the south, water also caused damage to machinery, but the reactors were not harmed. There was no risk of radiation release, so the Diani power station was of no interest to the international media. Diani was safely shut down to “cold shutdown” after two days.

As a result, over the past decade, any reference to “Fukushima” has meant only the Daiichi power station and not the other one.

The devastating tsunami swept up to 10 km (6 mi) inland in places, washing away buildings, roads, and telecommunication and power lines. Over 15,000 people were killed, mainly by drowning.

Although all the nuclear reactors had shut down to a state known as “hot shutdown,” the reactors were still very hot and needed residual cooling for many hours after the urgent fast shutdown. People instinctively know not to put their hands on the engine block of a car right after it has been switched off. Nuclear reactors are the same and need to cool down until they reach the safe state known as “cold shutdown.”

A nuclear reactor has pumps that send water through the reactor until it cools. But the Fukushima electrical pumps failed, because the tsunami had washed away the incoming electricity power lines. So the reactor system automatically switched to diesel-driven generators to keep the cooling pumps going; but the water had washed away the diesel fuel supply, meaning the diesels worked for only a short while. Then it switched to emergency batteries; but the batteries were never designed to last for days, and could supply emergency power for only about eight hours.

The result was that hot fuel could not be adequately cooled, and over the next three or four days the fuel in three reactors melted, much like a candle melts.

The world media watched, and broadcast the blow-by-blow action. Japanese authorities started to panic under the international spotlight. The un-circulating cooling water was boiling off inside the reactors resulting in a chemical reaction between hot fuel exposed to hot steam. This led to the production of hydrogen gas. As the steam pressure rose, the engineers decided to open valves to release the pressure. That worked as planned, but it released the hydrogen as well.

Hydrogen, being light, rose up to the roof, where the ventilation system was not working, because there was no electricity. After a while some stray spark ignited the hydrogen which exploded, blowing the lightweight roof off the building right in front of the world’s TV cameras. The Fukushima news just became much more dramatic. Authorities were desperate to show the world some positive action.

They progressively ordered the evacuation of 160,000 people living around the Fukushima neighbourhood. That was a mistake. As days and weeks passed, it materialized that not one single person was killed by nuclear radiation. Not one single person was even injured by nuclear radiation, either. Even today, a decade later, there is still no sign of any longer-term radiation harm to any person or animal. Sadly, however, people did die during the forced evacuation.

So one of the lessons learned from Fukushima is that a huge amount of nuclear power can be struck by the largest earthquake and tsunami ever recorded, and nobody gets harmed by nuclear radiation.

Another lesson learned is that an evacuation order issued too hastily did harm and kill people.

World Nuclear Association Director-General Dr. Sama Bilbao y León said: “The rapidly implemented and protracted evacuation has resulted in well-documented significant negative social and health impacts. In total, the evacuation is thought to have been responsible for more than 2,000 premature deaths among the 160,000 who were evacuated. The rapid evacuation of the frail elderly, as well at those requiring hospital care, had a near-immediate toll.” [emphasis added]

She added: “When facing future scenarios concerning public health and safety, whatever the event, it is important that authorities take an all-hazards approach. There are risks involved in all human activities, not just nuclear power generation. Actions taken to mitigate a situation should not result in worse impacts than the original events. This is particularly important when managing the response to incidents at nuclear facilities – where fear of radiation may lead to an overly conservative assessment and a lack of perspective for relative risks.”

Thus, a decade later, we can contemplate the cumulative lessons learned. Above all, they are that nuclear power is far safer than anyone had thought. Even when dreaded core meltdowns occurred, and although reactors were wrecked, resulting in a financial disaster for the owners, no people were harmed by radiation.

We also learned that, for local residents, it would have been far safer to stay indoors in a house than to join the forced evacuation. We also learned that governments and authorities must listen to the nuclear professionals, and not overreact, even though the television news cameras look awfully close.

Fukushima certainly produced some valuable lessons. Governments, news media and the public need to learn the correct lessons from them.

Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and is CEO of Stratek Business Strategy Consultants, a project management company based in Pretoria. He conducts business strategy development and project planning in a wide variety of fields for diverse clients. Contact him at Stratek@pixie.co.za 

Radiation, Covid-19, and Longer Life Spans

By Jack Dini —— Bio and Archives--June 18, 2020

Human medical trials have begun on severely ill Covid-19 patients using low doses of radiation. Although a very small sample size, the results were quite extraordinary.

Researchers at Emory University Hospital, led by Dr. Mohammad Khan, treated five Covid-19 patients with severe pneumonia who were requiring supplemental oxygen and whose health was visibly deteriorating. Their median age was 90 with a range from 64 to 94, four were female, four were African-American, and one was Caucasian.

These patients were given a single dose of radiation (1.5 Gy, or 150 Rad) to both lungs, delivered front and back beam configuration. Patients were in and out of the Radiotherapy Department in 10 to 15 minutes. This was not a low dose of radiation, but it’s only equivalent to 15 years of living in Ramsar, Iran, and 8 years on a Brazilian Monazite beach. Despite high natural background radiation fields the frequency of cancer and the lifespan of people living in the Ramsar area is not noticeably different when compared to other general populations around the world.

Radiation is not ‘killing the virus’ but is changing the immune response and may be able to stop the deadly cascade of the cytokine storm

Within 24 hours, four of the patients showed rapid improvement in oxygenation and mental status (more awake, alert and talkative) and were being discharged from the hospital 12 days later. Blood tests and repeated imaging of the lungs confirmed that the radiation was safe and effective, and did not cause adverse effects—no acute skin, pulmonary, gastrointestinal or genitourinary toxicities.
In theory, the shot of radiation is not ‘killing the virus’ but is changing the immune response and may be able to stop the deadly cascade of the cytokine storm...............

  A linear-no-threshold (LNT) assumption exists with ‘assumption’ as the all-important word that needs to be taken literally. While no one disputes that high doses of radiation cause harm, no one has proof that low levels cause harm. Surprisingly, the scientists and government bodies that adhere to the LNT assumption will tell you that no proof of harm at low levels is even possible because the risk is too low to measure statistically. In the absence of proof, they say, the only prudent course is to play it safe by assuming that low levels or radiation cause harm, reports Lawrence Solomon.

Yet, here are some examples:...........To Read More....

Mutant Time Bomb - or - Weasel Words, Junk Science and Scare Mongering

By Rich Kozlovich

On December 6th, 2018 Jon Lockett posted the article, MUTANT TIME BOMB, all in caps I might add, and I can only assume that was for effect.  He starts out with two statements;

1. Chernobyl wolves infected with radiation feared to be spreading mutant genes across Europe"
2. A scientific study raises the possibility the packs could spread radiation-caused mutations to other wolf populations

He then goes on to lay foundation saying:

"Scientists fear wolves living in Chernobyl's radioactive forbidden zone may be spreading mutant genes across Europe. The European grey wolf population has boomed at the site since the human population moved out and it became a virtual wildlife preserve."  

"The wolf population inside Chernobyl's exclusion zone is booming since the disaster. Research now reveals some of the wolves - potentially affected by damaging radiation - have been crossing Ukraine's borders into Russia and Belarus. The news has sparked concerns among some in the scientific community that the animals may mate and spread mutant genes to other packs. The site became off limits to humans after the nuclear power plant disaster on 26 April 1986, due to concerns about the high levels of radiation."

 Okay, so we're supposed to believe this "fear" scientists have will cause a disaster by this "booming" wolf population breeding with wolves outside their area.  I think that bodes well this question:  If this area of radiation is so bad, and the potential for mutation is so dangerous - why did this population boom?  What evidence is there?  Let's continue!

He goes on to say

"Wolves were tracked leaving the exclusion zone and one even crossed into Russia (stock) Scientists believe the mutant gene theory is worth looking into The researchers found while the adult wolves stayed within the zone, the juvenile roamed far beyond its boundaries." .........."This raised questions about the effect of wolves potentially affected by radiation carrying mutant genes to pass onto other wolf communities."

He continues with:

"Studies of other animals -mostly smaller ones like birds, rodents, and insects -show that Chernobyl radiation can cause mutations and ill health. And work done in creatures such as barn swallows and voles suggests these mutations may be transferred to the next generation."......... wildlife ecologist Michael Byrne told Live Science he believes the mutant gene theory is something worth looking into.

I give the author credit for this small attempt to be unbiased by including this point by "the University of Missouri animal movement and ecology expert:"

 "We have no evidence to support that this is happening. "No wolves there were glowing - they all have four legs, two eyes and one tail."

So to help pump the scare mongering well to the fullest he goes on to say:

"The Chernobyl exclusion zone is also home to other species including moose, horses, bison, boars and red badgers. Last year, we told how radioactive boars were running wild in the Czech Republic after eating mushrooms contaminated after the Chernobyl disaster."

But what do we find?  They're all still alive, they all still have legs, eyes, tails, no obvious signs of mutation and they're all still having babies, who are also capable of having babies.  So all these concerns are supported by what?  Speculation and extrapolation, fear mongering, weasel words and media hype. 

Let's get the facts of the matter.  Intense doses of radiation are deadly and can seriously impact health.  But we need to get rid of this idea that radiation at every level is dangerous.  That's a false assumption and bad science based on what's called the Linear No Threshold toxicity model that has now been shown to not only to be junk science, but was in point of fact fraudulent. 

On November 9th 2018 I published an article by two friends of mine, Dr Jay Lehr and Paul Driessen entitled, Fraudulent science behind radiation regulations, saying:

"world-renowned toxicology expert Dr. Edward Calabrese has now discovered and documented fraud behind the award of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The prize was given to Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe."

The article goes on to show:

1. The fraud Muller perpetrated.
2. The unwillingness of others to expose that fraud.
3. How the world accepted scientific fraud that was blatantly and provably false.
4. How the fraud was known by scientists who deliberately remained silent.
5. And how the fraud "resulted in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences adopting the LNT in 1956 for all regulatory programs relating to radiation. This convention was subsequently adopted worldwide."

You may wish to view this video interview with Dr. Edward Calabrese entitled, Is Fear of Radiation Bad For Your Health. 

Well, at this point I don't see a Mutant Time Bomb.  What I see are weasel words, junk science and the typical scare mongering the media feeds to the public. 

Is Fear of Radiation Bad for Your Health?

Fraudulent science behind radiation regulations

Radiation scientist documents fraud in Nobel award for “Linear No Threshold” toxicity model

Paul Driessen and Dr. Jay Lehr

The 2018 elections underscore the need for bipartisan efforts to address scientific frauds that promote and justify ever more stringent regulations – often to the great detriment of people, patients and society.

In fact, world-renowned toxicology expert Dr. Edward Calabrese has now discovered and documented fraud behind the award of the 1946 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The prize was given to Hermann Muller for his claimed discovery that even small or infinitesimal amounts of radiation can cause cancer. It is the ridiculous assertion that there is no threshold below which any kind of radiation is safe.

By contrast, toxicologists have long used actual experiments to establish a dose response model and determine what exposure to various kinds of radiation (or chemicals) actually pose cancer (or other risks) risks for humans.

Low doses are generally benign, they have found. In many cases, they even help animals and humans ward off disease, safeguard bodies against certain chemicals or diseases, or actually cure cancer and other diseases. Higher doses can cause problems, and therefore must be calculated and regulated.

For example, via a process called hormesis, low levels of radon exposure can protect against cancer; 80 milligrams of aspirin are thought to prevent strokes; and trace amounts of selenium help our bodies counteract the harmful effects of mercury in our blood.

However, despite this evidence, government agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have followed Muller’s straight-line Linear No Threshold (LNT) model for decades. Besides giving rise to what many say are overly restrictive and even unnecessary regulations, the LNT model has actually harmed patients, by greatly precluding the use of radiation in curative medicine.

But now University of Massachusetts at Amherst health sciences professor Calabrese has documented LNT fraud through an exhaustive review of communications that began July 22, 1927 in the journal Science, where Muller first put forth the claim that any amount of radiation causes cancer. Calabrese lays out his findings in an October 2018 paper in the Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine journal. an

Calabrese has spent years investigating Muller’s claims. His story unfolds like a detective novel with all the characters who played intentional or inadvertent roles in the deception indicted by their written and published communications 90 years ago. There are 34 documents in all.

They show that, without any supporting scientific data or peer review, Muller presented his claims at the Fifth International Genetics Congress in September 1927, where he described how he had supposedly induced hundreds of gene mutations by bombarding common fruit flies (Drosophila) with x-rays.

Muller’s closest friend and colleague, William Rice Institute biologist Edgar Altenburg, told Muller his experiment had not caused any mutations. Instead, they created changes by eliminating pieces of the flies’ chromosomes, enabling the creation of inheritable traits or progeny, but no mutations whatever.

As early as 1929, in a paper in the Journal of Genetics, geneticist Barbara McClintock demonstrated that Altenburg’s criticism of Muller were correct. She went on to win the 1983 Nobel Prize for her other work in genetics.

However, Muller repeatedly brushed off his friends’ advisories about his error and McClintock’s proof that his hypothesis was incorrect. The recriminations may have led to Muller’s failed suicide attempt in 1932. His suicide note was directed to Altenburg, rather than his family, and Altenburg never challenged Muller again. It appears that loyalty to a close friend may have overwhelmed his responsibility to science, medicine and humanity.

The scientific community was enthralled by Muller’s claims and the publicity it received. Scientists worldwide quickly and uncritically came to believe that Muller actually had produced gene mutations and was advancing one of the most significant questions confronting biology. His lack of data never slowed down the wave of excitement.

Muller resumed his duplicity quite strongly throughout the years leading to his Nobel Prize lecture on December 12, 1946. There he deliberately deceived the audience by arguing that there was no possibility of a threshold or harmless dose response for radiation-induced mutations.

Calabrese documents that Muller had seen data that supported exactly that conclusion. It came from two scientists, Ernst Caspari and Curt Stern, who worked at the University of Rochester and released their findings one month prior to Muller’s Nobel Lecture. Muller ignored their findings and promoted his deception to support his long-held commitment to his Linear No Threshold claim, which is commonly referred to as LNT dose response for mutation and cancer risks.

Muller’s story is one of unbridled ambition, self-serving manipulation, a scientific community that at many levels failed to demand accountability, and a Nobel Prize committee that inadequately evaluated the findings which lead to the award. The implications of these actions have been incredibly damaging.

They resulted in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences adopting the LNT in 1956 for all regulatory programs relating to radiation. This convention was subsequently adopted worldwide.

The deceptions facilitated a continuing impact on society that continues to the present day, without any acknowledgement or change by the scientific community or government regulatory agencies.

Incredibly, modern nucleotide analysis methods have repeated Muller’s experiments with x-ray bombardments – and shown conclusively that Muller’s alterations to fruit flies resulted in modest to extraordinarily large chromosomal deletions, rather than point mutations.

In addition, the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was exacerbated by a commitment to the LNT, which persuaded the Japanese government to mandate that people be moved unnecessarily miles from their homes. That led to an estimated 1,600 premature elderly deaths due to stress.

Not a single radiation illness or death occurred, because there was never enough radiation lasting long enough in the prevailing winds to cause either. But the Fukushima fear lasted for years afterward.

Most amazing and distressing of all, they have led to the rejection of low-dose radiation (LDR) treatments. Underscoring how devastating this can be for patients, Dr. Kiyohiko Sakamoto gave himself total-body LDR treatments for his systemic stage IV colon cancer. Thus far, he is a 20+ year survivor!

In his landmark paper, Calabrese says, regardless of Muller’s deceit, “the most significant criticisms and concerns should be directed to the scientific and regulatory communities, such as U.S. EPA, that have uncritically adopted and sustained Muller’s findings as the foundation for cancer risk assessment.”

They have permitted this process to be dominated by ideological perspectives that must end if healthcare is to be optimized by using low dose radiation to arrest or cure cancers, and prevent needless deaths.

The reasons behind this travesty of science and medicine are simple. First, prominent scientists do not like to be found incorrect on major issues. Second, an activist anti-nuclear population views all radiation as evil, whether that view is rational, irrational or actually harmful to people’s health and welfare.

Hopefully, a “refreshed” House of Representatives and stronger Republican Senate will team up with the White House to correct an egregious wrong that has negatively impacted the health of cancer victims and others who most need advanced radiation treatments that have too long been rendered unavailable.

Any LNT changes will likely be resisted by environmental and health activists and others committed to the status quo. However, Congress, EPA, the Food and Drug Administration, and other regulatory bodies worldwide need to reexamine and revise existing LNT rules. Countless lives hang in the balance.

Paul Driessen is policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of articles and books on natural resource issues. Dr. Jay Lehr is science director for The Heartland Institute Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Radiation In Healthcare And Its Measurement

April 9, 2017 By Michael D. Shaw @ HealthNewsDigest

 

Broadly speaking, “radiation” is simply energy in motion—usually at the speed of light, but always at a speed much greater than so-called thermal velocities (the velocities of molecules forming a sample of air). Stedman’s Medical Dictionary refines this for the world of healthcare as: The sending forth of light, short radio waves, ultraviolet rays, or x-rays, or any other rays for treatment, diagnosis, or another purpose.

The term “radioactivity” denotes the emission of ionizing radiation or particles caused by the spontaneous disintegration of atomic nuclei.

Ionizing radiation is radiation with sufficient energy to remove electrons from the orbit of an atom, causing the atom to become charged or ionized. Only the high frequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes X rays, gamma rays, and the higher ultraviolet is ionizing. There is also particle radiation (alpha, beta, and neutron). Except for certain phenomena such as radioluminescence, ionizing radiation cannot be sensed by humans. Thus, specialized instruments are required.

We are exposed to both natural sources of ionizing radiation (such as radon) and manufactured sources on a daily basis. The greatest part of the annual dose of background radiation that we receive is due to naturally occurring terrestrial and cosmic radiation sources. Not far behind, though, is radiation from various standard medical procedures. This does not include radiation therapy for cancer, which for an affected individual would be the key source.

Common uses of radiation in healthcare include X-ray, and the special cases of mammography and computerized tomography (CT) scanning, certain cardiac diagnostics, and the aforementioned radiation cancer therapy. In nuclear medicine, radioactive material is often injected into the patient, as when radioactive iodine is used to treat thyroid conditions.

The discovery of electromagnetic radiation—other than visible light—is credited to astronomer William Herschel, and the discovery of X-rays to Wilhelm Röntgen, who won a Nobel. It was double Nobel laureate Marie Curie who coined the term “radioactivity.” Sadly, her death in 1934 was attributed to excessive radiation exposure. Indeed, some of her personal items are still too radioactive to be handled today.

And, let’s not forget DNA hero Rosalind Franklin, whose death from ovarian cancer at age 37, in 1958, was very likely triggered by radiation exposure from her X-ray crystallography work.

What probably heightened public awareness of the dangers of ionizing radiation was the gruesome 1932 death of wealthy industrialist, athlete, and playboy Eben Byers, who consumed three bottles per day of radium-laced patent medicine Radithor. After consuming 1400 bottles of the stuff, he developed all sorts of symptoms, causing the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission to get involved. His death was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

The familiar Geiger counter has been around since 1928. Other standard instrumentation methods include scintillation detectors and solid state X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. There is also a need for dosimetry, whereby the exposure of a given individual over time can be determined. Many are familiar with the film badge, as introduced during the Manhattan Project of World War II. Upon exposure to radiation, the film emulsion darkens, and the cumulative “dosage” can be determined.
Other dosimeter methods include thermoluminescent elements and aluminum oxide based optically stimulated luminescence detectors. All of these methods require that the badges be collected, and be sent out for processing—introducing a delay in obtaining the results of two or three weeks.

Which brings us to a breakthrough product from radiation detection and protection leader Mirion Technologies called the Instadose+ Dosimeter. Mirion’s CEO Tom Logan recently gave me the full story.

The new dosimeters use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Technology to transmit dose data. As such, the dosimeters can be read in a number of ways, all securely communicating dose data to Mirion’s servers, allowing the user to view dose history, dosimeter assignment details, dose reads, and status.

** Via smart devices incorporating BLE technology with the instadose app installed
** Via a computer with an instaLink™ USB drive connected
** Via instaLink™ Hotspot Stations installed at your facility (can be connected to your network by Ethernet or WiFi)

This dose data becomes part of Mirion’s web-based Account Management Program, allowing the radiation safety officer to manage individual wearers, devices, and locations, and get real-time access to account details, dosimeter assignments, reports, and pertinent account information. Significantly, no badges ever have to be collected and sent away for processing. In fact, any Instadose+ Dosimeter can be interrogated at any time with a suitably outfitted computer or mobile device.

Finally, the Instadose+ Dosimeter is personalized with the wearer’s name, encouraging them to take ownership in their health and safety. One wonders if the great minds of Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin could have imagined such technology.

DANGER: RADIOACTIVE – Do Not Drink More than 63,000 Gallons of Water

My name is Art Robinson,  I am Professor of Chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and I publish a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise monthly newsletter, Access to Energy, which in September 1997 began its twenty fifth year. Access to Energy was founded by Professor Petr Beckmann in 1973 and published by him until his death in 1993.  As for those 63,000 gallons, our readers know why they are safe.

We don’t ask them to trust and parrot us, we ask them to think.

In this case, we told them how much radioactive iodine 131 is given to a healthy patient in a thyroid check: up to 90 microcuries (a cancer patient is given much more). And we reported the maximum measured activity in rainwater washing out Chernobyl’s iodine over the US: 0.00036 microcuries per liter. There is about 4 liters to the gallon; hence 63,000 gallons of “contaminated” rain water “full of fallout” will give you as much radioactive iodine as you get when you have your thyroid checked.......To Read More.....

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week 24

The presence of linked articles here are merely a way of showing what is going on, whether I agree or disagree with the positions presented. Rich Kozlovich

In an attempt to do justice to the ACSH’s efforts I have tried to improve my presentation of their work each week. As time goes by I will find what I believe is the best presentation in order to make sure the issues are clearly and completely outlined in a manner that is user friendly.

I have often said that I would like to explore and expand my presentations on a host of issues, but I have a job that interferes with my life. Soon I hope to have more time as I pass my 65th year. One of the things I would like to do is organized an ACSH page by topic. As an example I would like to have a page that is devoted to all the cancer articles for 2011 and so on. But….that is for another day.

It is also my hope that Paradigms and Demographics will become a source blog on all of these subjects. I do believe it is important to have a source that is only interested in the facts and prepared to publish them…..with an eye to consistency of thought and devotion to the truth….something the activists have difficulty with; along with their allies in the media.

There are so many great writers and sites out there that is it a shame not have all of their works organized in this fashion. I have attempted to do this with the page I have titled, Caruba’s Corner, Green Myths and Other Lies. There are a number of writers that have been graciously allowing me to republish their works, including Gil Ross and Elizabeth Whelan from the American Council on Science and Health. At some point in the near future I wish to do an article about all of these people, which numbers around fifteen or so.

Cancer

Weight of cancer getting lighter
After reading the headline, "Weighing Cancer Risks, From Cellphones To Coffee," ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross was ready to sink his teeth into what he perceived to be yet another anti-chemical news story. …. “RITE: Risk Is equal to Toxicity times Exposure,” which Dr. Ross puts in layman’s terms: “Everything under the sun, even water, can be considered toxic, or a hazard, to a varying degree. A substance such as cyanide is highly toxic, so even a small exposure creates a risk. Water, on the other hand, is not toxic at common exposures — but too much of it can kill.”….. says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan: “When it comes to cancer phobias, common sense holds little sway.”

Did you hear that, NY Times? Cancer death rates keep falling
Speaking of cancer, the American Cancer Society announced some good news on Friday: Cancer death rates are continuing to decline and, best of all, new cases of lung cancer among women are falling after having steadily increased since the 1930s.

ACS's toxic headline contaminates cancer discussion
The lower a person's socioeconomic status, the greater the risk of cancer. Those are the findings from a report released last Friday by the American Cancer Society (ACS)….. But the language of the ACS’s alarming headline “Poverty is a Carcinogen: Does Anyone Care?” does not sit well with ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, who believes labeling poverty a carcinogen “dilutes the meaning of the word. In that case, we could also label sedentary behavior a carcinogen.” “Indeed,” says ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom. “A carcinogen is a substance, not a behavior, which is more aptly considered a risk factor for cancer — not a carcinogen.”

Smoking

Another problem for smokers: Poorer prognosis for prostate cancer
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that, among prostate cancer patients, current smokers have an increased risk of prostate cancer mortality compared with non-smokers.

Will a picture be worth more than just words on a warning label?
The FDA's proposed new graphic warning labels on cigarette packs are causing a stir among pundits and, of course, tobacco companies.

Weight and Surrounding Issues

News from all over on the obesity front
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls: there are obesity updates for all.

Can surgery cure diabetes? Maybe — for a while, at least.
In other weight loss news, one of the authors of a new study recommends that weight loss surgeries, such as gastric bypass and gastric banding, become front line type 2 diabetes treatments.

ABC “sugar high” crashes on soda junk science
Readers who turn to ABC as their source of news will get a very skewed impression of distinguished professor Dr. David Allison, head of the Section on Statistical Genetics at the University of Alabama and director of the National Institutes of Health-funded Nutrition Obesity Research Center.

Pharmaceutical News

New bill seeks to treat (antibiotic) resistance to new drug development
A bipartisan bill introduced to Congress by Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey - the Generating Antibiotics Incentives Now (GAIN) Act - attempts to spur interest among pharmaceutical companies to develop new and effective antibiotics, traditionally an unprofitable sector of the drug market.

My Take – Is Greed Good? The article goes on to point out the “profit motive” is the key to all of this. When I was in New York last September for the premier of 3Billion and counting I had an interesting conversation with a young woman regarding this issue. My point was then and it is still today. You can’t keep allowing these socialists nations to force the pharmaceuticals to give them the products for free. Some have even demanded that they turn the patent and process over to them so that they can manufacture the antibiotics themselves. They may be able to convince everyone that this is for the common good, but it is absolutely a long term detriment to humanity. Does anyone ever ask; why aren’t these socialists coming up with the new drugs themselves? The U.S. has been the leader in this kind of research for years because they can recover their costs and make money in America. We need to get that if we expect to see more and innovative pharmaceuticals come to the market. Remember….no matter how much these products cost today….they will eventually go out of patent and become public domain. That is the purpose of patents. Get the products to market….and it will only happen if they are allowed to profit from their efforts. The left calls this Greed. I call it enlightened self interest. This is the seed that makes everything grow. Did We Get That?

Supremes protect generic makers after dissing innovators
The Supreme Court handed down a decision yesterday that represents a significant victory for the pharmaceutical industry.

Nutrition

Must we really take our (multi)vitamins?
In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck investigates the efficacy of the ubiquitous multivitamin. Yet it is, again, important to understand that the general population has very little to worry about when it comes to vitamins. For a more nuanced look at what Dr. Bloom calls “Vitamyths,” check out his article

So, why do so many of us take vitamins? The answer is Very Effective Marketing. It has become part of the American psyche that vitamins are good, that they will protect us from all sorts of diseases and that we don’t get enough of them in our diets

Radiation and Public Health

One burger — medium-well and irradiated, please!
ACSH staffers this morning lauded Los Angeles Times writer Elena Conis for her comprehensive and informative article on the many benefits of food irradiation, an effective yet underused method of preventing food-borne infection that has been around for the last century.

My Take – I keep hearing activists make the claim that there is no safe level of radiation. Horsepucky! That is a blatant lie and they have to know it.

Urban Myths, the Media, Sound Science and the Public

AMA’s new “public safety” policies: Neither medicine nor science
The Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) has resulted in the Association's adoption of a bevy ofnew public safety policies that have little (or nothing) to do with the actual safety of the public.

Media coverage of FDA breast implant update a total bust
Ever since the FDA finally approved silicone gel breast implants in 2006, the procedure has grown in popularity; nearly 400,000 breast enlargement or reconstruction procedures were performed in the U.S. in 2010 alone.

Our Dr. Bloom calls attention to America’s disappearing scientists
Writing in today's New York Post, ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom points out a troubling trend that may be hindering America's ability to compete globally on the scientific front: science jobs are quickly vanishing in the U.S.

My Take - This must explain why there are so many junk scientists out there. So many of the good ones left!

Dr. Nestle takes on the scaremongers of EWG
ACSH staffers were pleasantly surprised to find an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times underlining the scientific illiteracy and irresponsibility of the anti-pesticide scare tactics consistently used by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in their semi-annual Dirty Dozen reports.

If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more?  Please Donate Now!

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Observations From the Back Row: 4-28-11

...
“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

The environmental movement I helped found has lost its objectivity, morality and humanity. The pain and suffering it is inflicting on families in developing countries must no longer be tolerated. Eco-Imperialism is the first book I’ve seen that tells the truth and lays it on the line. It’s a must-read for anyone who cares about people, progress and our planet. – Patrick Moore, Greenpeace co-founder

Dog lovers and baby killers 

A couple months ago, when its dog-sledding business lost customers, a Canadian company had a hundred of its dogs killed. The incident "shocked" and "angered" people. The employee who shot the dogs said he suffered "post traumatic stress" from killing them and wants compensation.

Animal activists used the incident in campaigns against dog sled rides. "I don't think society is willing to accept that animals should be killed just because they are surplus or don't suit the purpose they were born for," said one. "The magnitude of this atrocity is so shocking—our heads are reeling," another said……….

My wife Fiona Kobusingye lost her son, two sisters and four cousins to malaria. Her nephew is permanently brain-damaged because of it. Almost everyone I know has lost at least one child or sibling to this killer disease. Despite millions of bednets, malaria still kills more African children than any other disease. I cannot help thinking it would really be nice if, just once in awhile, animal lovers, environmentalists, journalists and other people would care half as much about African babies, children and families, as about dogs.

A hundred dogs are killed, and activists and newspapers make it a huge story. Last year, almost one hundred thousand Ugandan children and adults were killed by malaria. And yet, nobody seemed to care—certainly not enough to write a story about it, or get outraged that callous anti-pesticide activists lie about DDT risks and prevent the use of DDT and other insecticides that could prevent malaria, yellow fever and other diseases that cause so much suffering, poverty and death on our continent……….

Michael Mann may have something to hide Over the weekend on “The Score” radio show, we followed-up on the story of how Chris Horner, working with the American Tradition Institute, had filed a freedom of information request with the University of Virginia for emails and materials former UVA Prof. Michael Mann generated during his time at the school. What we learned from our interview with Horner is jaw-dropping……..So why are they fighting so hard? Horner said, referring to UVA’s legal bill. “they’ve given us half a million reasons to believe there’s something [in Mann’s emails] to hide.” Horner has been told that Mann’s own lawyer has contacted UVA asking whether the school intended to release the records, indicating that he is worried about what they may reveal if they are made public. We may know soon enough.

Mike Fox with some rational I-131 coverage - Media Hysteria and Radioactivity BY MICHAEL R. FOX PHD – The US media continues to issue 40 year old hysterical scary one-liners about radioactivity, especially as they relate to the Fukushima reactor failures in Japan. It is as if the media have yet to discover natural and man-made radioactivity and that many of these are a natural part of our environment.

Organic Valley identified as secret funder of ‘FrogTV’ pesticide scare campaign Is American agriculture facing yet another major attack on food safety similar to the 1989 Alar scare? At JunkScience.com, we take notice when certain tactics by activists and unscrupulous marketing interests repeat themselves. That is certainly the case right now vis-à-vis conventional crop protection products used by farmers and growing online advocacy and marketing campaigns seeking to tie these products to various human diseases and harms to our ecosystem

Stink Bugs Destroy Crops At Germantown Farm GERMANTOWN, Md. (WUSA) -- The Red Wiggler Community Farm in Germantown is infested with stink bugs. Founder Woody Woodroof says the stink bugs cause discoloration, changes the texture, and make crops inedible. He says his farm has lost 15 percent of its crops to the bug. It's a loss for the farm and for the people that work there. "We grow and sell vegetables as a framework for training adults with developmental disabilities," Woodroof says. He says they are using a floating row cover to protect crops from stink bugs. "We're a certified organic farm," Woodroof says, "What that means is we don't spray chemical based pesticides or herbicides." Woodroof says nothing else has worked, nor have any other insects prayed on the stink bug. He says other farms are seeing the same thing. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett says he will asking for $3 Million to help fund research to protect crops from the the stink bug.

My Take – Another three million wasted. There may be an upside to this though. Maybe as this problem expands we won’t hear as many pretentious attitudes of moral superiority and general horsepucky from this lot.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

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March 7th. My Picks of the Day

By Rich Kozlovich

Radiation mythology exploded

There has been for many years a wealth of data showing that low to medium doses of ionizing rationion are at least harmless (with Tsutomu Yamaguchi being a striking example) but getting that fact past conventional alarmist dogma is the hard part. The scientists below did it the hard way

The summer of 1994 was our first season together in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a region within a 30-kilometer radius of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. We were there to investigate the long-term biological effects of ionizing radiation following the catastrophic explosion and fire at reactor number four on April 26, 1986, which released plumes of radionuclides that spread across Europe……

During our excursion through the woods, we trapped some of the local mice for examination in a makeshift laboratory. We were surprised to find that although each mouse registered unprecedented levels of radiation in its bones and muscles, all the animals seemed physically normal, and many of the females were carrying normal-looking embryos. This was true for pretty much every creature we examined-highly radioactive, but physically normal.

It was the first of many revelations. We have now spent 12 years trying to sort out the effects of a radioactive environment on the local wildlife. We have performed a variety of experiments in the Zone....


Cholesterol, It's Good for You

By Alan Caruba
Before you start to feel superior as you look back at the myths of ancient Rome, Greece or other civilizations, you might just want to give some thought to the myths we live with today because they can lead you to waste a lot of money and even put your life at risk….

………Dr. Curtis notes, that “Cholesterol is one of the most vital and important biochemical compounds in nature. It is a major component of every cell in the body. All cells are enclosed by a membrane that keeps the contents of the cell intact and regulates everything that enters or leaves the cell. All cell membranes are composed of cholesterol and cholesterol-control compounds. Brain and nerve tissue contain the highest proportion of cholesterol in the body.”

Why would anyone want to lower the amount of cholesterol in their body when it is known to perform one of its most vital functions?

As far back as 1925, “it was found that the body manufactured most of its own cholesterol and that in fact the body manufactured several times more cholesterol than was consumed in the diet.”

I know this next article isn't a green issue, but it demonstrates a mindset that I can't help outlining. So that we can understand each other; fascism is the right wing of socialism and communism is the left wing. The green movement became the stepchild of socialism, and has now become the tip of the spear for socialism. This article demonstrates the mentality of these people. You will never appease them, come to an agreement with them that they won’t renege on or get them to recognize the irrational misanthropic mentality they display. They can't be reasoned with no matter how much information is available that shows that they are wrong and that their policies are deadly.  They can convince themsleves that "in the pursuit of ostensibly humanitarian ends,  as true believers they see no contradiction in wiping out other humans".   Environmentalism is no different than its parent group; socialism! The tune may sound different, but the lyrics are the same.

Spies Like Us
by Daniel J. Flynn

“I will always say that I’m innocent and that I’m being framed,” testified Judith Coplon after being arrested in 1949 with a Russian agent, secret government documents, and after a chase worthy of The French Connection. The pinched Justice Department official always said she was innocent and framed. She certainly never believed that.

By last week, when the New York Times reported Coplon’s death at 89, nobody contested her guilt. Coplon’s name had popped up in an incriminating manner in the Soviet archives and in the Venona intercepts, where she is described as “politically well-developed” and having “no doubts about whom she is working for.”

“Was she a spy?” daughter Emily rhetorically asks in the Times. “I think it’s another question that I ask: Was she part of a community that felt that they were going to bring, by their actions, an age of peace and justice and an equal share for all and the abolishing of color lines and class lines?” She answers, “If these were things that she actually did, she was not defining them as espionage.”

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