Over the past several years I have had occasion to attend seminars and conference where I was able to meet personally with many of those I have quoted. Without exception, they have taken time for my "dumb" questions and have encouraged me to help "create understanding" about hormesis and the invalidity of the LNT theory.
Don Luckey answered my questions for hours sitting in his den in Ft. Collins, Colorado. Bernie Cohen did the same in his office at the University of Pittsburgh. I met Myron Pollycove at a conference in Ottawa and had a long dinner with Ted Rockwell in Boston. We visited the Chalk River reactor facility at the invitation of Ron Mitchel. Ed Calabrese, the first director of the International Hormesis Society, welcomed me warmly to the Amherst symposium. All these men have doctorates in the hard sciences (Pollycove is an M.D.), and I must admit to being a bit intimidated when I first approached them. Their generous assistance has been appreciated more than they know.
I owe a special thanks to Massachusetts State Nuclear Engineer Jim Muckerheide. Jim - also the president of the non-profit organization Radiation, Science and Health - and his wife Linda, have provided more information for this book than anyone, with the exception of Dr. Luckey. Their support has been invaluable.
Others who were willing to read and make technical comments on the draft manuscript include Michael Gough (then of the Cato Institute), health physicist Paul Beck, pathologist M.G. Simpson, physics professor emeritus Howard Hayden, and my old friend Ed Gran of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock physics department. Lastly, William R. Hendee, Ph.D., dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Medical College of Wisconsin - not known for his support of the hormesis thesis - gave me valuable insights.
In the nontechnical area, I am indebted to the late Irene Beckmann, my sister Martha Johnson, and Jane Jacob for reading early drafts and making helpful suggestions and corrections.
So many others were helpful along the way, and I have been so lax about recording their names. To all of them, my earnest thanks.
And finally, many thanks to Laissez Faire Books for its support on this project.
Showing posts with label Myron Pollycove. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myron Pollycove. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Lois, Call Clark!
All of this makes one continue to wonder: where are the journalists and the investigative reporters? They may not have taken biology and physics in college, but are they unable to grasp the ramifications of changing the way radiation is viewed by major scientific organizations? Or do they think that their "environmentalist" buddies will get upset if they are involved in jerking a major plank out of the platform of those who want us to fear and distrust all technology? (What would the anti-nukes do if they couldn't scare Maude and Harry with stories of radioactive clouds and plutonium mega-deaths?)
Whatever the reason, a major discovery - that is inspiring a worldwide movement - has been totally ignored by the popular media. How important is the story? Myron Pollycove, M.D., Visiting Medical Fellow on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, calls hormesis "the issue of the decade." As you will see, the evidence is incontrovertible. It is no challenged. It is ignored for whatever reason: ignorance, ideology, or indolence.
We have touched on what the taxpayers might save if the government policymakers were to understand that low-level radiation is harmless; but there are positive effects that those who have studied hormesis believe are even more compelling.
The potential benefits to health and vitality are phenomenal. As we shall see, a random dosage of radiation reduced cancer mortality by forty percent in 15,000 nuclear workers, compared with their fellow workers who were not exposed. While cancer is the disease commonly associated with radiation - and consequently there are more data in this area of study - there was also a reduction of 26% in deaths from all causes in 28,542 exposed nuclear shipyard workers when weighed against co-workers with only normal background exposures. The latter investigation, which we will look at in some detail in chapter 19, indicates that there is a beneficial effect to the entire immune system, which, if properly understood and maximized, could lead to the reduction of infectious diseases and possibly prevention of immune-system dysfunctions.
Since the 1950s, uses of nuclear technology outside of medicine and industrial instrumentation have been stifled because of the fear of radiation. (Smoke detectors are about the only consumer good that have escaped demonization by anti-nuclear activists because, in my opinion, they realized they could get annihilated by risk statistics on this one.) [I recently found that Ralph Nader proved me wrong on this. He actually came out against smoke detectors because of the tiny speck of americium that has saved thousands of "real lives."]
What about community or even residential power plants taking advantage of the technology advances that have occurred over the past forty years? What about nuclear vehicles that would be fueled at the factory for twenty years?
The science for many nuclear miracles is either already available or within reach of technological development. But the pervasive fear of low levels of radiation keeps these advances from being used for the benefit of humanity.
For more than thirty years, the "energy crisis" has been a convenient excuse for those who want more government control over energy resources, but the "crisis" is phony as a three-dollar bill. There is, and has been, readily available energy which is denied us solely because of the manufactured fear of low-level radiation.
This resource is not the promise of fusion, which seems to get further away every year, but the available-with-today's-technology breeder reactors that turn "wastes" into incredibly valuable fuel. Where, pray tell, do the advocates of environmentally pristine electric-powered vehicles think they are going to get the electricity to run those cute little things? A recent newspaper article warns that it would take at least a dozen full-scale (1,000 megawatt) power plants to replace the energy from gasoline and diesel engines in the transportation industry for the city of Los Angeles alone.
Available fuel from power plant "wastes" (which still have more than 95% of their original energy in a readily available form) and thousands of tons of "depleted" uranium currently choking our enrichment facilities could power the United States for many decades using available breeder reactor technology. Other uranium resources could fuel our country for centuries. But, as Edward Teller points out, the "breeding" of thorium - a source as common as dirt (actually it is dirt) - into a usable fuel (Uranium 233) could easily provide energy for 100,000 years.
[Each square mile of the earth's surface averages 2.5 tons of thorium in the first food of depth.]
* * *
Radiation hormesis - just as in the case of nuclear power - will be opposed by radical "environmentalist" leaders who oppose all technological progress and the transfer of its benefits to the multitudes, whom they consider to be unwelcome intrusions on the "Green" concept of nature. But both hormesis therapy and nuclear energy will ultimately become commonplace in our world, because they are based on scientific truths that the doomsayers and propagandists can mask only for so long. The question is: "How much unnecessary human misery will occur before truth and reason prevail?"
So let's take a look at how we developed this fear of radiation.
Whatever the reason, a major discovery - that is inspiring a worldwide movement - has been totally ignored by the popular media. How important is the story? Myron Pollycove, M.D., Visiting Medical Fellow on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, calls hormesis "the issue of the decade." As you will see, the evidence is incontrovertible. It is no challenged. It is ignored for whatever reason: ignorance, ideology, or indolence.
We have touched on what the taxpayers might save if the government policymakers were to understand that low-level radiation is harmless; but there are positive effects that those who have studied hormesis believe are even more compelling.
The potential benefits to health and vitality are phenomenal. As we shall see, a random dosage of radiation reduced cancer mortality by forty percent in 15,000 nuclear workers, compared with their fellow workers who were not exposed. While cancer is the disease commonly associated with radiation - and consequently there are more data in this area of study - there was also a reduction of 26% in deaths from all causes in 28,542 exposed nuclear shipyard workers when weighed against co-workers with only normal background exposures. The latter investigation, which we will look at in some detail in chapter 19, indicates that there is a beneficial effect to the entire immune system, which, if properly understood and maximized, could lead to the reduction of infectious diseases and possibly prevention of immune-system dysfunctions.
Since the 1950s, uses of nuclear technology outside of medicine and industrial instrumentation have been stifled because of the fear of radiation. (Smoke detectors are about the only consumer good that have escaped demonization by anti-nuclear activists because, in my opinion, they realized they could get annihilated by risk statistics on this one.) [I recently found that Ralph Nader proved me wrong on this. He actually came out against smoke detectors because of the tiny speck of americium that has saved thousands of "real lives."]
What about community or even residential power plants taking advantage of the technology advances that have occurred over the past forty years? What about nuclear vehicles that would be fueled at the factory for twenty years?
The science for many nuclear miracles is either already available or within reach of technological development. But the pervasive fear of low levels of radiation keeps these advances from being used for the benefit of humanity.
For more than thirty years, the "energy crisis" has been a convenient excuse for those who want more government control over energy resources, but the "crisis" is phony as a three-dollar bill. There is, and has been, readily available energy which is denied us solely because of the manufactured fear of low-level radiation.
This resource is not the promise of fusion, which seems to get further away every year, but the available-with-today's-technology breeder reactors that turn "wastes" into incredibly valuable fuel. Where, pray tell, do the advocates of environmentally pristine electric-powered vehicles think they are going to get the electricity to run those cute little things? A recent newspaper article warns that it would take at least a dozen full-scale (1,000 megawatt) power plants to replace the energy from gasoline and diesel engines in the transportation industry for the city of Los Angeles alone.
Available fuel from power plant "wastes" (which still have more than 95% of their original energy in a readily available form) and thousands of tons of "depleted" uranium currently choking our enrichment facilities could power the United States for many decades using available breeder reactor technology. Other uranium resources could fuel our country for centuries. But, as Edward Teller points out, the "breeding" of thorium - a source as common as dirt (actually it is dirt) - into a usable fuel (Uranium 233) could easily provide energy for 100,000 years.
[Each square mile of the earth's surface averages 2.5 tons of thorium in the first food of depth.]
* * *
Radiation hormesis - just as in the case of nuclear power - will be opposed by radical "environmentalist" leaders who oppose all technological progress and the transfer of its benefits to the multitudes, whom they consider to be unwelcome intrusions on the "Green" concept of nature. But both hormesis therapy and nuclear energy will ultimately become commonplace in our world, because they are based on scientific truths that the doomsayers and propagandists can mask only for so long. The question is: "How much unnecessary human misery will occur before truth and reason prevail?"
So let's take a look at how we developed this fear of radiation.
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