We're Out of Copper, But How About a Zirconium Bracelet?

Among the cruelest deceptions perpetrated upon people by other people are those having to do with phony medical aids, sham healing potions, "miracle" cures, and other forms of snake oil. It just seems to be my nature to suspect the worst when even the most trustworthy appearing people suggest to me some "cure" that has somehow been overlooked by pharmaceutical manufacturers who spend a few billion dollars a year on research - but is well known to granny and the girls working down in the lingerie department. This isn't to say that it doesn't happen, but these "cures" are certainly suspect from the start with me. And so it was when I first heard about the "Free Enterprise Mine" and its claim to have a beneficial effect on arthritis, bursitis, and a dozen or so other debilitating conditions.

For starters, I didn't like the name. Not because I don't like the free-enterprise system, but because I do. It seemed to me that charlatans might be using a good name to disguise another of those despicable medical deceptions. This was early in my attempt at writing this book - and I didn't think any more about it for several months. By then I knew about the high radon content of many European spas and those at Bad Gastein in particular. To me, these resorts, which compete for having the highest radiation level, just showed that our fears of radon and low-level radiation were what I had already suspected: contrived and ridiculous.

What I didn't know was that the major "cures" offered by such health resorts ad the "Thermal Galleries" (a former gold mine and only one of the many spas in the Bad Gastein area) were for "rheumatic, arthritic and scoliotic disease." What was described in their advertisements was much like what I had heard about the Free Enterprise Mine, with one big difference: The spas had a two-thousand year history of arthritics coming there for relief. Still, the placebo effect and mass hypnosis didn't start with the twentieth century. I don't enjoy being fooled, and what's more, I didn't plan to be a shill for anyone bent on fooling others. Skepticism reigned.

Only very recently did I learn of the Japanese research on the hormonal reactions to inhalation of radon. (The test animals in these experiments were rabbits rather than mice.) As shown in Figure 31, there were marked increases in both beta-endorphins and m-enkephalins in the test animals. Those who know about such things claim that the former is a pain reliever, while the latter hormone creates a feeling of well-being.

Source for Figure 31 Effect of Radon Inhalation on Hormones: Yamaoka, K., Komoto, Y., Suzuka, I., Edamatsu, R., Mori, A., Effects of radon inhalation on biological function - lipid peroxide level, superoxide dismutase activity, and membrane fluidity. Arch Biochem Biophys. 1993 Apr; 302(1):37-41.

It dawned on me that I now had evidence from three continents leading to the same conclusion: that radon inhalation has a positive effect on arthritic diseases.

I remembered that someone had sent me a book on the Free Enterprise Mine, which I had carefully filed in the "probably won't need this" box. The name of the book was Arthritis and Radioactivity, by Wade V. Lewis, the original owner of the mine. [Available from Free Enterprise Mine, P.O. Box 67, Boulder, MT 59632. Email: hlthmine@mt.net.]

I learned that it didn't start out as any kind of treatment facility, but as a uranium mine in 1949. By chance, the wife of a visiting engineer went down in the mine with him and found to her amazement that her debilitating arthritic condition had improved. She convinced a friend in similar circumstances to return with her to see if this was "for real." Apparently it was, as the mine has flourished ever since.

The best thing about the book is its tone. It is not written in a "This is the way it is" and "This is what's happening" manner. It's more like "This is the way it appears" and "Perhaps this is the cause." The author, who died in 1974, was not a scientist but had learned a great deal about radiation and was trying to put the pieces together. If only he had had Luckey and Pollycove around at the time, it's no telling what the trio could have accomplished.

On August 27, 1999, there were a number of scientists on the way to a "Nuclear Technology - Bridging the Millennia" conference in Jackson, Wyoming. Among the speakers was Sadao Hattori, a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering who is vice-president and director of nuclear energy research at the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) of Japan. Earlier, while compiling quotations from a large number of scientists (by which I hoped to show the depth of scientific criticism of the LNT and support for hormesis research), I ran across this 1996 quotation from the animated and dedicated "hormesian" [your author's first (and probably last) attempt at coining a word], Dr. Hattori:

"We [CRIEPI] are now carrying out experimental activities on the effects of low-dose radiation on mammals. After several years of research activities, we are recognizing Luckey's claim. Some basic surveys, including Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivors and animal experiments in Japan, have brought us exciting information on the health effects of low-dose radiation."

He went on to say that results for their research would be forthcoming. Let me tell you: Dr. Hattori delivers. In his paper delivered at the 1999 Boston conference of the American Nuclear Society, the nuclear scientist spoke on the following areas being explored by Japanese researchers:
1. Okumura's longevity of survivors exposed to low dose A-bomb radiation;
2. Sakamoto's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma successes;
3. Onishi's reports of enhancing the p53 tumor suppression gene;
4. An update on Mifune's Misasa Radon Spring study;
5. Yonezawa's research on Adaptive Response Windows;
6. Miyachi's work on stress moderation and pain relief;
7. Yamaoka's studies of hormonal and adrenaline increases.

There is one more study by Yamaoka with which an enterprising tabloid reporter could write his own ticket - if he could only understand a little science.

Yamaoka has found that radiation has a beneficial effect on cell membrane permeability, which in turn has a positive effect on the life of a particular cell. Stimulatory radiation equals high permeability, no wrinkles, no aging - and before this, relief from arthritis and related conditions. Rather interesting stories, wouldn't you say? Gee, I wonder where the reporters have gone.

Rummaging Through the Stacks

Where the radiation level is greater, cancer risk is invariably less. [Nambi and Soman. Further observations on environmental radiation and cancer in India, Health Physics, submitted in 1990, unpublished.]

Presenting the evidence of radiation hormesis has been the most daunting problem faced in writing this book; there is just too much of it. Luckey had more than 2,000 citations in his two books, and he estimates that this was about half of the data available in 1990. [Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1980; and Radiation Hormesis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1991.]

In the fifteen years since then, other researchers have become involved, and their research compounds the problem of "too much" evidence. Until of late there had been only a very few experiments designed to address the radiation hormesis hypothesis, and most of these involved non-vertebrates. [Even more rare are subambient (i.e., less than normal background) radiation experiments, which should show a degradation of biologic function when the target microbes are shielded from cosmic and other background sources. Two such experiments are described in Radiation Hormesis, pp. 211-23.]

The data available - which are the backbone of the argument I'm putting forth [While I have absolutely no reason to distrust the recent test reports that attest to the hormesis phenomenon, there is something very satisfying about examining data taken without any conceivable bias toward "the reverse effect." If there were any bias it was to ignore that which didn't fit the curve.] - are generally one of the following types:

• Animal tests designed to find adverse effects of high levels of ionizing radiation but which happened to take measurements in the low-dose area in the course of the experiment; [According to Luckey, much of the low-dose data - which showed negative correlation of the dose-response relationship - was either ignored, omitted or simply deemed too unimportant to report.]
• Japanese bombing survivors who were within a known distance of A-bomb detonations and whose exposures could be calculated; [There is considerable controversy about exposures, particularly in Hiroshima, with many researchers believing the data analysis understates the radiation dosage. One problem is related to some data still not being available to investigators - even after more than fifty years!]
• Statistical evidence on workers in nuclear power plants and weapons manufacturing facilities; and
• Populations that live in various areas with background radiation up to eighty times the U.S. average.

It would be wonderful if there were carefully controlled experimental data on humans for all diseases over the complete radiation dosage range. To optimize the hormesis effect, it would be marvelous to have double-blind studies over long periods of time, with carefully controlled exposures and rates. But we don't have these things.