Jim Muckerheide
Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.
Box 843
Needham, MA 02194 USA
Phone: 781-444-8319 FAX: 781-449-2214
E-MAIL: jmuckerheide@delphi.com
Daytime Phone: 508-820-2039 Fax: 508-820-2049  

Bias was introduced into radiation health effects science policy by funding that is directed solely to support radiation protection policies rather than to establish the role of ionizing radiation in health. No evidence supports the hypothesis that low-dose radiation is harmful. Substantial evidence contradicts this hypothesis, and even that natural levels of low level radiation are beneficial, even essential. Doses below background levels have been shown to be detrimental. Low-doses have been shown to stimulate immune functions, and have been applied accordingly to successfully treat and prevent cancer. However, radiation science policy has acted to ignore evidence of beneficial effects and to prevent confirmatory research. Such actions have constrained the use of nuclear technologies to provide global energy, food and water, medical and environmental needs for a world population growing by the US population every 3 years that can reduce potential global conflict over resources and environmental degradation; are costing the US public $100s Billions, and the world >$2 Trillion, for no public benefit; and are preventing studies on health benefit applications that could expand on successful treatments and prevention of cancer. 

The conduct of research on radiation health effects was primarily conducted on the premise of establishing radiation protection standards. Substantial bias was introduced however, since funding was dependent on the need to establish such standards, and the results of mammal experiments did not demonstrate adverse effects at doses below 10's to 1000's of cSv. In fact, unbiased animal studies of animals with whole immune systems consistently demonstrated increased average lifespan and lower adverse health effects. The data is such that it can be readily understood, even by engineers, who are expert in synthesizing the scientific data in the responsible development of conservative codes and standards for the development of cost-effective technologies in the public interest. 

A specific relevant indication of the biases starts with the work of Egon Lorenz of the National Cancer Institute. In 1950 Dr. Lorenz stated^1,2 that a 'permissible' dose for man would be one which, when given over considerable periods of time, cannot express pathologic changes, but may result in shortening of the life span of the individual; which "should be very small and of insignificant percentage". The 'permissible' dose of 0.1 roentgen per day was "based on scientific data wanting in completeness". He reported that "an exhaustive study was begun at the National Cancer Institute early in 1941, greatly expanded during World War II, and is still continuing" with dose levels of "8.8 r, 4.4 r, 2.2 r, 1.1 r and 0.11 r given in eight hours per day" and that "with such small daily doses animals will stay in good health for considerable time and quite large doses can be accumulated before death occurs." 

Non-irradiated mice showed a leukemia incidence of approximately 50 per cent in the females and 10 per cent in the males. Incidence data for the females showed that "the mean tumor development time and the incidence for the 2.2 r, 1.1 r (per 8-hr day) and control groups are approximately the same" and "the animals exposed to 4.4 r indicates a shift toward earlier tumor development time, and this shift is pronounced in the 8.8 r group in which, in addition, the incidence is 20 per cent higher than in the other groups. The conclusion may be drawn that chronic irradiation of these mice after they have reached maturity does not alter to a great extent the over-all incidence but mainly the time at which the tumors appear. This indicates a dependence upon dose rate rather than total dose." 

Dr. Lorenz also reported that newborn mice of a strain that has a low incidence of leukemia, "were exposed to a single acute dose of 400 r... Lymphoid tumors... developed in approximately 25%... up to 7 months, and... no additional tumors. In ...mice exposed to ... 8.8 r in 8 hours per day an incidence of lymphoid tumors of ~6% was observed. These mice had received... ~2500 r." 

He also reported on experiments by Kaplan^3,4 that "give considerable support to the view that a systemic effect is involved. He irradiated only the upper half or lower half of the body ... with the same dose ...used in whole body irradiation of other mice (1,000 r in 10 divided doses). The incidence of lymphoid tumors in the groups that received part body irradiation was found to be about 3 to 5 per cent, which is spontaneous incidence. On the other hand, the group receiving the same dose over the whole body had an incidence of 60 percent." 

Lorenz also reported on the 1941-1946 studies in the Manhattan Project records⁵ that mice "were irradiated with 4.4, 1.1, 0.11, and 0.044 r per 24-hr day. .. Male mice conceived and living continuously under exposure to 4.4 r/24-hr day up to total doses of over 2000 r are comparable with non-irradiated mice as far as weight, coat, and activity are concerned. Mammary tumor incidence is not significantly changed in mice exposed for 10-15 months to doses ranging from 4.4 to 0.44 r / 24-hr day" and that subsequent generations reared and living "under exposure of 1.1 and 0.11 r per 24-hr day show no damage to chromosomes as evidenced by the raising of 5 to 6 generations with normal litter size and an apparently normal life span." 

Considering this data, it is indicative of the problem to find that Dr. Lorenz states in his 1950 paper, contrary to his observations just a few years earlier: "It is well known that absorption of ionizing radiation by tissues is connected with damage, no matter how small the dose." Such statements were committed to maintain the funding basis for radiation research. 

In later 1950s studies, Lorenz' data with mice, guinea pigs and rabbits, at 0.11 r /8-hr/day demonstrated longer lives and other beneficial health effects. By then, this data was expressly misrepresented as "anomalous", even though it was statistically significant and repeated in multiple experiments, and with different species. Papers in the literature by scientists who were funded by programs to establish permissible dose limits consistently stated an unfounded presumption that ionizing radiation "must be harmful". 

In the 1950s to the 1970s research on these "anomalies" was not substantially supported, even though such results were continuously being published in the literature. 

Dr. Marshall Brucer, in his book "A Chronology of Nuclear Medicine", 1990⁶, states that after the formation of the new "Health Physics"; group during the Manhattan Project: 

"Their first experiment, raising mice in an atmosphere of uranium dust, showed exposed mice lived longer than controls. They set up an arbitrary Maximum Permissible Dose (MPD) after proving that mice in radiation fields ten times the MPD lived longer than controls." 

Dr. Brucer states that after WWII about 20 articles per year mentioned a hormetic effect despite a budding fallout hysteria. "Health Physicists soon learned that their livelihood depended on scaring the pants off Congress. H. Muller predicted genetic catastrophe from A-bomb exposure in a 1955 flurry of headline publicity. Health Physics and Genetics were supported lavishly by radiation hysteria, and Radiation Biology was the most intensely researched science in history... Every Genetics budget meeting, 1955-1981, opened its request for funds with an anti-nuclear litany. 

"In spite of this atmosphere, during the 1960s and 1970s about 40 articles/year described hormesis. In 1963 the AEC repeatedly confirmed lower mortality in guinea pigs, rats, and mice irradiated at low dose. In 1964 the cows exposed to about 150 rads after the Trinity A-bomb in 1946 were quietly euthenized because of extreme old age."

"In 1981 T. Luckey revived a very obvious radiation hormesis. No experimental evidence of damage at low doses existed; self-serving extrapolations from high dose-data dominated health physics." 

Similarly, in 1961 Dr. Hugh Henry in the Journal of the American Medical Association⁷, summarized a more extensive Oak Ridge report⁸, presented the data on beneficial effects, especially longevity, vs the lack of support for low-dose radiation resulting in life shortening, and for genetic effects. Henry states: "A significant and growing amount of experimental information indicates that the overall effects of chronic exposure (at low levels) are not harmful." In his conclusions: "The preponderance of data better supports the hypothesis that low chronic exposures result in an increased longevity than it supports the opposite hypothesis of decreased longevity...Increased vitality at low exposures to materials that are toxic at high exposures is a well-recognized phenomenon." 

In 1971 the US Court of Appeals, in the "Calvert Cliffs decision", found that the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) plant licensing Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) inadequate under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The AEC contracted for the "Argonne Radiological Impact Program", chartered to provide a better basis for assessing low level radiation effects. As a "preliminary study", Dr. Norman Frigerio analyzed cancer rates by state vs average doses; and applied the various methodologies of the "linear no-threshold hypothesis" (LNTH)⁹. This study tested, and contradicted, the LNTH. This study was acknowledged to be limited in that it applied only then available preliminary, coarse data from the EPA on state average background radiation dose data. 

There was 15% less cancer in high-background states than the US average. (This result has been consistently repeated since.) All disaggregated data, by cancer and by dose level, show consistent results. No substantive scientifically critical comments questioned the merit of the analysis. Equivalent methodology, with much less rigor, is the basis for many public health studies and public health decisions, including recent studies that find health effects from particulate emissions. 

In 1973, although specifically contracted by AEC itself to address the issue of the effects low level radiation in response to a court action on its deficiencies, AEC and radiation science policy interests terminated the study, and results were not published. Since this was a "preliminary study", committed to obtain and perform a more detailed analysis of radiation and cancer data at the county level, the effort to develop data to confirm or contradict this result was also terminated. 

At a 1976 IAEA Conference on natural radioactivity a proceedings version of this study was finally published¹⁰. These results were intentionally ignored in UNSCEAR 1977, as reported by UNSCEAR member, radiobiologist Dr. Gunnar Walinder in his report "Has Radiation Protection become a Health Hazard?"¹¹. This limited paper was rejected without scientific review of the original work and more comprehensive report, and it was similarly arbitrarily dismissed in BEIR III¹², even though no substantive scientific criticism of the results was produced. 

Various conferences on natural background radiation have reported the lack of health effects, and even beneficial effects, in high-background exposed populations. The most recent Conference was in Beijing, China, in October 1996¹³. 

The most definitive study of whole body natural background radiation doses and associated health effects is in the stable Chinese Han peasant populations of about 70,000 each, living for several generations in high and normal radiation areas in Guangdong Province¹⁴. The differential radioactivity source in the high background area is millions of times the radioactivity sources that are allowed to be released from nuclear facilities or nuclear waste sites, at massive public cost. Yet the high dose population has no adverse health effects, and some evidence of limited beneficial effects, with average individual doses about 3 times the control population. 

In the 1980s, Dr. Bernard Cohen at U. Pittsburgh personally undertook a version of the natural background radiation study^15,16 that the AEC terminated in 1973. He tested the LNTH using the more significant data on lung cancer vs residential radon doses. Lung cancer is a significant cancer, and radon varies over a wider range vs average background radiation exposure to the whole body. 

Dr. Cohen was able to analyze more than 300,000 residential radon measurements, including all EPA and State data, to associate with lung cancer data by county in the US¹⁷. The results contradict the "LNTH". Lung cancer decreases as radon increases. The actual data is 20 standard deviations below than the unfounded projections of health effects from the poor high-dose uranium miner data. 

All significant confounding factors that have been identified in a decade of development and review have been explicitly analyzed, demonstrating no substantive effect on the analysis. Dr. Cohen also demonstrated that any confounding factor that would be sufficient to effect the result would have to be greater than the effect of smoking on lung cancer, it would have to be inversely correlated with radon concentration, and it would have to be unrecognized to date¹⁷. This is not conceivable. 

The LNTH radiation science policy proponents promulgate the non-scientific conclusion that Dr. Cohen’s results are to be ignored. Most often such a statement is based on an unfounded position that Dr. Cohen’s results are not valid "because they are based on an ecological study". Such a statement is based solely on the characterization that there are "weaknesses" in "ecological studies." 

These "weaknesses" are specific factors that are subject to test. First, the premise that "ecological studies" are inadequate because mean values may not represent the population due to threshold effects clearly fails in a test of a linear model in which no threshold is presumed to exist. In addition, the scientific assessments that have been applied have failed to technically question Dr. Cohen’s results. (It is also disingenuous to discount "ecological studies" when many such studies are the bases for EPA and other public health initiatives that apply much less rigorous results in much weaker ecological studies than Dr. Cohen’s studies over the last 10 years.) 

Dr. Cohen has been able to conduct many independent, highly significant, studies for specific parameters from this substantial database. Numerous specific independent analyses confirm the primary results in various population groups. 

Dr. Cohen’s results are confirmed independently. From limited national data for radon from EPA, with substantial cancer data from the American Cancer Society, Dr. Gary Sandquist, Dr. Vern Rogers, and others¹⁸ have found that US doses vary by more than an order of magnitude, and that cancer rates in the lowest dose group of states to be 390% of the projected cancers from the EPA "model", and the cancer rate in the highest dose group of states to be 14% of the EPA "model". 

Although it has produced no valid scientific criticism of Dr. Cohen’s results, EPA uses mathematical projections to zero dose from the poor data on radon and lung cancer from the confounded and poor quality uranium miner studies to promulgate its positions, and has undertaken a $multi-millions-equivalent public relations campaign to mislead the public on radon risks. 

Because of the extent of the data, dozens of credible independent individual studies can be performed, based on many potentially significant parameters. The integrity of the data and the analysis is substantially confirmed within the study itself. For a decade the results have been published in the literature and subject to substantial efforts by the radiation protection interests to discount and criticize the work. No scientific criticism has been published. Yet the NCRP and the EPA, and others supporting the radiation protection costs and agenda, use unfounded political statements to expressly misrepresent the studies as being refuted. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

LNT supporters claim that "case-control" studies are "better" to assess the health effects of radon. Actually, although case-control studies can be more definitive than ecological studies in theory, such theory relies totally on the premise that the individual doses of cases in a case-control study are precisely known. However, in the case of radon, the individual doses from radon are not adequately known. First, residential monitoring data can not adequately represent individual dose-related radon levels at the locations of interest to estimate individual doses within a residence. Second, the doses to persons in different residences with equivalent radon levels can not be taken to be equivalent. And, third, two persons in the same residence or other location will have substantially different doses due to specific differences in personal actions and attributes that directly affect exposure, especially individual activities that relate to the great stratification and pooling of radon (e.g., persons on two sides of a bed; sleeping with a window cracked open; laundry in a basement; a desk in a corner, etc.) 

The case-control studies, absent reasonably accurate knowledge of individual doses, become completely inconsistent and unable to determine a dose-response result in such small populations. Such studies are therefore notorious for producing a variety of results, as would be expected. 

In fact, it is the statistical power of the extensive ecological study that applies the proven properties of rigorous mathematical statistics that more accurately represents mean doses vs lung cancer rates. 

In 1974, the preeminent scientist Dr. Robley Evans of MIT rigorously demonstrated in an article in the Health Physics Journal¹⁹ that BEIR 1972²⁰ had misrepresented the data on the health effects of radium to produce a "linear no-threshold" result from extremely non-linear data. On his 1970 retirement, the Center for Human Radiobiology (CHR) was established at Argonne. In 1981, an international conference reported that in then thousands of cases worldwide, there were still no cases of bone cancer or nasal carcinoma from ingestion of less than 250 uCi of Ra-226, producing an estimated dose of 1000 rad to the bone. The report was published in 1983. Dr. Evans stated in the "Invited Summary" of the conference:²¹ "The studies of the radium cases during the past dozen years...has continued to show no radiogenic tumors, or other effects, in hundreds of persons whose effective initial body burden was less than about 50 uCi of Ra-226, and whose cumulative skeletal average dose is less than about 1000 rad." . In 1983 DOE initiated program termination. 

In the 1990s, follow-up after "another decade" confirmed these results. Dr. Bob Thomas showed that the log-normal distribution of cancers projected a threshold of 400 rad without even considering the total absence of cancers in the large population with doses below 1000 rad.²² Work by Dr. Evans and Dr. Constantine Maletskos and others similarly established that threshold a threshold.²³ Further analysis by Dr. Robert Rowland, former Director of the CHR, has more conclusively determined that a threshold exists.²⁴ He states: "Today we have a population of 2383 cases for whom we have reliable body content measurements... All 64 bone sarcoma cases occurred in the 264 cases with more than 10 Gy, while no sarcomas appeared in the 2119 radium cases with less than 10 Gy." 

In 1991, the EPA Scientific Advisory Board stated that radium health effects should be based on the radium population data. EPA responded in the Federal Register that their "policy" was a linear dose-response, and that to apply the data would require a policy change, which they would not consider.²⁵ Simply, science is irrelevant to the campaign to mislead the public about the hazards of radium, and radiation generally, for $billions of public funds to be wasted for no public health benefit. 

FDA achieved control of radiation from Congress using the notorious 1932 death of Philadelphia socialite Eben Byers from a massive overdose of radium ingested in large quantities over 3 years, creating public fear. Byers did not die of cancer. His bone necrosis led to removal of his jaw and other interventions to put a gruesome image on the radiation effects.²⁶ But the FDA did not assess the dose effects to the many thousands of persons who had been using radium and other radioactive appliances; or acknowledge that Byers had been the victim of the equivalent of a drug overdose.

The amount of radium (equivalent Ra-226) ingested by Eben Byers daily is roughly 2,000,000 times the EPA limits, drinking 1 liter/day at 5 pCi/l.²⁷ The threshold for bone cancers from ingesting radium by the dial painters is more than 125 times the annual limits from drinking water at 5 pCi/l. 

The Nuclear Shipyard Workers Study (NSWS) was similarly not reported. This study was completed under a DOE contract in 1987 following 10 years and $10 Million to study 39,004 nuclear workers (NW) carefully matched with 33,352 non-nuclear workers (NNW) from a population of 108,000 NW in a total population of about 700,000 workers.²⁷ It was not published. 

These radiation workers, with external Co-60 exposures under a program controlled by Admiral Hyman Rickover, and with limited confounding work experience, had the best dosimetry and exposure records of any worker population. In failing to publish the results, the NSWS data was also not used in BEIR V²⁹ even though the Chairman of the NSWS Technical Advisory Panel and BEIR V were the same person, and other non-published sources were used. 

Further, this most definitive study was not included in a study of "all" US, UK, and Canadian nuclear workers contracted for with the International Association for Research on Cancer (IARC)³⁰. This IARC study used only the much poorer data from the early nuclear workers. The IARC study was proclaimed as a definitive study, but it manipulated its own data to produce results that were claimed to support the LNTH, with a public relations campaign before the data was published to claim that it was the "best evidence of the linear dose-response to low doses" (which is true to the extent that it simply states again that there is no evidence for a linear response to low doses). 

The sole "evidence" to support the claim rests on one cancer, leukemia, absent chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which has 119 deaths in a total of 15,825 deaths, for which one data point in the small high dose group at ">40 cSv" shows 6 Observed cases vs. 2.3 Expected cases. The 116 leukemia deaths in the data below 40 rem show no excess leukemia. The IARC "analysis" discounts all data below 40 rem to produce a "trend analysis" in which the 6/2.3 data point alone causes a positive slope.³¹ This data is made to seem statistically valid by applying Monte Carlo modeling of 5000 trials. This is manipulates and misrepresents data to support a pre-determined, conclusion to maintain the LNTH. This is highly questionable, as either science or policy-making. 

Dr. Warren Sinclair, President emeritus of NCRP and continuing controlling influence of NCRP, ICRP, UNSCEAR, and the National Research Council/Board of Radiation Effects Research that controls the BEIR Committees, states that the IARC report "vindicates" the LNTH. But not only is this data inconsequential, explicitly misrepresenting its data and ignoring valid applicable data, this conclusion is directly contradicted by the lack of health effects in millions of people exposed to moderate doses, often much more well known, especially from medical workers and patients. 

Only high doses demonstrate risk, with threshold effects. The IARC "study" claims a "linear trend" in only one of dozens of cancers. Certainly, even if it were true, and not a manipulated result, it would be potentially anomalous, contradicted by the its own "all-cancer" data. (And even if one cancer were increased by a significant radiation exposure, while all cancer were unaffected, or reduced, it would not warrant consideration as a risk outside the interest of creating public fear and funding.) 

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) "low dose" Japanese survivor data is substantially misrepresented, especially since DOE closure of the CHR at Argonne, and DOEs reassignment of the RERF from the National Academy of Sciences to Columbia University. 

Certainly, in the first instance, the conditions of doses to persons exposed directly to an atomic bomb, and confounding factors of survivors, both before and after the bombing, can be of negligible significance to the assessment of chronic low-dose exposures to environmental contamination. Doses from the atomic bombs were "instantaneous", with a significant neutron component, for which a poor basis exists for a quality factor to establish dose equivalence or relative effects. The highly uncertain confounding effects make the data essentially irrelevant to radiation protection in any event (except perhaps for victims of atomic bombings). Dose estimates to survivors, especially for low-doses, are relatively poorly known based on location, orientation, and shielding estimates, in addition to the blatant error in the neutron dose. Fallout doses are also not included, which disproportionately affect the low-dose population. The controls include the lowest dose group. 

Low dose health effects data is forced to be "linear" as a matter of policy for data that is non-linear. Substantial analyses have demonstrated beneficial effects in the low dose In the most recent update³² the estimated doses based on the linear model were used in the analysis rather than the observed doses.³³ Dr. Pollycove demonstrates that using the appropriate statistical analysis the lowest dose that indicates an increase in health effects is 35 cSv (0.2-0.5 cSv, p=0.03); and estimating the effect of correcting the neutron component "we may conclude that the lowest dose at which there is a statistically significant observed excess risk for solid tumors is > 1 Sv." 

The epidemiological data is secret and unavailable to others for analysis, even to the BEIR Committee analysts, contrary to the policies in other worker and exposed population studies; and results are produced from adjustments and manipulations to the data by computer codes that are not subject to review. The most recent update³² added about 10,000 "new cases" to the database, with no review as to the validity of the selection, especially at this time of urgent effort to maintain the LNT under the threat to the RERF program. 

The evidence that Japanese survivors are living longer than non-exposed persons^34,35 is ignored, along with the fact that cancer is lower than controls in the low dose population, and significantly lower than cancer in the Japanese population. 

Relative to significant populations with good dosimetry and relatively unconfounded results, for example, among medical patients and practitioners, the Japanese survivor results are both highly questionable and largely meaningless to the assessment of low-dose, low-dose-rate radiation health effects for radiation protection policies. They do indicate agreement with high dose rate exposure results in animals and humans that have demonstrated beneficial effects. 

The FDA achieved control of radiation by using the notorious 1932 death of Eben Byers from a massive radium overdose to create public fear. The FDA did not assess effects of ingesting radium, or other radiation treatments, on the populations that, like Eben Byers, were using radiation for its beneficial effects (especially those who were not being exposed to the doses of daily ingesting 3-4 bottles of radium water containing 1 uCi Ra-226 and 1 uCi of Ra-228 each). The FDA did not explain Byers’ use as an "overdose"; nor clarify that Byers’ death from bone necrosis and complications was not from the latent risk of cancer at lower doses. The FDA, with the AEC and radiation protection agencies since, ignored the evidence for hormesis in the literature as described by Dr. Brucer and others, and did not support research work proposed to confirm or assess such results. 

The data on beneficial effects, including such uses of radiation in the first half of the century has not been considered. The potential health and medical benefits of patients that receive significant low and moderate exposures without adverse effects are not considered, including groups in which high doses have produced adverse health effects. The biological evidence that organisms in below-normal radiation background demonstrated adverse health effects has also not been confirmed and evaluated. 

Research to confirm the successful treatment of some cancers by the stimulation of the immune system using low-dose radiation (both alone and in combination with traditional high dose cancer therapy). Such results have been reported by Dr. Sadao Hattori³⁶ from the work of Dr. Sakamoto and Miyamoto^37,38,39 and Dr. Takai⁴⁰ in Japan, and others. As noted by Dr. Hattori,⁴¹ funding to continue and confirm this research is constrained by radiation protection policies that constrain the research and prevent government medical research sources. 

An example of suppressing applicable data that contradicts the LNTH is from the study of Canadian women with tuberculosis who had frequent fluoroscopy to check on lung function.⁴² The larger group with doses <30 cSv to the breast had lower than normal breast cancer rates, up to 16 standard deviations below normal at 15 cS^v42,43. The conclusions however arbitrarily project a linear response from excess cancer in the smaller high dose group (with poorer statistics) to claim an excess of breast cancer at 1 cSv, contrary to its own data. 

BEIR V²⁹ identifies this study as the second most significant study supporting the LNTH, contrary to its data, after the Japanese survivors. Not only are the low dose results ignored, following substantial reporting on this data, a subsequent study of this population obfuscates the low-dose data, suppressing the evidence of beneficial effects.⁴⁴ Dr. Howe was recruited to Columbia University to be given the Japanese survivor study. Although this initiative was defeated, DOE engaged a review panel from the radiation protection establishment committed to the LNTH to redirect RERF work, with seeming great influence on RERF in its research and reporting.) 

Low-dose total body irradiation (TBI) and half body irradiation (HBI) has successfully treated and prevented some cancers.^38,40 That breast cancer, or other cancers, may be prevented or treated should be data to be investigated. The cost of suppressing this data, of maintaining high public costs for radiation protection to control releases at millions of times below natural radioactivity sources, with $100s Billions in environmental cleanup alone, may have even greater costs to women with breast cancer, and to millions of others with cancers that may be preventable or treatable at low cost. 

Also, research is constrained on millions of persons who use radium and radon balneology for health and medical applications throughout the world. The positive medical results seem to be ignored. 

The voluminous credible scientific literature data is reported by Prof and Chairman Emeritus of the Dept. of Biochemistry of the University of Missouri School of Medicine, Dr. Don Luckey in his two books on radiation hormesis^45,46 which have, respectively, 1269 and 1018 references. Dr. Luckey’s work led from his fundamental biology and physiology research, and the general biological response to natural and antibiotic agents that are toxic at high doses and beneficial, and even essential, at low doses. Dr. Luckey was not part of the radiobiology establishment. He found radiation and radioactivity as equivalent to many such essential agents from first examining the actual physiology and biology, confirming also that biological functions at doses below natural background produce detrimental effects in microorganisms. Such data has led to determining nutritional "Minimum Daily Requirements," and vitamin and mineral supplements. However, for radiation, such research is left to the radiation protection establishment. Such research is not supported. 

Dr. Luckey has also summarized the major nuclear vs non-nuclear worker studies, demonstrating that the nuclear workers have much lower cancer in 13 million person-years of exposure.⁴⁷ Dr. Luckey proposes that, as with other natural nutrients, supplementation of deficiencies in human health are warranted. This data further indicates the need for confirmation of the beneficial effects that are not supported by the radiation protection interests. 

These constraints are to the great detriment of the American public and the world in resolving the role of radiation and health. New initiatives are underway to form new scientific research and scientific committees to establish the role of radiation and health rather than to maintain the biases and constraints of committees and research committed solely to radiation protection.

Hundreds of credible scientific studies over these 40 years, and more, contradict the LNTH. Yet, records show that this data is systematically ignored, suppressed, and work terminated by the small group of government agencies that control radiation science policy and related interests. To the contrary, no evidence exists in hundreds of studies in which the LNTH could be confirmed by adverse effects, in low, moderate, and high-dose populations. 

The LNTH is a fiction, maintained by a closed, biased, process at massive cost to the American taxpayer, ratepayer, and insured public, and to the extreme detriment of future generations as a result of constraints on the benefits of nuclear technologies. The indirect costs of constraints on nuclear energy, food irradiation, nuclear medicine, and other nuclear technologies essential to development of a sustainable world economy, including the suppression of health and medical benefits, are greater than the direct costs which are estimated at greater than $2 trillion. The benefits can substantially alleviate growing conflicts over oil, food, water, and other resources, along with reducing environmental degradation in the combination of populations growing at the rate of the total US population every 3 years, and the growing expectations for individuals in the developing world. 

Knowledgeable persons are providing the extensive evidence on the data and the lack of integrity in the process of controlling research and results. Dr. Harald Rossi, a member of BEIR and ICRP, has published a review of all the credible data that indicates that lung cancer is lower with exposure to low to moderate doses, from x-rays and other sources.⁴⁹ In addition to describing both the scientific basis for the inability of low-level radiation to cause cancer, and data being misrepresented by UNSCEAR, Prof Dr. Gunnar Walinder, the renown Swedish radiobiologist and associate of Rolf Sievert, a member of UNSCEAR and many international committees, in distributing his monograph, "Has Radiation Protection Become a Health Hazard?"¹¹ states: "I do not hesitate to say that this is the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th century."⁵⁰

Action is needed to stop the massive waste of public funds for no public benefit in favor of reorienting nuclear expertise and technologies to develop the enormous opportunities to provide the cost-effective capabilities to reduce conflicts in the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. 

1. Lorenz, Egon (1950) Some biologic effects of long-continued irradiation, Am. J. Roentgenol., 63, 176.

2. Lorenz, Egon (1950) Some Biologic Effects of Long-Continued Irradiation, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, Feb 1950, p176-185

3. Kaplan, I. I., (1948) "Comparative susceptibility of the lymphoid tissues of strain C57 black mice the induction of lymphoid tumors by irradiation, J. Nat. Cancer Inst., 8, 191-97

4. Kaplan, I. I., (1949) Clinical Radiation Therapy, P. B. Hoeber, New York.

5. Lorenz, Egon, et al (1954) Effects of long-continued total body gamma irradiation on mice, Guinea pigs and rabbits. III. Effects on life span, weight, blood picture and carcinogenesis and role of intensity of radiation, in Biological Effects of External X and Gamma Radiation, Vol. 1, Zirkle, R. E., Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 24.

6. Brucer, Marshall (1990) A Chronology of Nuclear Medicine, Heritage Foundation, St. Louis, 423

7. Henry, H., 1961a, Is All Nuclear Radiation Harmful?, JAMA 176:8, 671-675

8. Henry 1961b, Is All Nuclear Radiation Harmful?, Doc K-1470, Union Carbide Company, ORNL

9. Frigerio, Norman, Eckerman, Keith, and Stowe, Ralph Carcinogenic Hazard from Low-Level, Low-Rate Radiation, Part I, Rep. ANL/ES-26. Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, 1973.

10. Frigerio, Norman and Stowe, Ralph (1976), "Carcinogenic and genetic hazard from background radiation." IAEA Symposium, Biological and Environmental Effects of Low Level Radiation, vol. 2, pp 285-289, Vienna.

11. Walinder, G. (1995) Has Radiation Protection become a Health Hazard? SMTSC, P.O.Box 1039, S-61129 Nykoping, ISBN 91-630-2492

13. Wei, Luxin; Sugahara, Tsatomu and Tao, Zufan. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. Amsterdam.

14. Wei, Luxin (1997) High background radiation area - - an important source of exploring the health effects of low dose ionizing radiation. In Proceedings. Editors: Wei, Luxin; Sugahara, Tsatomu and Tao, Zufan. Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. Amsterdam.

15. Cohen, B.L. (1986) "A National Survey of Radon in Homes and Correlating Factors," Health Phys. 51:2 .

16. Cohen, B.L. (1987) "Tests of the Linear, No-Threshold Dose-Response Relationship for High-Let Radiation," Health Phys. 52:629.

17. Cohen (1995) Test of the LNT theory of radiation carcinogenesis in the low dose, low dose-rate region. Health Phys. 68, 157-174

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