FREE RADICALS

This title is applicable to virtually all of the speakers at the recent DDP meeting in Tucson. This was a remarkable meeting of intellectually free scientists whose radical ideas and surprising data you will definitely not see on the evening news. (Audio tapes are available from DDP by calling telephone 602-325-2680.) The chemical free radicals of special interest, however, were those operative in the outstanding presentations by Bernard Cohen and T. D. Luckey on the health benefits of low-level ionizing radiation. Data in support of this effect is now very convincing. In any ordinary science, this work would be widely acclaimed in scientific and popular articles. That will eventually happen, but it will take longer here because the findings are politically incorrect.

If, of course, radiation levels become too high, this beneficial effect is overwhelmed by radiation damage, and health effects are negative. The radiation level for optimum health is apparently far above normal background, however, so the whole culture of radiation fear in our society is both industrially and also medically counterproductive.

Sadao Hattori, "State of Research and Perspective on Radiation Hormesis in Japan,'' Belle Newsletter 3-1, July 1994, published by the Northeast Regional Environmental Public Health Center, University of Massachusetts, School of Public Health, Amherst, MA 01003, describes numerous ongoing Japanese studies of the biological effects of low-level radiation. Figures 1 and 3 from the Hattori article illustrate the reduction in leukemia deaths in A-bomb survivors (and the increase when radiation level becomes too high) and the greater longevity of Nagasaki residents who were exposed to the A-bomb. Hat-tori reports that Professor Sakamoto has raised the five-year survival rate from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at Tohoku University Hospital from 36% to 90% by means of low-dose radiation.