RADIATION, CHILDREN, AND TAX MONEY

This is separate from the acknowledged 700 excess cases of thyroid cancer in children resulting in three deaths near Chernobyl. These resulted from Soviet negligence in not providing the children with thyroid blocking doses of iodide during the weeks following the accident.

The radiation effect studies, as is now so common, focus upon finding a measurable effect rather than upon finding differences in health.

Recently, during a visit to our laboratory here by a tax-funded scientist, I was explaining that we are finding that the health and longevity of mice is not diminished even at carbon dioxide concentrations as high as 3,000 parts per million (the current atmospheric level is about 360 ppm, and 700 ppm is at the outer limit of most future global scenarios). "Yes,'' our visitor exclaimed, "but did you measure their blood pH?'' No, we are interested in their health and longevity. If health is not diminished, there is little motivation to look for reasons for nonexistent ill health. Regardless of substantial buffering, a slight change in blood pH might occur at very high carbon dioxide levels, but why would this be of importance? He disagreed. Those blood pH measurements were, in his opinion, of very great importance.

If we were among the new breed of tax-guzzling "scientists,'' however, we would probably agree with him. We would look for changes in blood pH and not bother with the laborious health and longevity studies. Just raise the carbon dioxide level around a few rabbits until a blood pH change is detected (carbon dioxide becomes carbonic acid when dissolved in water, and pH meters are now very sensitive), call a press conference, issue dire warnings about the potential health effects of this newly discovered phenomenon, and send the resulting articles in the popular press to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health along with grant requests for a few hundred thousand more tax dollars per year.

If we were really astute, we would use baby rabbits. Relating the new crisis to "the children'' should ensure an even larger tax grant.

Biological systems are so complicated and measuring instruments are now so sensitive that it is trivial to find a measurable difference and then relate it to some hypothetical problem by convolutions of reasoning that can be neither confirmed or refuted by honest scientists. Then press conference generated tax dollars can be made to flow copiously over the whole charade.