Small doses of toxins
¾chemical, biological or radioactive¾ are beneficial; the phenomenon is known to physicians as hormesis. In the case of radiation, hormesis was known to few people until the publication of Prof. Luckey's trailblazing book Radiation Hormesis (CRC, 1981). Today it is recognized among experts in the field, though not by the media machine, that low level radiation is not only beneficial to living organisms (which have never been without it), but essential to their life.The papers of the International Conference on Radiation Hormesis in Oakland, Calif., in August 1985 [AtE Oct 85] are now available in full in the May 1987 special issue of Health Physics, and on reading them one wonders
¾quite seriously¾how many Ukranians and Europeans will be blessed with a slightly longer life due to the low-level dose they got from the Chernobyl fallout.The papers are rather esoteric, but Dr Marshall Brucer, M.D., the father of nuclear medicine, has written a fascinating two-page paper on "Radiation Hormesis after 85 years (Background radiation is good for you)" in his inimitable style. It is available to AtE readers from him for a SASE (yes, stamped, please!) at 5335 Via Celeste, Tucson, AZ 85718.
I was among those who did not know about hormesis until the publication of Luckey's book, though some years ago I ran a correlation of background radiation against cancer incidence for the US states and found it strongly negative (the more radiation, the less cancer); had I been smarter than I am, I would have paid more attention. As it was, I merely chuckled and considered it a freak effect due to other factors
¾perhaps because nobody is quite immune to the Great American Brainwash.And now for another stunning fact. I mentioned some time ago why cancer was a comparatively rare disease in past cen-turies: with the short life spans of the time, people rarely knew the luxury of cancer because they died of something else before they could contract this disease of the aged. What is not gene-rally known is the full story behind the famous lung cancers of the miners in the radon-infested mines of Joachimsthal (Bohemia, supplied Marie and Pierre Curie with radium-rich ores). They are proof of the benefit, not the danger, of low-level radiation. Let Dr Brucer speak (in a private letter to me):
". . . Back around 1950 the now defrocked health physicist K. Z. Morgan learned of many deaths from lung cancer at Joachimsthal. He never mentions that the article giving these figures pointed out that there were no lung cancers in any of the 323 working Joachimsthal miners [A. Pirchman, Am. J. of Cancer, 1932]. The average life expectancy in those days was 55 years. The miners who reached Bismarck's retirement age (I think 65??) became 'pensioners.' Two thirds of the deaths among the Joachimsthal pensioners were from lung cancer. In other words, breathe radon and you will live a very long life, but be finished off by lung cancer. . . "
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Vol. 14, No. 11
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 14, No. 11 Date: November 30, 2004 10:00 AM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: Doctored data
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