THE OTHER ENEMY

Politics is not the only enemy of science. Another is inertia: "It can't be true because it contradicts what I have learned in school."

Scientists are human and reluctant to let go of old shibboleths. Charles University in Prague, founded in 1348 and the second-oldest university on the Continent (after the Sorbonne), was a venerable institution from its beginning; yet its venerable profes-sors did not introduce Newton's Principia as a textbook until the 1790s, more than a century after their publication, and even then some found it difficult to discard Descartes' complicated and out-dated teachings of vortices.

Yet the evidence confirming radiation hormesis is beginning to be overwhelming, and there is not a shred of scientific evidence that low-level radioactivity is harmful. [The official radiation pro- tection estimates simply extrapolate from higher values, the only ones easily measured, and their authors will freely admit that they are extrapolating down into the unknown.]

And I do not mean indirect evidence such as the correlation be-tween cancer incidence and background radiation of the 50 US states, which shows that the more background radiation, the less cancer. Nor do I mean the beneficial effects of radon-laden wa-ters in the world's spas, visited by the sick for centuries and (in the case of Bath, England) for millennia. Nor do I mean evolutionary arguments: radioactivity is far older than man, who has grown up with its ever-present background over the last million years; he must have adapted to it, and it would have to cause adverse ef-fects if it were withdrawn. None of this is hard scientific evidence.

[Nevertheless, I take it that since Fonda, Wald, Kendall and Gofman claim that "there is no such thing as a safe level of radioactivity," they are all staunch and devout creationists.]

No, I mean hard experimental, scientific evidence, of the type reported in Prof. T.D. Luckey's trailblazing book, listed among more recent references below. Some of this evidence has been available for a surprisingly long time: at least 16 of his 1,269 documented sources go back to the first decade of this century (1903-1908), reporting the stimulating effect of radium radiation on plants, protozoa and algae.

But on to scientific inertia: The 4^th International Symposium on the Natural Radiation Environment in Lisbon, Portugal, Dec. 7 to 11, 1987, was attended by 220 scientists from 26 countries.

Most of the 134 papers presented dealt with the usual stuff: radioactivity in water supplies, releases by industry, radon in spas and buildings, cosmic rays, etc. But there was also a paper by C. M. Fleck, H. Oberhummer (Atomic Inst. of Austrian Universi-ties) and W. Hofmann (U. of Salzburg), Interference of chemi-cally and radiologically induced cancer at environmental doses.

Their carefully documented epidemiological study of various types of cancer in the US led them to the conclusion that "a statistically significant decrease of cancer frequency with increasing background radiation can be deduced... [The cancer incidence exhibits a minimum in the range of 350 to 500 mrem/year.~

This is perfectly consistent with all the other now known evi-dence, some of which is listed below, and in an assembly of radia-tion protection specialists, of all people, should have caused no surprise. But shoemakers don't like to be told that barefoot is bet-ter, and radiation protectors don't like to be told they are (some-times) protecting people from what's good for them. So reaction was mixed. Some, including Dr Ellet, representing the US Bio-logical Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) Committee at the conference, welcomed the paper; others started huffing, hawing, and expressing reservations about including the report in the pub-lished proceedings of the conference (a question that has not yet been resolved). But the prize for obtuse inertia goes to Mr X, a US DoE bureaucrat (I was unable to get his name by press time, but will be happy to disgrace him in a future issue) who made this memorable statement: "It is the radiation protector's task to pro-tect people from radiation, regardless of whether the radiation has bionegative or biopositive effects."

It is fortunate that this sage is not in charge of flood control, where his task would be to protect people from water. One of his sacred duties would be to shut down all fire departments in the country.

[More: T.D. Luckey, Hormesis with ionizing radiation, CRC Press, 1981; First international conference on radiation hormesis, San Francisco 1986, most papers published in special issue of Health Physics, vol. 52, no. 5 (May 1987). Among Prof. Luckey's more recent papers (after publication of his book) are "Ionizing radiation hormesis of non-specific immunity" Microokologie und Therapie (W. Germany), vol. 11, pp.113-123 (1981); "Physiological benefits from low levels of ionizing radiation," Health Phys., Dec. 1982; "Beneficial ef- fects of ionizing radiation," Proc. 24^th Ann. Meeting of Union of German Radiation Protection Physicians Reinbeck, W. Germany, May 1983; "Horme- sis with high LET radiation induced cancer," Intl. Symp. on Radon Therapy, Bad Muenster, May 1984; "Ionizing radiation promotes protozoan reproduc- tion," Radiation Resrch., vol. 108, pp. 215-221 (1986); and, perhaps most use- ful for the layman reader, "Hormesis and nurture with ionizing radiation," a 75-page chapter in H. Elsaesser (ed.), Global 2000 Revisited: Re-Assessment of Man's Impact on Spaceship Earth, Paragon House Publ., to be published this year (1988).]