Science versus Common Sense of Cause and Effect
You know, my brother, a non-smoker all of his life, died at the age of forty of a cancer that had spread to produce tumors throughout his body --- groin, lungs, glands (origin unknown --there was never an autopsy at his wife's request). His doctors had told him for months that he was "over-reacting" to pain in his chest and side. This was in 1988 and less than two years after Chernobyl. My wife and I have also had ten close friends or family members on both Coasts (from just the current generation -- no aunts, grandparents, etc.) that have developed cancer by age 45 --- also all non-smokers --- and half of them are now gone. My wife, a nurse, has also witnessed what she believes is a a significant upswing in cancer and cancer deaths of those around age forty or younger during her career in the health profession, despite claims to the contrary.
Frankly I am offended at the callous and somewhat arrogant attitude portrayed by many of the comments on here from scientists and obvious pseudo-scientists regarding the potential danger of the current fallout from Japan. I don't think A SINGLE ONE OF YOU can DISMISS THE AMOUNT THAT CHERNOBYL AND OTHER REACTOR / BOMB TEST EMISSIONS MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THESE DEATHS that I mention above.
Or, are we all simply dying from that "simple" "minimal" "existing" "background radiation"?
Well put, Joe. I echo these
Well put, Joe. I echo these comments and I hope everyone on this forum understand our only interest to to provide the public with clear answers about what we are measuring and what it means. We are not funded through any government agency for doing this work and we are not directed by anyone pertaining to what we release and what we are testing. We have more or less responded to requests from the public to test more items and we hope to provide more data from tap water, milk, and vegetables. The only contention I have seen, other than a couple of experimental details, is the method we present the health risk context. We debated this context (the comparison with an airplane flight) for about a day because we felt that the general public would need something more than just numbers and dose units. This is before we introduced the forum and we had not envisioned the current level of Q&A that has been used to get very detailed on the dose calculations. We are nuclear scientists and engineers and not health physicists, so frankly, we should step back from making any further health risk estimates other than what we have presented. Our calculations and assumptions are transparent and we understand that some may have issue with how we present the data. Please understand that we are trying our hardest to maintain a level of balance and honesty within our reporting.
On a personal note, my mother died of cancer in 1999 before she had a chance to see me attend Berkeley. This time in my life has always been, and continues to be, a motivating influence. I truly feel for anyone who has lost a loved one due to cancer.
Thank you again to the
Thank you again to the people at UCB for the work your doing. I know its not your job to report this information and address peoples concerns, but there are a lot of people out here that appreciate it.
There's has been a lot of discussion here about the possible health effects from this exposure and that's a good thing. It might be worth having a separate forum section dedicated to this topic. That way there is a designated place for discussions and it will also help keep things organized.