The Medical Association for Prevention of War has released a statement signed
by 45 medical doctors calling on uranium mining company Toro Energy to stop
promoting the view that low-level radiation is beneficial to human health.
Toro Energy plans to mine uranium at Wiluna in WA and has interests in
uranium exploration ventures in the NT and SA. The company has sponsored at
least three speaking tours by controversial Canadian scientist Doug Boreham,
most recently to the Paydirt uranium conference in Adelaide where he promoted
radiation as “anti carcinogenic”.
Dr Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and a public representative on the
radiation health committee of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear
Safety Agency, said: "Toro has facilitated several visits to Australia by the
Canadian scientist Dr Doug Boreham to present the fringe scientific view that
radiation is beneficial to human health.
“To promote such marginal views without any counter-balance is self-serving
and irresponsible and it may be time for governments to step in to provide
that balance. Recent research has heightened rather than reduced concern
about the adverse health impacts of low-level radiation."
Dr Harry Cohen, former President of CCWA and the Medical Association for
Prevention of War and former Director of Gynaecology at the King Edward
Memorial Hospital said: "Toro Energy has sponsored "employee radiation
training" by Dr Boreham. This is a dangerous and unacceptable situation.”
“The promotion that radiation is safe threatens to undermine the safety
culture that underpins workplace safety in a potentially hazardous
environment thus could threaten the health and welfare of mine workers.” Dr
Cohen concluded.
Read the statement at www.mapw.org.au/resources - or (full link):
www.mapw.org.au/download/doctors-slam-uranium-miner-over-junk-science-ra...
Contact for comment:
Dr Peter Karamoskos (Melbourne), MAPW Treasurer, 0403 125 507
Dr Harry Cohen (Perth), former MAPW and CCWA President: 08 9386 5268
(or via MAPW Executive Officer Nancy Atkin, 0431 475 465 or 03 9023 1958;
nancy.atkin@mapw.org.au)
Medical Association for Prevention of War, Australia: www.mapw.org.au
Link to Dr Doug Boreham
http://www.paydirtsuraniumconference.com/prof-doug-boreham/
Comments
Boreham is basically saying that risk is not linear with dose
Declaring something "junk science" does not make it so. This guy, for those who have not bothered to check, does have a fairly respectable publication record, 13 out of 58 as first author. A number of his papers dealing with adaptive and protective responses to low-level radiation are sole-authored, which may be an indicator that he is out on his own in this regard. Though it can indicate that it's just a topic that nobody is interested in.
The radiation response papers don't appear in highly prestigious journals, but hardly junk journals either. Just relatively specialised journals.
And for those who have not bothered to read the papers, or even the abstracts which are freely available, they don't simply say that radiation is beneficial which is what this article seems to imply that Boreman is saying. His publications merely state that there is some evidence that some forms of radiation, in low doses, may stimulate adaptive and immune responses is some types of cells. They do challenge the Linear No-Threshold model of radiation health risk. Boreham is basically saying that risk is not linear with dose. What would be amazing is if it really was linear with dose. There are few things in complex biological systems that are truly linear.
This is not a radical thing to say at all. The Linear No-Thrshold model assumes that you can extrapolate the well studied and demostrated health risk of moderate to high does radiation down to low dose. But it' only a model. It is one that is widely used, mainly because it's simple and easy to use.
The concept of adaptive response to pathogen or toxin exposure is well known and thoroughly accepted. I don't see why the suggestion that there could be an adaptive response to damage caused by radiation exposure is so off-the-wall. We are all adapted to radiation exposure to some extent. We have millions of years of evolution in an environment awash with low-level radiation to thank for that. There are cellualr and genetic repair mechanisms that can deal with low levels of radiation damage. What's so radical about the idea that these responses can be stimulated by one of the very things that they have evolved to respond to?
Most damage from radiation exposure is after all from the the OH- radicals generated by ionising radiation splitting water. A rule of thumb is that 90% of the energy in incident radiation is expended in splitting water molecules. This is hardly surprising since we are made largely from water, and this water presents a somewhat larger target than the various protien and DNA molecules that we are made of. So radiation exposure, to a large degree but not totally, just looks like exposure to OH- radicals as far as your cells are concerned. This is similar to any number of chemical agents that are cancer causing. It's not controversial at all to suggest an adaptive response to these agents.
The hostility to these Adaptive-Response suggestions seems to stem from the rather religious-like adherance to irrational fear-mongering arguments that some elements of the anti-nuclear lobby seems very fond of. I don't think it's got very much at all to do with an honest scientific critique of Boreham's work.
The criticism that the nuclear industry is selectively promoting research that can be used to allay some concerns about low-dose radiation, is valid. It's disingenuous to try and use this to justify uranium mining or nuclear power technology. But it's equally disingenuous of the anti-nuclear lobby to overstate hazards and unfairly attack anything that does not suit thier agenda.
Not just cancer, other diseases are implicated as well
Here's an interesting article from Nature on efforts to use old low-dose studies samples to look at low-dose effects. There's not just cancer to consider, other diseases are implicated as well. Hopefully this sort of work will shed some real scientific light on some unresolved issues associated with low-dose exposure. It may turn out to be more or even less damaging than the linear-no-threshhold model predicts. Or it may be a much more complex picture that that even.
http://www.nature.com/news/radiation-risks-raiders-of-the-lost-archive-1...