In March 2015, Foreign Policy magazine published an article by Sarah Laskow titled The Mushroom Cloud and The X-Ray Machine. The article described the controversy over the radiation protection model known as the linear, no-threshold dose response. Ms. Laskow conducted some admirable literature research and talked with a number of well-known people. The ones that…
Consumer Reports, a widely read magazine in the U. S., has published more than half a dozen articles in the past couple of years warning people that every CT scan carries with it the risk of causing cancer. Here are the headlines of those articles. Consumer Reports: January 03, 2013. Many patients unaware of radiation…
Pressure groups and interested individuals have been striving for more than two decades to force the U. S. to reduce its occupational worker radiation protection limit from 50 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year. The primary justification for this effort is that in 1991 the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) issued publication 60 and provided their…
The U. S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) held its annual meeting in Bethesda, MD on March 16 and 17. On the second day of the meeting, Jacques Lochard, Vice Chair of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP), gave a talk titled The Ethics of Radiation Protection. The slides from that talk are…
Dr. Ed Calabrese has published additional installments in his continuing effort to illuminate the methods by which the 16 member Genetics Committee of the 1956 National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation committee altered history. That small group of colleagues, chaired by the man who approved their research grant requests during the period…
There is a growing understanding among people who specialize in understanding how ionizing radiation affects human beings that the prevailing “no safe dose” model that was adopted as the result of a major political struggle during the mid to late 1950s is false and does not represent reality. Responsible people that continue to accept and…
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has started an initiative branded as “What We Know” about climate change. The initiative is sponsored by the following individuals and organizations: Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment Lawrence H. Linden Robert Litterman The MacArthur Foundation Rockefeller Family Fund Henry M. Paulson Here is…
By Jerry Cuttler, DSc, PEng All organisms have very remarkable protection capabilities. While most people still think that living cells are structurally stable, scientists discovered in the 1980s that cells undergo a very high rate of naturally-occurring physical and chemical damage caused by the heat, oxygen and other chemicals in their bodies. Approximately 10,000 measurable…
On November 17, 2014, I attended a meeting at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington organized to determine if there is a need to convene an eighth committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VIII). The presentations given during that meeting have been published on line at Planning Towards the BEIR…
On December 3, 2014, Dr. Wade Allison was invited to give a speech to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. The title of that talk was The Fukushima nuclear accident and the unwarranted fear of low-dose radiation. After Dr. Allison gave his talk explaining why he believed that our current treatment of radiation is governed…
Note: The below is part of a longer work in progress. Comments and corrections are greatly appreciated. On Monday, November 17, the US House of Representatives passed H.R. 5544, the Low Dose Radiation Research Act, which called for the National Academies to “conduct a study assessing the current status and development of a long-term strategy…
I just received a link to a fascinating podcast from the World Nuclear Association about the risks associated with attempting to protect the public from low doses of radiation. It was posted almost a month ago on October 14, 2014. I apologize for initially missing this important recording and failing to bring it to your…