Saturday, April 22, 2006
UNPUBLISHED LETTER TO THE INDEPENDENT
The Independent have been running various letters & generally giving heavy coverage to the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl. Coverage has been slanted strongly towards the entirely imaginary 93,000 deaths predicted real soon now by Greenpeace as opposed to the under 50 real ones.
I had elsewhere suggested that the Indie were disinclined to publish letters which don't push the Luddite line. So I wrote this more in the expectation of proving my point than getting published & the Indie didn't fail to live down to my expectations.
From experience I have found that letters radiation hormesis are as difficult to get published as those suggesting the Milosevic "trial" was not impartial. There is a journalistic principle that at least one letter opposing that of the majority of letters chosen should be allowed,
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Dear Editor,
"A little radiation every day is just what the doctor ordered" (letter 13th April). Perhaps so. The case of the Taiwanese apartment block whose concrete was mixed with radioactive Cobalt 60 some 25 years ago is well understood within scientific circles but never reported in the popular media. What happened is that for 20 years 20,000 people were subjected to known doses of up to 75mSv (5 times the official safe limit) which resulted in a measured 97% reduction in cancer. This process is known as hormesis & is a well known phenomenon completely disproving the "no lower limit" to radiation damage for which, in any case, there has never been any actual evidence.
The media give considerable coverage to the Green's ridiculous claim that deaths from Chernobyl are 30-60,000 (the true figure is under 50). On the other hand they now give zero coverage to Greenpeace's claim, 20 years ago, that it will produce 2-4,000 deaths in Sweden alone. no such epidemic has happened, but since Greenpeace have never apologised for it we must accept it as representing the highest level of honesty of which that organisation is capable. To be fair to Greenpeace this lie does not come close to matching that of the nuclear opponent who claimed Chernobyl would kill half amillion.
It is unfortunate that, in pursuit of the scare stories that make headlines the media choose to give maximum coverage to organisations such as Greenpeace & the Green movement whos predictions have, time after time after time, been proven to be untrue. They give zero coverage to the repeated disproof of such things (for example see how much coverage the Independent didn't give to the disproof of the hockeystick theory that global warming was rising fast).
I had elsewhere suggested that the Indie were disinclined to publish letters which don't push the Luddite line. So I wrote this more in the expectation of proving my point than getting published & the Indie didn't fail to live down to my expectations.
From experience I have found that letters radiation hormesis are as difficult to get published as those suggesting the Milosevic "trial" was not impartial. There is a journalistic principle that at least one letter opposing that of the majority of letters chosen should be allowed,
--------------------------------------
Dear Editor,
"A little radiation every day is just what the doctor ordered" (letter 13th April). Perhaps so. The case of the Taiwanese apartment block whose concrete was mixed with radioactive Cobalt 60 some 25 years ago is well understood within scientific circles but never reported in the popular media. What happened is that for 20 years 20,000 people were subjected to known doses of up to 75mSv (5 times the official safe limit) which resulted in a measured 97% reduction in cancer. This process is known as hormesis & is a well known phenomenon completely disproving the "no lower limit" to radiation damage for which, in any case, there has never been any actual evidence.
The media give considerable coverage to the Green's ridiculous claim that deaths from Chernobyl are 30-60,000 (the true figure is under 50). On the other hand they now give zero coverage to Greenpeace's claim, 20 years ago, that it will produce 2-4,000 deaths in Sweden alone. no such epidemic has happened, but since Greenpeace have never apologised for it we must accept it as representing the highest level of honesty of which that organisation is capable. To be fair to Greenpeace this lie does not come close to matching that of the nuclear opponent who claimed Chernobyl would kill half amillion.
It is unfortunate that, in pursuit of the scare stories that make headlines the media choose to give maximum coverage to organisations such as Greenpeace & the Green movement whos predictions have, time after time after time, been proven to be untrue. They give zero coverage to the repeated disproof of such things (for example see how much coverage the Independent didn't give to the disproof of the hockeystick theory that global warming was rising fast).
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I note you do not give any source for your apartment block story. Without any proof it sounds like an urban myth and this is probably why your letter was not published. As to the reliability of Greenpeace's figures, your readers should see my comments to your 14 April posting.
# posted by 
: April 22, 2006
: April 22, 2006
I have given sources for this regularly since before this blog started. If you wish to type "hormesis" into the search facility here you will find some of what you have been missing. Alternately try
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0404/msg00078.html
This is not an "urban myth" it is cold proven fact. A well known secret which it is as politically incorrect to talk about as the faults of Lysenkoism ever were in the USSR, which is rather more probably why it was not published.
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http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/0404/msg00078.html
This is not an "urban myth" it is cold proven fact. A well known secret which it is as politically incorrect to talk about as the faults of Lysenkoism ever were in the USSR, which is rather more probably why it was not published.
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