A Place to Stand

This letter went out on Thursday to the world's newspapers & has been published by the Scotsman. They have edited it significantly to take out the specific evidence for hormesis which is a pity (highlighted) but nonetheless it is only the 2nd time any western newspaper has been willing to publish any letter on the subject.

Oxford Professor of Physics Wade Allison has had the courage to state publicly that the alleged "scientific consensus" about low level radiation being harmful is wrong. He is right to do so. Since climategate media & political assertions of scientific consensii (changed to assertions of scientific consensus) are, rightly, coming under increased examination. This one, by preventing the world having sufficient inexpensive, safe & reliable nuclear power has greatly & unnecessarily impoverished the entire human race for the last 30 years.

Not only is there absolutely no evidence to support the claim that low level radiation is harmful, there is a vast amount for the contrary theory, known as hormesis, that it is beneficial. There are many places in the world such as Kerala in India or Yellowstone Park in the USA where natural background radiation is far above the level the "official consensus" says is dangerous, without any measurable ill effects over many thousands of years. Studies of Radon in homes have been done repeatedly because they repeatedly find the "official" wrong answer - that high levels of Radon correlate with good health. There is other evidence but the most indisputable, because it is almost a classic experiment, albeit accidental, occurred in Taiwan. A block of 180 flats were built there in 1983 with steel contaminated by radioactive cobalt 60 which has a half life of 5.5 years. When this was discovered, 20 years & 10,000 inhabitants, later, the radiation was largely gone but the records of who had lived there & how much they must have been exposed to were easily calculable. According to the no lower threshold "consensus" there should have been a massive increase in cancers. In fact cancers were down to 3.6% of prevailing Taiwanese rates.

The alleged "consensus" has only been maintained by a blanket refusal to notice this & other conclusive proofs. I can say from personal experience that newspapers eager to push any sort of scare story from the global ice age to breast enhancements without any evidence, have overwhelmingly refused to report this clear & unambiguous proof. That may make a consensus but certainly not a scientific one.

Reference - detailed article on hormesis http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/05/radiation-hormesis.html

I would have much preferred some of the evidence to also have been published but this is a move in the right direction. I have also given myself a Google News alert on mentions of the no threshold theory & will keep sending out variants of this when they occur. The original variant of it went to the Guardian when they rubbished Professor Allison as not being on message with the "consensus" but though they published other letters none as supportive, unsurprisingly, were used.

Perhaps some anti-nuclearist will write to the Scotsman saying I am wrong - in which case I will reply using the evidence in the last half of my letter. However experience shows such people reticient about getting into a fact based discussion.

Labels: Hormesis, letters, Media, nuclear