Renewable Revolution

Agelbert NOTE: And example of a well meaning person being insulted by a nuke puke propagandist troll: 

To Agelbert:

I wanted to ask you for your feedback on the dude who thinks radiation is not a problem - and hey, if you don't want to get into it, NO worries. I actually wonder if the guy is out to lunch anyway (he's got comic strip "heroes" for his Facebook page photos... that's enough to turn me off... not exactly worthy of any of my respect... I am assuming he is a grown man). But I have a hard time leaving an argument, especially when I get insulted. Again, if it looks to you like he is indeed out to lunch, I'll walk away promptly, and just continue to be very happy to know people like yourself! There is another fellow I follow via Disqus, goes by the moniker: "darkmark". I very much need to be reminded that there are folks out there ready, willing and able to take aim at the fools.

_____________

What I posted to him, in response to something he said to me, was the following:

Mike, you are being presumptuous. Oh, and by the way, did you read the article you posted up there about the babushkas in Chernobyl? Not in any place in it does it say that radiation is safe.

How much radiation is safe? Zero. There is no such thing as a safe level of radiation. Much like the lead poisoned water we’re hearing about, radiation is cumulative. The more you get; the more you get to keep.
You want some real science?

Dr. John W. Gofman, Father of Antinuclear USA Movement
Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, Emeritus UC Berkeley

Poisoned Power is the most authoritative case against nuclear power ever written. The Atomic Energy Commission cover up about the health effects of ionizing radiation. Gofman established the biomedical division of he Lawrence Livermore Lab. He was given a $3.5 million dollar annual budget per year from 1963 o 1970 to study the biological effects of ionizing radiation. He was pronuclear when he as given the research project. In 1969, they took their results to the AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg.

Seaborg rejected the results, quashed the study and cut his budget to $150,000 in 1970. Gofman laid off his 150 research assistants and resigned in the same year. The AEC when on to blackball Gofman in the nuclear industry Poisoned Power tells the story in it entirety.

In 1965, Dr. Ian MacKenzie published an elegant report entitled "Breast Cancer Following Multiple Fluoroscopies" (British J. of Cancer 19: 1-8) and in 1968, Wanebo and co-workers, stimulated by MacKenzie's work, reported on "Breast Cancer after Exposure to the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (New England J. of Medicine 279:667-671), but few were willing to concede that breast-cancer could be induced by low-LET radiation.

Gofman and his colleague, Dr. Arthur Tamplin, quantified the breast-cancer risk (1970, The Lancet 1:297), looked at the other available evidence, and concluded overall that human exposure to ionizing radiation was much more serious than previously recognized (Gofman 1969; Gofman 1971).

_________
This was his    reply:

I miss Dr Seaborg. He told good stories. The first time I met him he was wearing a t-shirt that read "I'm in my element." It was the year they named Seaborgium after him.

As much as he contributed to chemistry, I think his most important work was when he was working on the national educational policy and wrote in his report that if a foreign country had imposed our system of schooling upon us, we would rightly consider it an act of war.

You quoted Mercola. Exactly the same level of veracity as realpharmacy or naturalnews. I'm sorry that ear candling and oil pulling don't cure cancer. Really, I am. Meanwhile, the rest of us have science to do.  

Well, that troll (that is what he is) pretending radiation is "okay" in small doses, that's one of their cons. You see, back in the late 1920's some fools thought radiation was great stuff and were drinking radium solutions. They began to die and that was the end of that. Then some other fools in the late 1930's claimed that radiation (from abandoned mines with a high radioactivity) "accelerated" the evolution of fruit flies there. Have you seen all those pretty pictures or drawings of a fruit fly with two sets of wings the "radioactivity increases positive mutations" crowd loves? The Geneticists made it their symbol!

Well, if you study college level biology, you can't avoid it. It's THE icon of all the fools claiming radiation is "okay" (AND all the geneticists claiming evolution provides for all positive mutations - something that, despite what you may have read, has NEVER been proven - but that's another subject.  ).



What they always have left out is that the fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) with that extra pair of wings are sterile AND only ONE PAIR of wings has muscles for flight attached to it. IOW, it's NOT a positive mutation. It's an evolutionary disadvantage to be sterile and have a dysfunctional pair of wings to drag around.

The term for what radiation actually does to life forms is "mutagenic" effects.

Insects, which are far less susceptible to radiation damage than mammals, because they have proportionately less water than mammals in their tissues, still experience severe mutagenic effects.

But that didn't stop the radiation lovers. The "love" for radiation got even worse when the bomb was invented in 1945. If you look at the Nuke Puke section of this forum and the topic 1950s, you will see what I mean.

http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/nuke-puke/the-nuclear-insanity-of-the-1950s/msg182/#msg182

Like the government then KNEW what radiation does since the 1930's (LONG before the bomb!), the troll you are dealing with undoubtedly knows and is pushing, not only the lie that "low doses are like an x-ray or flying in an airplane at 30,000 feet" but, once he gets you t accept THAT, the next step is the con about low doses being "GOOD" for you. They even have a name for that bit of heinous mendacity. It ls called "Hormesis".

You can test your troll very easily buy asking him if he thinks Hormesis can help humanity. He will wag his head up (through his written reaction) and down so furiously that it will make your head spin.

At any rate, I'm a veteran of taking those propagandists apart piece by piece. They just move the goal posts and dance this way and that, no matter what hard scientific proof you present to them or even the data from the Eminent Dr. Gofman. You saw how your troll tried to pretend your post on data from him was not accurate ( the old questioning the source TRICK    ). Dr. Gofman is hated by the nuke pukes because he was one of them and proved conclusively that there is no "safe" dose.

So, instead of accepting the evidence (that Dr. Gofman merely built upon from the older 1930's hard data), they continue disparaging the truth.

They claim to be objective. They are not. But they use the ignorance of most people against them. These propagandists sound oh so calm as they rattle off some half truths that ignore all the dangers in radionuclides.

For example, the fact that most people don't understand radionuclide photon frequency energy math (Most people wrongly only associate photons with light - and the energies of the photon frequencies - there are several bands in each radionuclide - are completely off of people's radar  ) makes it very difficult for the average person to understand how the linear model of radiation dosage is a con perpetrated by the Nukers (against Dr. Gofman's will) so scientists and doctors doing epidemiological studies of cancer clusters near nuclear power plants people would NOT have a scientifically accurate starting point to link radionuclides with cancer.

Radionuclides radiate in all directions. When a person ingests them the damage is HUNDREDS of times worse than an x-ray or flying at 30,000 feet. Yet the nukers pushed this linear theory to low ball the effects. It was a despicable scam based on mens rea from the start.     

I could go on and on but, to give you a brief (though the document isn't vey brief  ) of what is the truth and what you are up against with these nuker trolls, I dug this up from my files and am posting it here for you to read at your leisure.

These nuke pukes have no ethics whatsoever. 

Here are some snippets from a paper discussing how background radiation, once heralded (wrongly) as the cause of evolution and natural selection because it induces mutations that are passed on to future generations. The problem they encountered is that about 98% of mutations in life forms are deleterious, not beneficial. Any statistician will explain to you that if you increase the mutation rate, you decrease the viability of the species experiencing all the mutations. But that did not stop the nukers from developing the LNT theory happily adopted by the AEC and EPA.

The target theory, earlier developed and now factually proven by the proportionality of inverse proportionality distance to damage from ingested radionuclides, is still hotly contested by the nukers claiming their ARE beneficial effects to radiation. The fact that the immune system will respond to an insult and appear to be "benefited" by some radiation is reverse logic. We are built to address certain insults. Add them up and our immune systems are overcome. this is science instead of wishful thinking. The LNT is still the favorite (and thoroughly misleading and inaccurate because it ignores the damage from nanometer distances with ingested radionuclides) of the nukers for obvious reasons (not mentioned in the paper, of course).

Origin of the linearity no threshold (LNT) dose–response concept
Edward J. Calabrese

Keywords Ionizing radiation · Linearity · Dose response · Risk assessment · Threshold dose response ·
Target theory · Eugenics · LNT

Babcock and Collins (1929a, b) tested the hypothesis of Olson and Lewis (1928). They found a location in which the natural radiation was twice that found in their University of California/Berkeley laboratory. Using the ClB strain sex-linked recessive Drosophila assay, they reported an increase in mutation that corresponded in the same proportion as the difference in background radiation, supporting the proportionality hypothesis. Detailed experimental methods including the actual radioactivity levels were never published, although such data were promised to be provided in a subsequent paper.

In 1930, Hanson and Heys provided further support for the hypothesis that “natural radiation may be responsible for the mutations that are the grist of the natural selection mill with the resulting evolution of new forms.” Their findings were based on a study of fruit fly mutations in an abandoned carnotite (i.e., uranium) mine. Such interpretations were initially supported by commentaries by various authors (Lind 1929; Dixon 1929, 1930).

In 1930 Muller and Rice University physicist, Mott- Smith, challenged this LNT evolution perspective by
reporting that natural radiation, which was of such a lowdose rate, could only account for about 1/1,300 of the gene mutations that occurred spontaneously in Drosophila melanogaster, assuming a linear dose response. The authors concluded that other causes must explain the origin of most mutations that spontaneously occur. Nonetheless, in his dissertation, under the direction of Muller, Oliver (1931) stated that cosmic and terrestrial radiations must account for some proportion of the spontaneous mutations (see Muller 1930).

The radiation target theory as applied to mutations was formulated by the detailed interactions and collaborations
of leading radiation geneticists and theoretical physicists during the mid-1930s. Although Muller was a geneticist, he was drawn quickly toward the physics-mutation interface, accepting significant elements of target theory for radiation-induced mutational effects, including the important assumptions that damage was proportional to the energy absorbed, linear dose– response modeling and that effects were cumulative and deleterious (Muller et al. 1936).

This excitation was proposed to affect a permanent change or mutation to a different molecular structure. Ionizing
irradiation was the only effective way to induce mutations; it showed no threshold, suggesting that the absorption
of radiation is a quantized and additive process (von Schwerin 2010).

A “quantum-jump” was considered to be the physical process caused by a hit on a target, resulting in mutation. Treatment effects induced by a physical agent like ionizing radiation were believed to be caused by one or several discrete biophysical events, that is, hits on a target. Based on hypotheses about what constituted a hit, statistical models were used to construct dose–response relationships. If there was only a single hit on a single target, the dose response was linear. As the number of assumed hits increased, a more threshold like the dose response would appear.

 
This conceptual framework led to the conclusion that mutation was a single-hit process, proceeding from a single ionization, from a quantum of ionizing radiation in a specific sensitive zone of the gene. This theoretically based perspective became not only a workable model but a firm belief within the radiation genetics community even though there was no knowledge of the physical nature of the gene.


In the radiation risk assessment area, two endpoints were adopted to which linearity was applied: germ cell mutations
and cancer. In the case of germ cell mutations, based on several publications in the early 1950s by Muller (1951,
1954), the BEAR I Genetics Panel (1956) proposed to limit exposure to ionizing radiation such that exposure would not exceed doubling of background mutations from conception through the first 30 years of life. The panel assumed that exposure to ionizing radiation could cause mutations to germ cells in a linear manner and had the potential to cause adverse genetic effects in individuals and future generations. The panel derived a risk assessment methodology for application to both first-generation offspring and total genetic risk, including future generations. The panel derived a doubling dose method (i.e., the dose of ionizing radiation, assuming linearity at low dose, that would equal the number of mutations resulting from background exposure), to estimate population-based risks. This doubling dose methodology would predict the number of genetic diseases based on three parameters: the assumed doubling dose, the proposed exposure limit and the background incidence of genetic disease.

http://radiationeffects.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Calabrese-2013_Origin-LNT-concept.pdf

As to the radiation induced mutagenicity in fruit flies, here's a modern, below please find a modern, up to date study. No insects are not human. In fact insects, because of lower water percentage content in their tissues, are MORE resistant to radiation than mammals are. Do you want a link to that too, Mr. "biologist Scientist"?

 Mutagenic Effect of 5000 r Gamma Rays in Drosophila simulans
MUHAMMAD HASSAN
Postgraduate Department of Zoology, Government College, Faisalabad–Pakistan

SNIPPETS

Irradiation treatment. For irradiation treatment, 45 unetherized young (2-3 days old) male Drosophila simulans
flies were exposed to 5000 roentgens (r) of gamma radiation in COBALT60 GAMMA CELL (220 Canadian make with the radiation chamber 21 x 155 mm). In the cell chamber,36 flies within the bottles were kept approximately at the distance of 10 cm from the target. The exposure time was 2.28 min for 5000 r gamma radiations.

Identification and isolation of mutants. The irradiated males were crossed to controlled virgin females, on the
same day. The F1, F2, and F3 generations were examined to identify visible mutant flies. To identify and isolate the
mutant flies, the phenotypic characteristics namely, sex, body size, eyes, head, thorax, abdomen, bristles, wing
shape, wing venation and genitalia were examined under binocular microscope, at magnification X 100. In each
culture bottle, three pairs of Drosophila simulans flies were kept for 3-4 days and then the flies were released. The new flies of F1 generation were counted and examined under the binocular microscope to identify the autosomal and sexlinked dominant mutations for three successive days until there were no more flies emerging. Pairs of F1 flies were allowed to mate randomly for the production of F2 and F3 generations. The controlled culture was also grown parallel to irradiated flies for the sake of comparison.


Induced Mutants were identified and isolated from the culture of Drosophila simulans flies irradiated by
5000 r of gamma radiation and their genetic pattern was studied to the maximum extent. However, no
spontaneous mutant could be recorded in the controlled strain of the fruitflies grown parallel to the irradiated culture.

It seems likely that these mutants were produced due to semilethal structural chromosome mutations induced by 5000 r gamma radiation, in the present investigation.

http://www.fspublishers.org/published_papers/73648_..pdf

Here's a very good book. As might be expected, NO EVIDENCE has been PUBLISHED about the mutagenicity of Radiation in humans.  But then the AEC had an "agreement" since the 1950s with the World Health Organization (that conducts a large chunk of these studies for the U.N. on many health issues) that NO STUD?Y on radiation effects can be published with the AEC's permission. If you do not get what that means, feel free to call me a raving conspiracy theorist". A think I'm being Occam's razor logical. When you read even the summary, radiation mutagenicity jumps right out at you from the careful presentation of empirical data. What's more, adaptation and hormesis are debunked while they privately admit they don't have "evidence" of human mutegenicity. However, the fact that the risk assessment clearly supports Target theory as opposed to LNT say it ALL. Read on.

Google this book:
Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation:: BEIR VII PHASE 2 (2006)
By Committee to Assess Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation, Board on Radiation Effects Research, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council.

SNIPPET:

Animal data support the view that low-dose radiation acts principally on the early stages of tumorigenesis (initiation). High-dose effects on later stages (promotion or progression). are also likely. Although the data is limited, the loss of specific genes whose absence might result in animal tumor initiation has been demonstrated in irradiated animals and cells.


RISK ESTIMATION METHODS

In the absence of data on radiation-induced germ cell mutations that can cause genetic disease in humans, all of the methods developed and used for predicting the risk of genetic disease from the mid-1950s to the present are indirect. Their strengths and weaknesses are reviewed in BEIR V (NRC 1990). One such indirect method is the doubling dose method, on which attention is focused in this section. It has been in use since the early 1970s (NRC 1972, 1990; UNSCEAR 1977, 1982, 1986, 1988) and is used in the recent UNSCEAR (2001) report.

The Doubling Dose Method

The doubling dose method enables expressing of the expected increase in disease frequency per unit dose of radiation in terms of the baseline frequency of the disease class. The doubling dose (DD) is the amount of radiation required to produce in a generation as many mutations as those that arise spontaneously. Ideally, it is estimated as a ratio of the average rates of spontaneous and induced mutations in a given set of genes:
 
(4-1)
The reciprocal of the DD (i.e., 1/DD) is the relative mutation risk (RMR) per unit dose. Since RMR is the reciprocal of DD, the smaller the DD, the higher is the RMR and vice versa. With the doubling dose method, until recently, risk was estimated as a product of two quantities—namely, the baseline disease frequency, P, and 1/DD:
 

Last link. I promise!


The discovery, as the scientists state in their article, can shed some light on the problem of individual irradiation sensitivity. It is known that low doses of radiation sometimes result in serious inborn defects, and sometimes leave no traces. In part, it is connected with the a priori random nature of ionizing radiation, but there are also a number of genetically-based molecular-biological differences, many of which have not been yet defined.

SNIPPET

The mutant flies bred by the scientists have a number of significant peculiarities. The experiments have shown that even low doses of X-ray irradiation (not exceeding 10 R) can cause serious defects in those flies' legs.

In addition, the mutant flies' cells are less resistant to the so-called superoxide radicals.

Superoxide radicals are ions which appear in cells under both normal and pathological conditions. Superoxide radicals have very high rates of reactivity, which is why their excess damages many types of bio-molecules, including DNA. The mutations in Drosophilaflies' cells lowered their ability to resist that damage.

“These results may have broader implications beyond the model organism. In particular, they may indicate an increased risk of pathological response to radiation in humans carrying hypomorphic mutations of these genes in their genome (note that both genes are highly evolutionarily conserved). Such individuals may be more vulnerable than the bulk of the population to even low levels of radiation………http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-reveal-secret-vulnerability.html

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-05-reveal-secret-vulnerability.html

Adaptation, low dose hypersensitivity, bystander effect, homeisis and genomic instability are based mainly on phenomenological data with little mechanistic information.