Subject:  Nobody was really interested......
Date:     Thu, 17 Sep 1998 052941 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------


......More about the institutionalized DIShonesty in our government...
"Nobody was really terribly interested," says the scientist who sat on
the knowledge that radio-active fall-out had contaminated HALF of the
U.S....Possibly resulting in over 200,000 cases of thyroid cancer!
.....Will they (are they) saying that about EMF????.....Note!!!...
This involves our "favorite" RICH health bureaucracy again (NCI, of 
course)......guru....


DO YOU KNOW OF OTHERS WHO SHOULD BE ON THIS LIST?????


.......Fallout Study Delayed 14 Years

.c The Associated Press

 By H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The scientist who oversaw a 14-year health study of
radiation fallout from Cold War bomb tests apologized Wednesday for years of
delay in making the findings public.

``The sense was that nobody was really terribly interested in this,'' Bruce
Wachholz, chief of the radiation effects branch of the National Cancer
Institute who coordinated the fallout study, told a Senate hearing.

To which Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, responded: ``The public couldn't be
interested in what the public didn't know.''

The study, which tracked fallout nationwide from 100 aboveground nuclear
explosions in the Nevada desert during the early years of the Cold War, was
released last October, nearly 15 years after Congress ordered it.

Three months earlier, key findings were made public. The study concluded that
exposure to iodine-131 from the bomb test fallout may have caused 11,300 to
212,000 additional cases of cancer.

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee members asked senior National Cancer
Institute why the findings were not made public earlier, since the basic
results were known as early as 1989 and a final draft report was completed in
1992. Some lawmakers have suggested the release was delayed out of concern
about public reaction.

Wachholz said there was ``no intention to deceive or conceal this
information'' but acknowledged the report ``received little attention'' for
several years after it was largely completed as some of the same researchers
focused on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident.

``The report should have gotten out faster,'' said Wachholz.

But another witness suggested that public relations concerns may have played a
part.

``There was concern within the (National Cancer Institute) about the negative
impact that the study might have on public perception about the legacy of
atmospheric testing of nuclear devices,'' said Owen Hoffman, who was a
consultant on the fallout research.

``This concern may have been partially responsible for delay in publication of
the results,'' said Hoffman, now president of SENES Oak Ridge Inc., a
consulting firm on risk analysis.

Richard Klausner, who became NCI director in 1995, acknowledged that he became
aware of the study because of an inquiry from Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

``Somewhere, obviously, this fell through the cracks,'' said Sen. John Glenn,
D-Ohio. ``We shouldn't have to heckle people to get a report.''

In releasing the report last year, the NCI concluded that bomb testing in
Nevada between 1951 and 1962 exposed millions of American children to
radioactive iodine-131, which can cause thyroid cancer.

The report estimated there would be 11,300 to 212,000 additional cases of
thyroid cancer as the result of the exposure, particularly in the Farm Belt
where children often drank fallout-contaminated milk. The NCI urged people who
believe they may have been highly exposed to undergo thyroid screening even at
this late date.

Earlier this month, however, a committee of the Institute of Medicine called
such screening unnecessary because it probably would not help people to live
longer and would provide no significant health benefits.

``A national or regional screening effort could result in needless worry and
unnecessary surgeries because the tests used to detect the disease are so
often inconclusive,'' said Robert Lawrence, a Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health professor and the chairman of panel.

William Raub, deputy assistant secretary for science policy at the Department
of Health and Human Services, said the agency was reviewing the conflicting
scientific assessments on screening.

AP-NY-09-16-98 1454EDT




Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html