At 04:24 PM 7/4/01, Jeroen wrote:
>At 13:47 4-7-01 -0700, Darryl Shannon wrote:
>
>Darryl, would you mind being a little more accurate when quoting people?
>
>>Now, about the safety of nuclear power, and the economic viability of
>>other power sources. Jeroen complained that people have many times
>>higher cancer rates near nuclear power plants,
>
>No, I said *there were reports* that made such claims.
And I and others on the list have asked for references to those reports so
we can read their claims for ourselves. Can you give us the references?
>>but that it was being kept secret.
>
>If there are reports in the media about it,
Are the reports you are referring to only in the media, or are they based
on research published in scientific journals?
>it is by definition not being kept secret. I also don't remember saying it
>was kept secret. What I said was that the nuclear power lobby will do
>everything it can to tone it down, because they have large economic
>interests to protect.
>
>
>>I think what Jeroen is refering to are so-called "cancer clusters".
>>Several people in an area are diagnosed with cancer, and some
>>environmental effect is blamed...power lines, nuclear power plants,
>>pollution, etc.
>
>Yes. I'm doing this from (my admittedly rusty) memory, but I do remember a
>claim about a high number of cases of leukemia (sp) near a nuclear power
>plant. My memory tells me it was Sellafield (UK), but it might have been
>some other location. What I do remember is that it was blamed on the
>nuclear power plant,
By whom?
>since no other possible source was found.
As Daryll pointed out, a purely random distribution for cancer cases
implies that there will be clusters where a high density of cancer cases
will be found ***with no external cause whatsoever***. To show that
nuclear power (or anything else one might name) was the _cause_ of such
clusters, one would have to find that such clusters _always_ (or at least
almost always -- randomness would account for the occasional lack of cases
near a proven source of carcinogen, too) occur near nuclear power plants
and their frequency decreases as you move away from the nuclear power plant
to the point where such clusters are (almost) never found in locations that
are far away from nuclear power plants. To the best of my knowledge
(admittedly, epidemiology is not my field), there are no published
scientific studies showing such a distribution. If you are aware of such
studies, could you give us a reference to the original papers, please?
-- Ronn! :)
