Fact-Checking Helen Caldicott

Helen Caldicott was in Santa Fe a week or so after the Japanese earthquake. A friend suggested we go to hear her speak, and I went along, although I knew I wouldn’t agree.

I didn’t bother to write down every statement that needed checking – they came every minute or so. She was quite clear and accurate on the basic physics and chemistry but then went off into opinion on pretty much everything else. And some things were just wrong.

The structure of her speech was like a preacher’s “come to Jesus”. There was fear of radiation and guilt on everyone present for not ending this terrible situation immediately. She omitted the altar call at the end, although she mused about entertaining questions and decided not to “break the mood.”

The talk was sponsored by one of our local antinuclear groups, so she was given a standing ovation. Another friend sitting nearby said “Don’t fact check, but she’s good.” I pressed him on that; he knows the importance of fact-checking. “We’ve got to get rid of the nukes, one way or another” was his answer.

I want to see the numbers of nuclear weapons decreased and eventually eliminated. I want to see nuclear power developed safely. But Caldicott’s tactics don’t lead to the kind of world I want to live in.

The New York Times has given her an op-ed today. What she says there is very similar to what she said in Santa Fe, and what I’ve seen in her other op-eds and videos.

What she says has a number of problems. George Monbiot recently documented many of them at his blog and columns (here and here). I’ll work through a few from the op-ed.

Six weeks ago, when I first heard about the reactor damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, I knew the prognosis: If any of the containment vessels or fuel pools exploded, it would mean millions of new cases of cancer in the Northern Hemisphere.

Have you noticed how much of the scariest commentary about Fukushima has revolved around that little word if? Bugs me every time. No, none of the containment vessels or fuel pools exploded. Every day that goes by, that if becomes less likely. Sorry, Helen and all the others who seem to have been longing for the most horrific outcome possible.

But that quote does manage to re-evoke the fear that we felt in the week or so after the earthquake. It paves the way for more credulity about the last part of that sentence. Millions of cases? I’ve been looking in some detail at the BEIR VII report, whose purpose is exactly such prediction. (I hope to have a post with some numbers in the next day or so. It’s taken me a while, because I’m trying to understand what they’ve done in some depth.)

It won’t be millions of cases of cancer. Mainly because those explosions didn’t happen and probably won’t. But even if they did (beeee veerry afraid!), the numbers aren’t likely to be that high.

During the 25th anniversary last week of the Chernobyl disaster, some commentators asserted that few people died in the aftermath

Ah, those shadowy anonymous commentators, who can’t be traced! They would include the authors of BEIR VII and the researchers who provided some of the data those authors used.

The only source that Caldicott actually names, a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, is a translation of a Russian report that hasn’t undergone the same sort of peer review that the BEIR VII and other reports have been subjected to. It stands alone in its very high estimates of damage. Here’s one critique. Caldicott needs to address why she has chosen this outlier report over other available material.

The stories about deformed fetuses and genetic damage are heart-wrenching. Nobody wants babies to be deformed. BEIR VII looks for genetic damage and finds not enough to be treated statistically, as cancer cases can. Miscarriages? Has there been a study to show that there were more than normal? Again, Caldicott provides nothing that is checkable, only assertions.

Caldicott sets up straw physicists and attacks them with statements that are simply untrue. There’s something wrong with every paragraph. Just one more for now:

Still, physicists talk convincingly about “permissible doses” of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells.

The authors of the BEIR VII report are physicians and health physicists, who I’ve always found to be closer to the health side than the physics side. And that report doesn’t ignore internal emitters, nor do other similar reports. Those internal emitters, incidentally, include potassium-40 that is a natural part of every living thing.

It’s easy to say that there is no safe dose of radiation. That’s not really proved; BEIR VII assumes that the probability of developing cancer is proportional to the dose, but they are clear that it is an assumption. It’s true in the same way that no amount of automobile exhaust is safe or char on barbecued meat is safe. It’s also easy to say that radiation exposure is additive, but the numbers in BEIR VII don’t support that. Radiation treatment for cancer may involve doses of tens of thousands of rem, which would kill if absorbed all at once.

Much as I agree with some of Caldicott’s goals, I don’t want to live in a world in which fear and guilt are primary motivators for political action. Even Caldicott suggests that guilt is an inappropriate motivator for her stereotyped physicists. It’s fact we need, and Caldicott provides little of that.

Ciriguela

Photo by Fernando Picarelli Martins, Flickr

Bits and Pieces - April 30, 2011

One of the things I love about the internet is that I get to meet people I wouldn't have otherwise. Here are a couple of artists worth knowing.

Jeffrey Lewis tries to track down a quote attributed to Enrico Fermi. I guess I haven't paid enough attention to that one; I would have attributed it to Edward Teller. I've certainly heard it from his students and acolytes enough times.

Dana Milbank breaks with the cool kids.

Bad news! The Armchair Generalist is going silent.

What we might learn from the Greg Mortenson debacle: "the search for the next killer app or the next big star makes us vulnerable to fads and, simply, to the characteristic failures of many organizations focused on a single person or a single gripping idea." Journalists, are you listening? Progress is more often incremental, boring by newsy standards.

Thirty-six years ago today, the Marines left Saigon. The predictions of what would happen next were as dire as those about Afghanistan today. And they were wrong. Something to think about. Government policy folks, are you listening?

So this gorgeous female who is interested in missile technology wants to be your friend on Facebook and follows you on Twitter? What do you do? Give her the secrets she asks for, of course, if you're a guy. Hey, it's worked before.

India: Still Unique

One of President George W. Bush's brave ideas was to normalize nuclear trade with India. India would be a counterweight to China in Asia. India is the world's largest democracy, so there would be much commonality to its interests and America's. And normalizing trade would help to bring India within the ambit of nuclear restraint that most of the rest of the world has accepted through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Those were all more or less explicit justifications for the negotiations between the United States and India in 2006 on nuclear trade. The NPT banned nuclear trade with nations that didn't accept its constraints, but Bush was forging a new world, outside the requirements of those treaties that constrained the United States' great power. And he knew best.

Less discussed was the role of the various lobbies in pressing for the trade agreement: the nuclear industry, the Indian-American lobby, and, of course, the defense industry. The reasoning was that a favorable relationship with India would bring big bucks to the nuclear and defense industries, undoubtedly part of the argument by the Indian-American lobby. India was looking for military aircraft, in particular. India would be so grateful for the opening of nuclear trade by its great friend the United States that much of the business would go in that direction.

And today we have the outcome.

New York Times: U.S. Loses Bids to Supply Jets to India

Washington Post: U.S. firms lose out on India fighter jet contract

It was quite clear throughout the negotiations that India would follow the path it has always followed: Indian interests, with a certain flavoring of self-righteousness, come first. India will make the very best choices for itself, which will be the very best choices for the world. That's not very different from the way most nations negotiate, although India tends to be more explicit about that. President Bush wanted a deal very badly, and from many accounts, ordered the negotiators to give the Indians what they wanted. And they did.

India's approach to the fighter jet deal is not different from the correspondence I received from Indian nuclear weapons advocates back in 2006: India is beholden to no other country. That has been the nucleus of India's objection to the NPT. So, given an extremely weak negotiation by the US resulting in a deal highly favorable to India's nuclear weapons program, today's result should surprise nobody.

How Many Roads?

Back in the 1960s, I took "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind" to mean that soon, any day now, some of those things would come to pass. And some of them sort of did.

Wikipedia says there's an ambiguity to "blowin' in the wind." I've always been an optimist and still don't feel the downside.

That's fifty years on, now. Back then it was a bit more than fifty years on since Reconstruction, a hundred years now. And we still have racism that's willing to be right in our faces. You know what I'm talking about, the birther nonsense, the still-too-common slurs that those darker folks just can't be as good as us whities.

I just don't get it, and it's seemed that the people who were born back then, when a new world seemed to be blowin' in the wind, seem less willing to get it, too. We've got one of the best and smartest presidents we've had in some time. Lovely family and family values, too, if by family values you mean loving and encouraging each other toward the best they can be.

I've experienced a mild version of what's going on, and it seems as if the prejudices toward women are flaming up again too. But that's prejudice light compared to what's going on with Donald Trump and the demands for President Obama's birth certificate. It's never enough. Place highest on the tests, live an exemplary life, no, we need to see more, you need to jump one more hurdle, then another and another. Even being elected President isn't enough for them.

I think that Juan Cole and Baratunde Thurston have provided the best commentary.

But I disagree with Thurston on one thing. I think that President Obama easily showed himself to be the better person this week. It probably won't stop the racists; maybe the rest of us can help with that.

And here's another place we need to be working to eliminate racism.

Added later: Jeff Danziger gets it right.

Andiróba

Photo by lourivaltyski, Flickr

What Haunts Yoo at Night

TPM:

Torture advocate John Yoo thinks that the President of the United States has the executive power to order a village of civilians slaughtered. But force federal contractors to disclose their political donations? That's a bridge too far.

In an editorial former Bush-era Justice Department official Yoo and David Marston wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the authors argued that the "only purpose" of an executive order being considered by President Barack Obama to require companies seeking federal contracts to disclose political contributions "is to dangle the specter of retaliation.. and harassment."

If a small businesswoman wants to sell paper clips to the Defense Department, Mr. Obama would force her to reveal contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood or the National Rifle Association. These donations are obviously irrelevant to whether she made the most reliable bid at the lowest price.

While the editorial says that the order "represents the latest salvo in the Obama administration's war on the First Amendment rights of its political opponents," there's no word from Yoo on whether the President has the executive power to torture executives to force them to disclose their political donations.

Chernobyl

Twenty-five years ago today, I was working on the chemistry of flame and flame suppressants. I got a phone call (not much use of e-mail then) from the Los Alamos Director's Office to attend a meeting on the events at Chernobyl. That phone call probably came a day or two later; it took some time for the world to realize what was happening in the secretive Soviet Union.

It turned out that there wasn't much I could contribute; dumping limestone, boron compounds, and other solids on the smoking reactor zombie was probably the best path and what was eventually done.

The Guardian has an article on what I've been thinking, as a result of my forays into the BEIR VII report: much more research is needed into the consequences of Chernobyl. The terrible numbers you will read in some places today are almost certainly incorrect; BEIR VII concludes that the results are pretty much what might have been expected, except for a higher number of thyroid cancer cases. Chernobyl is located in an area that historically has seen high incidence of goiter, a result of iodine deficiency, which may be part of the reason for those additional thyroid cancer cases.

I'm half-listening to a White House conference on energy security as I write this. Nice words are being said, especially by Jane Harmon, formerly of Congress and now at the Woodrow Wilson Institute, about the complementary roles of industry and the national laboratories. Conservatives and the business community, however, haven't allowed that to be the case for thirty years or so. Back in that Chernobyl time, I was fighting off arguments that industry could do what I was doing much better. They eventually, with the aid of internal fighting within the DOE complex, won. And, twenty-five years on, the technology I was working on is as dead as it was when I came to it in 1986, also under the influence of industry.

So I'm not holding my breath that we'll learn what we could about radiation hazards from Chernobyl. The Republicans would probably eliminate all research, so that they can make their cases unimpeded by fact. And beeee veeery afraaaid of the deficit!

Some more links about Chernobyl from Dan Yurman.

The Women of Chernobyl. Some things to think about in balancing radiation risks against having to abandon one's home.

Not about Chernobyl specifically, but a ridiculous result of some of the fear about stuff people don't understand.

Poly Styrene

1957-2011

BBC

The Guardian

Dangerous Minds

A Question and Some Answers

Daniel Little works through some of the numbers on income per percentile of the American population and asks

The big mystery is -- why do the majority of Americans accept this shifting equation without protest? And how can progressive political organizations and movements do a better job of communicating the basic social realities of our economy and our democracy to a mass audience? Social justice isn't a "special interest" -- it is a commitment to the fundamental interests and dignity of the majority of Americans.

David Kaiser suggests an answer:

The United States and much of the world are suffering from a terrible crisis of authority, both because of an increasing emphasis on individual self-expression, and because the intellectual basis of authority has been destroyed.
....
It is a great irony that participation at the highest levels of our society has been opened up to women, minorities, and gays during the same period in which the idea of "common good" has gone into eclipse.

I'd add another factor I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere. It's a variant on the "bread and circuses" theme. You're unhappy with your life? Not making enough money? But you're better than...somebody. Fill in the blanks; Rightwingers have used all the usual scapegoats, those that Kaiser mentioned, Muslims, and probably some that don't spring immediately to my mind.

The moral indignation machine has been revved up. But hate has a "use by" date. It gets old after a while, particularly when the dire effects of those slated to be hated don't materialize and some of them live down the block. So another target has been found.

I manage my household respectably and pay my debts. Why shouldn't the national government? They're embarrassing me by doing something I wouldn't do! I'm better than those slobs in Congress! Let's show them a thing or two!

Of course, as any number of commentators have pointed out, this morality doesn't transfer. But it keeps people from sitting down and thinking about the reality of their situation.

Blood Orange

Photo by Eric Hill, Wikimedia Commons

Bits and Pieces - April 22, 2011

How low are taxes? Too low.

David Frum concludes, with Irving Kristol and Bismarck, that the welfare state is consistent with conservatism.

Is it just me, or is there an awful lot of fantasizing these days? Pan-Arabism is back in fashion, although perhaps not among the Arabs. We shall see, I guess.

Here's a map of actual measurements of radiation from the Fukushima reactors. Whatta concept, NRC and NYT!

Frank Munger thinks back to the dearth of information on Chernobyl while it happened (anniversary April 26).

Bits and Pieces - April 21, 2011

I'm still struggling with BEIR VII, to try to get some numbers out on what the various radiation exposures associated with Fukushima mean in terms of people's health. In that regard, the far too many units used to describe those exposures are the subject of four posts at the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear Cafe by Stewart Brand, Steve Aplin, Mimi Limbach, and me.

I'm kind of sad to see Russia pulling out of the International Science and Technology Center, which funded former Soviet scientists to do non-weapons work after the breakup of the Soviet Union. I worked with a group at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Alatau, Kazakhstan, who were funded by the ISTC to assess the radiation risks at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site and was extremely impressed by their work. But perhaps the need for external funding has lessened in Russia, and it would be condescending to continue this program. Nothing lasts forever, and this program was intended to deal with the particular conditions of an extraordinary time.

Back in the United States, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson has thrown his hat into the already crowded Republican presidential ring. There was a time, maybe as recently as a year ago, when I would have said that Johnson was too kooky to be a serious presidential candidate. No mas. As far as I can see, his biggest disadvantage is that he's not being paid by Roger Ailes.

Another I-Told-You-So

TEPCO has retracted the chlorine-38 measurements they published a couple of weeks ago.

There was much chortling over those measurements, because about the only way you could get chlorine-38 would be if there were "re-criticalities," if the fuel in the reactor cores or possibly the fuel pools were becoming critical again. I pointed out the improbability of such things happening.

I hope that now those who were looking for the worst will retract their overblown interpretations of China-Syndrome-type meltdowns, fires in the fuel pools, and those unexplainable "localized criticalities."

This is why I haven't been rushing to interpret every single number that comes out of Japan, particularly when it's a stand-alone number like the chlorine-38. The demand that TEPCO release all its information (first comment on Jeffrey Lewis's post) is out of line. If people weren't rushing to be the firstest with the worstest, they wouldn't have to feel dumb when the conclusions they've jumped to turn out to be incorrect. And radiation-measuring instruments are prone to error.

Plus, you know, the people they're asking to provide all that had, like, an earthquake and a tsunami, as well as some reactors to take care of?

Your Chart For Today

Can't be said enough: Let the Bush tax cuts die!

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities via Ezra Klein. And read Ezra's piece.

Bits and Pieces - April 18, 2011

Happy Tax Day from John Cole!

Paul Revere's ride was 236 years ago today.

Tepco provides their plan for the next six to nine months to get all the reactors to cold shutdown. What's here and in its links needs an enormous amount of detail worked out. But they wouldn't necessarily make all that public.

A few weeks ago, the president of the American College of Surgeons wrote an editorial urging the value of semen's biochemicals, properly absorbed through a woman's mucous membranes. Unprotected sex, in other words. After some uproar, he has resigned as president. I'm still wondering why he thought writing that editorial was a good idea.

A former senate staffer writes his experience with that 1979 event in the South Atlantic Ocean that was detected by a VELA satellite. It's one more tiny piece of the story. I'm looking forward to when we'll hear all of it: did Israel and South Africa warn the United States? Did our intelligence know?

Boak Tabung Kak, Sumatra (Poisonous)

Photos by CurupKami Flickr

Bits and Pieces - April 16, 2011

Dan Yurman has been anticipating some of the posts I'd like to write on Fukushima and frequently doing a better job than I might have because he has more connections in the business community than I do. Here's a good one on how some of the big nuclear companies are salivating over the prospect of the eventual cleanup and what the NRC might have known and when. On that last issue, I am becoming more convinced that the New York Times map that showed deadly radiation doses out to the same radius NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko was concerned about was in fact the modeling that he was relying on in his testimony to Congress that undercut what the Japanese government was saying. I also have suspected for some time, and Dan's post seems to support this, that one of the assumptions that the Times reporters didn't bother to question was that at least one full reactor core and one fuel pond were completely vaporized and distributed fairly uniformly. It's been clear for some time, even as the Times published that map, that that was an extreme worst case.

More photos of Fukushima damage.

And now for some thoughts on rampant marketism.

Bruce Bartlett, who was run out of the Republican Party for having the audacity of rationality on economic issues, has collected a great number of polls on Americans' feelings about the deficit and government spending. He makes a case that they don't like the first and do like the second but haven't put those two ideas together yet. However, it does seem that when faced with facts relating the two, they recognize a need for taxes, particularly on other people. Since "other people" include the 1% who have gotten most of the tax cuts over the last decade and are taking in 50% or more of the country's income, this actually makes a lot of sense. That number was not intended to be factual, but rather indicative of the wildly disproportionate wealth in that 1%. I keep seeing it written in different ways, and it's just too sickening to think about it enough to recall the exact number.

The miracle of the invisible hand deconstructed.

Back when I worked for an organization whose product was nuclear weapons, it occurred to me that there are some functions that probably should be left to the government. But we've gotten past those old inhibitions, and that organization is now managed by some of the same folks who are salivating at the $12 billion estimated for the Fukushima cleanup. It turns out that, silly me, I'm still stuck with that idea about the market not being the measure of all things. Here's another place where that seems to be the case. Could there be a conflict between the Hippocratic oath and making a buck?

Bits and Pieces - April 15, 2011

Roger Ebert reviews "Atlas Shrugged."

Seems to me that the solution to these two problems is for journalists to understand what they're writing or talking about. Clothes make the interview. "He said, she said."

Want an itemized receipt for your taxes? Here is is.

Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) takes down Jamie Dimon (pdf). Nice to see a legislator who understands the laws he's proposing.

Seven Out Of Seven

I have avoided saying anything here about the INES rating scale for nuclear accidents, because I don't think it's worth discussing. I've mentioned before the penchant of reporters for simple ways to report complex stories, condensing them down into a single number if possible. For those people, the INES rating scale is a godsend, as well as for the people who have been salivating for "another Chernobyl," something that seems to have started well before the Japanese earthquake.

But I'm encouraged by the news coverage of the one-number approach. Actually, I think that the media overall have done a pretty good job of covering Fukushima. They're having a hard time conveying risks, but let me tell you how long it's taken me to write my last couple of risk posts...

BBC News compares Fukushima to Chernobyl. The Christian Science Monitor discusses some of the objections to the INES scale, most of which I share. And the Russians are wondering whether the Japanese are exaggerating for financial reasons.

It's not clear to me what the purpose of the INES scale is, other than aiding lazy journalists. If it indeed winds up having to do with insurance, government aid, and other financial help, then there is a motivation to exaggerate, as the Russians point out.

So this is part of the story I'm not paying much attention to. What is actually happening at Fukushima is what's important.

Added later: Photos of tsunami damage at Fukushima.