Cancer & Radiation - Shorts - Brief Article

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  June, 2002  by Jule Klotter

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According to a three-part series in Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly [www.rachel.org; #691-693; April 2000], radiation from unnecessary diagnostic X-rays and nuclear waste/fallout is the major factor in the development of cancer. Researchers and medical doctors have been aware of the harmful effects of radiation since shortly after the discovery of X-rays in 1896. Within months of successfully operating the first nuclear reactor at a University of Chicago laboratory in December 1942, Dr. Arthur Compton, leader of the Manhattan Project, and his colleagues insisted that safety standards be set up for people working with radiation.

One of the original five 'health physicists' to set radiation safety standards was Karl Z. Morgan. Dr. Morgan served on the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), which set up most radiation standards. He also directed the Health Physics Division at Oak Ridge from 1944 until his retirement in 1972. In recent years, Dr. Morgan has publicly criticized the ICRP for falling to protect human health. In a 1994 article for the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Dr. Morgan wrote: "The period of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the USSR is a sad page in the history of civilized man. Without question, it was the cause of hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths. Yet there was complete silence on the part of the ICEP. During these years (1960-1965), most members of the ICRP either worked directly with the nuclear weapons industry or indirectly received most of their funding for their research from this industry."

The ICRP's alliance with the nuclear industry includes ties to the International Congress of Radiology. In his 1999 autobiography, The Angry Genie: One Man's Walk Through the Nuclear Age (ISBN 0-8061-3122-5), Dr. Morgan related his concern about the ICRP's refusal to address the danger of excessive X-ray exposure during diagnostic procedures and dentistry. Until the passage of the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act of 1968, some X-ray equipment used in the 1950s and 1960s delivered 2 to 3 rem per X-ray. X-ray doses as low as 1.6 rem increase a woman's chance of developing cancer, according to a 1974 study by Baruch Modan [Lancet (Feb. 23,1974), pp 277-279]. The Act did not address the cumulative effect of multiple, routine, and often unnecessary X-rays.

Karl Morgan is not the only scientist to point to medical radiation (X-rays, including fluoroscopy and CT scans) as a cause of cancer. John Gofman, a scientist with degrees in chemistry and medicine, has published studies on the hazards of low-level radiation for over 20 years. He co-discovered uranium-233 and was the first to isolate plutonium. In his 1999 book Radiation from Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease (ISBN 0932682-98-7), Dr. Gofinan presents support for his hypothesis: "Medical radiation is a highly important cause (probably the principal cause) of cancer mortality in the United States during the 20th Century." Writer and editor Peter Montague explains in the Rachel's Environment series, "...when Gofman says Xrays are responsible for a large proportion of all cancers in the US, he is not saying that X-rays are the only cause of those cancers. However, he is saying that most ofthose cancers would not occur in the absence of X-rays." Like Dr. Morgan, Dr. Gofma n objects to excessive and unnecessary X-rays. He claims that the number of X-rays in the US could be halved without decreasing medical information.

The Major Cause of Cancer - Part 2. Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly (www.rachel.org) 2000 April 13; 692.

"The Major Cause of Cancer - Part 3" Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly (www.rachel.org) 2000 April 20: 693.

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