Deceptions at the highest levels of science have crippled one of America’s most important energy sources. To make matters worse, the same flawed science has prevented our country from properly exploiting critical medical technology. The power source crippled is, of course, nuclear power and the medical technology hampered is the use of radiation therapy to cure and prevent disease. To understand how this travesty came about, we need to first understand some basic nuclear radiation science.

The Linear No Threshold (LNT) rule, still upheld by the United States government, states that a single atom/ molecule/ radiated ion can cause cancer. The depth of this historic scandal has been revealed by Dr. Edward Calabrese, Professor of Toxicology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has dedicated his research life in epidemiology to this cause.

Ultimately, the purpose of his work is to save thousands of lives, through more widespread use of radiation therapy, and to save billions of dollars needlessly trying to protect us from insignificant radiation that not only isn’t harmful, but in fact, is helpful.

Digging into science and medical archives, Calabrese came up with well-documented and referenced papers proving the fraud behind the LNT. It has been perpetuated by a long line of scientists trying to protect the reputation of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Hermann J. Muller, who lied about his research.

The historic paper which fired up Calabrese most recently was by Dr. Edward B. Lewis, published in Science May 17, 1957. Lewis was a young professor at the California Institute of Technology working in the area of Drosophila (fruit fly) genetics. He had no background or training in radiation, leukemia, epidemiology, or statistical modeling, yet the paper was accepted in Science and even supported by the issue’s editorial. The paper focused more on the Precautionary Principle than actual data that would support an LNT. It came under significant criticism from scientists in the field, yet it proved to transform the process of cancer risk assessment leading to the adoption of the LNT.

Calabrese’s March 2021 paper in Environmental Research (part 1 and part 2) describing how unsound LNT science became accepted, reads like a mystery thriller. Edward B. Lewis became the “stalking horse” for his department head and later chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Science “BEAR” Genetics Panel. BEAR stands for the Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation. The BEAR Genetics Panel determines medical standards for radiation exposure.

The concept of a “stalking horse” comes from the world of politics where a junior politician acts to promote the interests of a senior politician who remains unseen in case the actions might damage him or her but nevertheless wants to promote a debate or challenge to an opponent.

Lewis became motivated to assess the leukemia and radiation issue after a July 1955 memo from Dr. George Beadle, his academic department chair of the biology department. They were asked to assess the effects of ionizing radiation within the emerging radiation fallout controversy following the 1945 atomic bomb blasts in Japan.

Lewis took the challenge and by November of 1955 had turned out a preliminary memo on the subject. Late that month the BEAR Panel had its first meeting from which they published a report recommending the LNT. Not long after, their report came under negative pressure as the results of a long-term study on 70,000 offspring of survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima who showed no radiation-related hereditary damage.

The panel simply ignored the study and decided to rely only on fruit fly studies for human risk assessment. If the reader is shocked at this you should be. The lack of ethics in science has grown to the detriment of all science. In this case, the ramifications have had deadly consequences.

Beadle, who became the Chair of the BEAR Panel, tried to suppress the growing LNT controversy among other geneticists after the 70,000 offspring study was released. He redirected the Panel’s focus to other issues. Helping Lewis get his final paper into Science magazine was something of a crowning achievement for getting the LNT theory across the existing goal line.

Lewis came under withering criticism for his flawed work appearing in Science. The BEAR panel remained silent, not coming to his rescue, as he had served their purpose in solidifying the establishment of the LNT. It was 1946 Nobel Prize winner Muller whose blatant lies described in our May 28, 2019, America Out Loud article, who is initially responsible for the whole world being duped by fraudulent science.

In an article published with co-authors, Dr. Nicholas D. Priest and Dr. Walter J. Kozumbo on 29 March online at Chemico-Biological Interactions, Calabrese and his colleagues described how their research further buries the Linear No-Threshold model for radiation exposure. As stated, current regulatory cancer risk assessment principles and practices assume the impacts of low doses of radiation, even orders of magnitude smaller, can be extrapolated in a linear fashion from the impacts of high doses of radiation. It assumes that there is no threshold below which no damage would occur. 

Common sense should tell us that this is likely wrong. After all, we know that dozens of liquids and solids that we eat or drink would be terrible in large quantities but harmless and, for some, good in small quantities. There are all kinds of trace elements like selenium that your body needs but is a poison in quantity. Obviously overeating and even drinking water can kill you. This was noted back in the 16th century by Swiss chemist Paracelsus who said The Dose Makes The Poison. Alice Ottoboni wrote a wonderful book by that title in 1984.

The study by Calabrese, Priest, and Kozumbo examined tumor latency which is the time-to-tumor following exposure to a carcinogen. Evidence for and against the concept of carcinogen-induced tumor latency is presented, discussed, and then examined with respect to its relationship to dose, dose rates, and the dose-related concepts of initiation of:

• tumor promotion, 
• tumor regression, and 
• tumor incidence and hormesis (the concept of reversing effects). 

They offer considerable experimental evidence that tumor latency is inversely related to the dose of carcinogens. Lower doses of carcinogens display a threshold below which the promotion and consequently the progression and growth of tumors are delayed and prevented in a normal life span. 

The damage the flawed LNT concept has wrought is clear. Besides its negative impact on nuclear medicine, it has allowed the government to triple the costs of nuclear power plants by requiring totally unnecessary duplications and triplication of safety protocols. Under the present circumstances, the US may never complete a new nuclear power plant even though two are under construction in Georgia. IT IS CLEARLY TIME TO ELIMINATE THE LINEAR NO-THRESHOLD MODEL FOR RADIATION EXPOSURE.

Professor Edward Calabrese will be our guest on The Other Side of the Story this Saturday and Sunday at 11 AM ET, with an encore at 8 PM. Listen on iHeart Radio, our world-class media player, or our free apps on Apple, Android, or Alexa. Each episode goes to major podcast networks early in the week and can be heard on-demand anywhere in the world.