Epidemiology Without Biology: False Paradigms, Unfounded Assumptions, and Specious Statistics in Radiation Science (with Commentaries by Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake and Christopher Busby and a Reply by the Authors)

Abstract

Radiation science is dominated by a paradigm based on an assumption without empirical foundation. Known as the linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis, it holds that all ionizing radiation is harmful no matter how low the dose or dose rate. Epidemiological studies that claim to confirm LNT either neglect experimental and/or observational discoveries at the cellular, tissue, and organismal levels, or mention them only to distort or dismiss them. The appearance of validity in these studies rests on circular reasoning, cherry picking, faulty experimental design, and/or misleading inferences from weak statistical evidence. In contrast, studies based on biological discoveries demonstrate the reality of hormesis: the stimulation of biological responses that defend the organism against damage from environmental agents. Normal metabolic processes are far more damaging than all but the most extreme exposures to radiation. However, evolution has provided all extant plants and animals with defenses that repair such damage or remove the damaged cells, conferring on the organism even greater ability to defend against subsequent damage. Editors of medical journals now admit that perhaps half of the scientific literature may be untrue. Radiation science falls into that category. Belief in LNT informs the practice of radiology, radiation regulatory policies, and popular culture through the media. The result is mass radiophobia and harmful outcomes, including forced relocations of populations near nuclear power plant accidents, reluctance to avail oneself of needed medical imaging studies, and aversion to nuclear energy—all unwarranted and all harmful to millions of people.

Time to Eliminate LNT: The NRC Needs to Adopt LT and Eliminate ALARA

“…At low radiation doses and/or dose rates protective adaptive responses more than compensate for the damage, repairing or removing some of the far greater damage caused by endogenous processes [4,8,14]. With no evidence supporting the LNT assumption, and much evidence to support LT or even hormesis, LNT advocates are responsible, perhaps unwittingly, for promoting radiophobia with all its negative consequences.…”

“…But, as they further found, the level of DSBs in irradiated cultures decreases to that of unirradiated cell cultures if the cells are allowed to proliferate after irradiation, as would occur in vivo. Thus, they found evidence of either repair or cell-destroying and organism-preserving apoptosis-a finding disturbingly omitted in the BEIR VII report [4]. Crucially, cell cultures lack all those mechanisms that occur at higher levels in intact organisms, including tissue and immune responses.…”

“…Little thus defends two incompatible claims: first, that epidemiological studies cannot provide evidence for LNT because of statistical invisibility, and, second, that if some how they appear to provide this evidence, then they should be uncritically accepted as having, in fact, accomplished the impossible. But the appearance of success in the IARC studies is based on circular reasoning, as well as on illegitimate statistical maneuvering that satisfies a desire for mathematical convenience, as we (BS and JAS) have shown, thereby resolving the apparent paradox [4]. Considerations of biology and physics should be the source and/or final arbiter of scientific hypotheses about ionizing radiation, and not assumptions that happen to yield mathematically convenient relationships.…”

Subjecting Radiologic Imaging to the Linear No-Threshold Hypothesis: A Non Sequitur!

“…However, these data are certainly not the only kind we accept scientifically. There are also ample epidemiologic and in vitro data to support the contention of Siegel et al (1)(2)(3)(4). And where can be found the excess cancers that the LNT hypothesis says should exist?…”

“…In their recent article in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (1), these authors reviewed the data on low-level radiation and documented the absence of carcinogenesis in humans below acute or subacute exposures of 100 mGy or less. An even more comprehensive data analysis by these authors, when space for publication was not limited, appeared in Biological Theory in 2016 and included 105 references (2).…”