To: Tim Steadham <tstead@ntirs.org>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: [downwinders] Eugene Cronkite, Dies at 86; Found Cancer's Links to Radiation
In-Reply-To: <3B4C8270.3A0C47F9@downwinders.org>
References:

To: Tim Steadham
From: Russell Hoffman
Re: Eugene Cronkite, Dies at 86; Found Cancer's Links to Radiation
Date: July 11th, 2001

Sir,

This item is of interest to our debate, among other reasons because it points out how young the scientific studies of radiation dangers, and specifically the link between radiation and cancer, must be, considering that one of the discovers of the connection has just died as we debate (or shall I just say you deny) radiation's dangers in our correspondence?   Statistics too, is a relatively young field.  Pump design, for example, on the other hand, has gone on for millennia and still goes on.  So imagine how much further the study of radiation's dangers has to go.  Imagine if it was just 40 or 50 years ago that Archemedes invented his water lifting devices, and they were the first ones invented.  Would the amazing new designs such as the Ball Piston Pump, the Recessive Spiral Pump, the Wolfhart Principle Pump, the Cylindrical Energy Module Pump, or any of the other wondrous new designs have likely been invented yet?

The nuclear industry does not really know what it's dealing with.  They thought there would be a solution to the waste disposal problem by now.  But no solution --certainly not Yucca Mountain -- is in sight.  They thought there would be much higher reliability than the industry has had.  They thought the energy nuclear power produced would be "too cheap to meter" (or at least that's what they claimed).  They thought there would be a "cure for cancer" by now, so one of the main dangers from radiation wouldn't matter -- but no very effective solution is in sight or in use, and most solutions that do exist are only effective sometimes (say, 10% or 20% of the time, or maybe 80%, but its rarely that high).  Many of these procedures involve dangerous operations with painful recovery periods, nauseating drugs, expensive drugs, and drugs which cause more radioactive waste to be dumped into the environment, and which cause new cancers later in life, especially for the person who receives the treatment.

Besides all that, wind energy is cheaper and all the other renewable energy solutions would be too, if there was a fair accounting of the waste costs and the development costs which the government incurred in giving us the nuclear "solution" to our energy problems.

Sincerely,

Russell D. Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

My Internet Glossary of Pumps:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/pumpglos/pumpglos.htm

P.S. I am composing a response to your email of this morning as time permits.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/11/obituaries/11CRON.html?pagewanted=print

 JUL 11, 2001

Eugene Cronkite, Dies at 86; Found Cancer's Links to Radiation

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

r. Eugene P. Cronkite, an expert in radiation biology who was among the first to recognize and report on links between cancer and exposure to sublethal levels of radiation, died on June 23 at his home in Setauket, N.Y. He was 86.

In addition, Dr. Cronkite developed a center for the treatment of acute radiation injury at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

After finishing medical school, he served in the Navy as a Medical Corps lieutenant in World War II and directed the Naval Medical Research Institute in Maryland.

In 1954, he left the Navy to direct a project that studied the effects of fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific on inhabitants of the Marshall Islands. The work he did there described the likelihood of survival under varying degrees of radiation exposure and its effects on the nervous system and brain.

In addition to being one of the first to report on the cancer-inducing effects of radiation exposure, he studied its effects on bone marrow cells and developed a method of treating leukemia.

The procedure, extra-corporeal radiation, used a tube inserted into the patient's arm to direct blood out of the body and behind a lead shield, where it was irradiated. With the patient's heart serving as the pump, the blood was then directed back into the body.

The treatment destroyed diseased cells without killing too many healthy cells and was first conducted by Dr. Cronkite in 1965 at Brookhaven. It helped some patients and was considered an important advance at the time. It was replaced by newer forms of radiation treatment and chemotherapy.

In the 1970's, while chairman of the medical department at Brookhaven, Dr. Cronkite helped develop a way of growing human blood and blood- forming cells from the bone marrow, outside the body. This process made it possible to grow cells from leukemia patients and use them to test the effectiveness of drugs.

Dr. Cronkite was a founder and president of the International Society for Experimental Hematology in 1977. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. He also was editor of The Journal of Hematology for 15 years. Born in Los Angeles, he did his undergraduate studies and received his M.D. at Stanford University.

Dr. Cronkite's wife of 60 years, Elizabeth, died in 1999. He is survived by a daughter, Christina Cronkite of Hayward, Wis.

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