Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I don’t think David gets that I say that the death ratio figures by energy source are static because they don’t deal with a transition, that is the differential effect of transitioning to nukes vs transitioning to actual renewable power. As nuke plants take much longer and use a lot more energy to build than say solar thermal plant, a transition to nukes will cause more death and disease, *from fossil fuels*. This is without even considering the excess cancer from plants and millennia of waste (possibly small possibly not with accidents). I don’t think the Dissent article shows the “failure” of renewables in Germany any more successfully than pro-nuker Geoff Russell in this Australian left-liberal outlet https://newmatilda.com/2017/11/08/greens-at-a-fork-in-the-road-evidence-based-decisions-or-mob-rule/. Geoff thinks he has a killer argument because although the replacement of some nuke power by more renewables has in fact led to a fall in emissions, this fall is smaller than the previous fall made by replacing some fossil fuels by nukes. But all this shows is that renewables are a better replacement for fossil fuels than nukes, and the Germans should be rapidly replacing fossil fuels, as well as nukes, with renewables. As should the French and everybody else. That bourgeois governments haven’t been game to take on fossil fuels nearly enough is the point with the so far small (but real including cf nukes) fall in emissions in Germany. The left recently showed defeating big carbon was feasible in South Australia, with a new solar thermal rather than coal or gas plant, well short of a workers government, whereas the idea of anyone campaigning for nukes is in the Australian vernacular pushing shit uphill with a pointed stick. On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 at 9:17 am, Nick Fredman wrote: > I don’t think David gets that I say that the death ratio figures by energy > source are static because they don’t deal eith a transition, that is the > differential effect of transitioning to nukes vs transitioning to actual > renewable power. As nuke plants take much longer and use a lot more energy > to build than say solar thermal plant, a transition to nukes will cause > more death and disease, *from fossil fuels*. This is without even > considering the excess cancer from plants and millennia of waste (possibly > small possibly not with accidents). > > I don’t think the Dissent article shows the “failure” of renewables in > Germany any more successfully than pro-nuker Geoff Russell in this > Australian left-liberal outlet > https://newmatilda.com/2017/11/08/greens-at-a-fork-in-the-road-evidence-based-decisions-or-mob-rule/. > Geoff thinks he has a killer argument because although the replacement of > some nuke power by more renewables has in fact led to a fall in emissions, > this fall is smaller than the previous fall made by replacing some fossil > fuels by nukes. But all this shows is that renewables are a better > replacement for fossil fuels than nukes, and the Germans should be rapidly > replacing fossil fuels, as well as nukes, with renewables. As should the > French and everybody else. > > That bourgeois governments haven’t been game to take on fossil fuels > nearly enough is the point with the so far small (but real including cf > nukes) fall in emissions in Germany. The left recently showed defeating big > carbon was feasible in South Australia, with a new solar thermal rather > than coal or gas plant, well short of a workers government, whereas the > idea of anyone campaigning for nukes is in the Australian vernacular > pushing shit uphill with a pointed stick. > > On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 at 1:45 am, DW wrote: > >> On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 2:59 AM, Nick Fredman >> wrote: >> >>> >>> Well I was just commenting on one aspect of the evidence that been used, >>> but I'll be more general. One big problem with David’s claim that his >>> figures on deaths attributable to forms of power shows that nuclear power >>> entails least risk to human health is that they're a static picture of the >>> current situation of nukes being a small proportion of global power usage >>> and don't tell us much about the real issue, the related technical and >>> political aspects of de-carbonising the current economy. >>> >>> Indeed...this was a health centered discussion in response to a >> haphazard posting by Louis P. Actually, Nick, it's very important. It's not >> 'static' at all: it is showing the deaths per unit of energy for most types >> of energy. It is used as risk assessment and it totally dynamic as these >> numbers can and do change as various forms of energy start predominating >> over other forms. But those numbers
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 2:59 AM, Nick Fredman wrote: > > Well I was just commenting on one aspect of the evidence that been used, > but I'll be more general. One big problem with David’s claim that his > figures on deaths attributable to forms of power shows that nuclear power > entails least risk to human health is that they're a static picture of the > current situation of nukes being a small proportion of global power usage > and don't tell us much about the real issue, the related technical and > political aspects of de-carbonising the current economy. > > Indeed...this was a health centered discussion in response to a haphazard posting by Louis P. Actually, Nick, it's very important. It's not 'static' at all: it is showing the deaths per unit of energy for most types of energy. It is used as risk assessment and it totally dynamic as these numbers can and do change as various forms of energy start predominating over other forms. But those numbers are only 'static' because it shows which are safe and which are not. And it shows that nuclear is safer...the proportions don't change that much. Nuclear is a "small proportion" of global power usage...if you mean electricity? It's around 16%...not so small. > If he seriously wants leftists and environmentalists in a country like > Australia, with no nuclear power and a massive over-reliance on fossil > fuels, to somehow be convinced that 99% of them are wrong and that nukes > should be campaigned for, to the extent that they are successful in the > massive task of convincing the public that this is a good idea and the huge > investment already in solar, hydro and wind a less good idea, then there > would be a massive use in *fossil-fuel* derived energy to build the things, > and the resultant deaths and disease from that extra use of energy, and > while they're being built the 5-10+ years of the current massive use of > fossil fuels continuing, optimistically, before they helped in any way. > That's all in the unlikely event that they'd be a plausible political force > that would both build nuclear power and wind down fossil fuels, of which > there is now virtually zero. > > On the other hand the alliance of activists, scientists and engineers > Beyond Zero Emissions http://bze.org.au/ have a feasible plan for a rapid > transition to renewables with ideas that have wide support among the left, > the Greens, Labor left, unions and the public, and with technology and > infrastructure that's being rolled out now. That this is political feasible > on a big scale with a stronger left and environmental movement is shown by > the recent victory by a broad front of campaigners including Socialist > Alliance members in pressuring the South Australian Labor government to > replace a coal fired plant with a big solar thermal plant, which will be > online in 3 years. > > Indeed...never said it was going to be easy :). The left most places has long ago given up it's science based understanding of political economy for knee-jerk...and not serious, concern about climate change. No solar thermal plant has or ever will replace the same equivalent of coal. Germany has shown the failure of renewables to replace fossil fuel, where that country just put on line the largest coal plant in Europe and built scads of natural gas turbines. If you read the articles in Dissent I posted (a debate actually) Germany has been an unmitigated failure and they will never reach their goals. As opposed to nuclear France where close to 80% of their grid is nuclear powered and they did away with fossil fuel for generation in 15 years. Don't say it can't be done, Nick. It has. Wanna guess which big country in Europe has the lowest carbon footprint and why? David Walters > > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Mon, 11 Dec 2017 at 11:31 am, DW via Marxism wrote: > The bottom line is *not* whether a given means of making power is 100% > without risks (implicit in all points made here by Louis, Nick, etc). It's > "Which means of making power that is otherwise desirable (economical, > sustainable, low in CO2 production per unit electric power put out, low in > impact on the environment... as is all obviously the case with nuclear > power) entails *least* risk of harm to human health?" > Well I was just commenting on one aspect of the evidence that been used, but I'll be more general. One big problem with David’s claim that his figures on deaths attributable to forms of power shows that nuclear power entails least risk to human health is that they're a static picture of the current situation of nukes being a small proportion of global power usage and don't tell us much about the real issue, the related technical and political aspects of de-carbonising the current economy. If he seriously wants leftists and environmentalists in a country like Australia, with no nuclear power and a massive over-reliance on fossil fuels, to somehow be convinced that 99% of them are wrong and that nukes should be campaigned for, to the extent that they are successful in the massive task of convincing the public that this is a good idea and the huge investment already in solar, hydro and wind a less good idea, then there would be a massive use in *fossil-fuel* derived energy to build the things, and the resultant deaths and disease from that extra use of energy, and while they're being built the 5-10+ years of the current massive use of fossil fuels continuing, optimistically, before they helped in any way. That's all in the unlikely event that they'd be a plausible political force that would both build nuclear power and wind down fossil fuels, of which there is now virtually zero. On the other hand the alliance of activists, scientists and engineers Beyond Zero Emissions http://bze.org.au/ have a feasible plan for a rapid transition to renewables with ideas that have wide support among the left, the Greens, Labor left, unions and the public, and with technology and infrastructure that's being rolled out now. That this is political feasible on a big scale with a stronger left and environmental movement is shown by the recent victory by a broad front of campaigners including Socialist Alliance members in pressuring the South Australian Labor government to replace a coal fired plant with a big solar thermal plant, which will be online in 3 years. So no thanks David. > In other words in ever study presented, gross increases "statistically > significant" in Nick's phraseology, is not really that significant. > I'll comment on this as the technical use of "significant" often leads to confusion and this stuff useful to understand for anyone wanting to be an informed consumer of scientific studies. David is right that "statistical significance" doesn't necessarily mean practical significance, but quite wrong that it's my phraseology. It's a standard statistical term that confusingly isn't *at all* a measure of how big an effect is, but is about the probability that a result from a sample study, generally a difference between two things, can be inferred to be real difference in the population, rather than just being random sampling variation. "Significant" refers to passing a probability threshold test, generally 95%. The term appeared in my post because of the abstracts I quoted. I tend not to use it at all unless I really have to, because it *is* confusing, and because I'm a partisan of "the new statistics" pioneered in particular by Australian psychologist Geoff Cumming https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/. Geoff and his school are very critical of the standard, rather formal logic, practice of presenting a yes/no statistical significance based on a threshold. They say look more at "effect sizes", measures of the likely extent of differences, and for uncertainty/probability, have a more dialectical, continuous, not yes/no view, particularly by looking at the "confidence interval" of a likely range of result values, often presented in charts in the form of "error bars" that you've probably seen some kind of. Studies in various fields report effect sizes and confidence intervals more now, party as a result of these guys' agitation. They're also strong supporters of "open science" and breaking down the pay walls of research. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet,
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I think Nick's response and his overview of the two studies shows a myopic focus on this issue of small increases in cancer morbidity And those turning to it as a case against nuclear power provide a good illustration of most fundamental error made by radiation-phobic and anti-nuclear activists: The bottom line is *not* whether a given means of making power is 100% without risks (implicit in all points made here by Louis, Nick, etc). It's "Which means of making power that is otherwise desirable (economical, sustainable, low in CO2 production per unit electric power put out, low in impact on the environment... as is all obviously the case with nuclear power) entails *least* risk of harm to human health?" This means, looking at the bottom line. *Not* a particular minuscule increase in (highly treatable, by the way) thyroid cancer or even a minuscule increase in leukemia (even if those those reports are valid), but instead the OVERALL health impact of one means of making power compare to another. The relevant question to ask is: After making an exawatt-hour of electricity, how many human lives are taken? Current calculations suggest: power sourcedeaths per exawatt-hour === coal 5000 oil 1000 nat gas 500 nuclear 1 (World Health Organization: and most epidemiological studies are close to these same numbers). Now... which means of making power makes sense from a point of view of human health? To be sure, Nick could immediately pipe up that *mortality* is not the only form of medical harm from an environmental risk. There is also *morbidity*... harm to health short of death. However: Fact is the numbers are similar there. This same critical overview concept that intelligent and competent societal planners understand (and anti-nuclear activists either cannot comprehend or deliberately ignore) is true of the tired debate regarding LNT (Linear Non-Threshold Thesis) hypothesis. *It makes no difference* whether harm from radiation exposure goes to zero at some point as dose goes down OR whether it always exists and just continues to get smaller as the dose decreases, IF in the latter case there is a point where harm from radiation drops below background noise and/or drops massively below harm from any of the alternatives involved in doing things (such as making electric power, or diagnosing a disease) in a manner that does not entail radiation exposure. In other words in ever study presented, gross increases "statistically significant" in Nick's phraseology, is not really that significant. We are talking very small numbers. Gross incidents of cancer in the U.S. are higher than 45%! Nuclear if all the studies that show increases in breast/thyroid/leukemia contributes to around .0001% of that. We are trying to determine as I noted in the beginning: "Which means of making power that is otherwise desirable (economical, sustainable, low in CO2 production per unit electric power put out, low in impact on the environment...entails *least* risk of harm to human health?"* David *At the plant looked at in Germany cited in Nick's study (and which I also noted early on) the authors noted that the risks are minuscule to the health of the residents. Secondly, they failed to note that the plant was build on an old chemical plant. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 8:24 AM, DW via Marxism wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > ...We absolutely KNOW that cigarette smoking causes (or greatly increases > the > risk of) lung cancer, heart disease, and many many other lethal and/or > serious medical disease. We KNOW that exposure to asbestos causes > mesothelioma. We KNOW that high exposure to lead paint chips by children > will cause lasting poisoning of their nerves and brains. > > What do these known and established facts have in common? (1) The effect > observed is HUGE, to is easy to see and study. As opposed to a case of > claiming that a given environmental exposure causes a few extra cases of a > rare disease, which can be near impossible to prove: Too big a study is > needed, too long a study is needed, and it becomes near impossible to rule > out the effects of random variation. (2) Proper methods were employed. We > not only identified statistical associations... we were able to highly > control for other issues that might be causing the diseases. In the > absolutely spectacularly brilliant original study of cigarette smoking, a > population of British physicians served as the study group... a group that > was very homogeneous in all other respects OTHER THAN the division into > those who smoked cigarettes and those who did not. > Speaking as a quantitative researcher who's worked on a couple of epidemiological projects, and whose work now is in the area of social science most concerned with causation, social program evaluation, I'd say that David's isn't quite correct on the relevant evidentiary and statistical issues. Regarding tobacco and smoking, the tobacco corporations, in their long struggle to discredit the evidence, were formally correct in pointing to the limitations of observational results such as from the classic British Doctors Study that David is alluding to. When looking at the causal relationships between an exposure and an outcome, an observational study is limited crucially because unlike a randomised trial of a treatment, the "assignment" to the exposure isn't random but caused by various things, *which might also affect the outcome*. Taking out possibly confounding social factors by looking at just one occupation might help (at the expense of losing any evidence of interaction between social factors and exposure), but doesn't really help with this crucial issue. So the tobacco corporations were able to be formally correct is arguing that, who knows, more stressed out doctors might be more likely to smoke because they take some relief with a soothing cigarette, but unfortunately for them stress causes lung cancer. The reason we can be pretty sure that this is spurious because David's first point is the most relevant: the massive effect size in repeated studies (of all sorts of social backgrounds), and the big proportions of smokers who get lung cancer. Formally what you really want to do, as ethics committees might frown on randomly assigning people to smoke or work with asbestos, is a "quasi-experiment", what we do in quantitative evaluation when random assignment to a program is impractical or unethical or invalid (pretty much all the time for social programs despite a current mania in this area for RCTs, IMO, but that's another issue): you separately model "assignment to exposure" if you do happen to have data that affects such assignment, e.g. stress levels of doctors before any of them started smoking, and use some weighting or matching techniques to synthesise randomisation to make the two exposure groups actually equivalent apart from exposure. I don't know if anyone's done that with regard to smoking but the massive, repeatedly-found associations make it probably a bit redundant (as opposed to say the tricky issue of whether the slightly higher incidence of serious mental health issues among cannabis smokers, about 2% c.f. 1% for the general population, means the weed is causing the problems of the problems are causing some self-medication). Now this all seems relevant here because there does seem to some clear and repeatedly found, if small, associations between cancers and living near a nuclear plant, but at least in the case of thyroid cancer, no credible confounding factor. David does also allude to the fact that general observational studies are limited with regard to rare disease, a
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * In the first place, David badly misquoted me (carelessly, not intentionally I assume): On 2017-12-07 15:34, DW via Marxism wrote: Jeff is wrong when he suggest people might consider moving from areas of high levels of background radiation that occur naturally in many areas. No, I said there are places that I would avoid spending much time at. One of Brazil's nicest beaches, Guarapari, has background radiation levels reaching over 100x of the levels where most people live. Spending a day in the sun there can be like getting a dozen chest x-rays. I would choose a different beach. But here is the crux of the issue: This goes to Jeff's fear of radiation as well: there is no evidence that small dosages of radiation that exist at background levels have a thing to do with cancer. This is exactly the problem: we don't firmly know that does "have a thing to do with cancer" but we also don't know that it DOESN'T. The cause of most cancers is unknown so currently we can't even rule out background radiation as the leading cause of cancer. The reason I talked about the history of awareness of radiation dangers is that at every point where people just didn't know, it later did become known that they had earlier been too complacent and that the dangers were greater than previously imagined. That might not happen again, but if you don't know whether something is dangerous, but have reason to believe it could be (such as knowing for sure that it is dangerous at a much higher level), then the prudent course of action is always to regard it as dangerous until proven safe. I would recommend the Nature article Louis pointed to, which seems to summarize the current (but poor) knowledge concerning risks from low-level radiation exposure, and claims to contradict the hypothesis that below a certain level radiation is not a cause of cancer. This is the big question that is so very difficult to measure for the reasons we have been discussing. It's difficult to detect statistically one additional cancer case among 1 people. But that small increase could mean 100 deaths in one large city alone. If there were 100 deaths due to a building collapse, then people would condemn those responsible and ask why such a preventable accident were allowed to occur. One could ask the same question concerning artificial sources of radiation or radioisotopes in the environment. In addition to the Nature article, there is a lot of reference information on low-level radiation exposure at the website of the US Environmental Protection Agency (content which I guess Trump hasn't gotten around to axing since he was too busy removing their content on global warming!): https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses - Jeff _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 12/7/17 9:34 AM, DW via Marxism wrote: There is simply no evidence whatsoever that people who live in higher area of background radiation are at all at risk for higher rates of cancer. There were also reports that the people who lived in houses built near Love Canal had lower incidence of cancer than people living elsewhere. The problem is that cancer tends to develop later in life, long after exposure to environmental factors first occurred. This is something I wrote about here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/29/cancer-politics-and-capitalism/ Several weeks before I watched “Second Opinion”, I made a point of reading George Johnson’s recently published “The Cancer Chronicles” in order to get up to speed on current thinking about the disease. As I mentioned above, when I worked at MSKCC, I read Samuel Epstein’s “The Politics of Cancer”, a book that ties what was perceived at the time as a cancer epidemic to environmental toxins, especially pesticides. It was very much in the spirit of Barry Commoner’s “The Closing Circle” and amenable to my Marxist opposition to corporate indifference to our health and safety. About ten years after reading “The Politics of Cancer”, I read Robert Proctor’s “The Cancer Wars” that backtracked from Epstein’s findings. Although very much a man of the left, Proctor warned his readers that finding a direct correlation between pollutants and cancer is very difficult. With Proctor’s warnings in the back of my mind, I was not completely surprised by Johnson’s treatment of the environmental question. In chapter seven, titled “Where Cancer Really Comes From”, Johnson amasses some statistics of the sort that pro-industry hacks might repeat. For example, epidemiology studies conclude that cancer cases in the immediate vicinity of Love Canal were no greater than that in the rest of New York State even though there was a spike in birth defects. In referring to cancer clusters, such as the supposed breast cancer epidemic in Long Island, Johnson concludes that they are “statistical illusions”. It is not so much that Johnson denies that there is a connection between cancer and the environment; it is that they are exceedingly difficult to prove. Since I have like most people on the left become convinced that there is a connection between carcinogens in the water, soil and air and the incidence of cancer, I emailed Johnson with my concerns and referred him to a study of cancer clusters near heavily polluted rivers in China. Showing a grace uncommon to most well-established journalists, Johnson took the trouble to write back: Thanks very much for your email. I appreciate the kind words about my book. I hadn’t seen that particular study and will make a point of reading it. Of course many industrial chemicals are carcinogenic, and it seems very possible that concentrations have been high and chronic enough in China’s water to expose the general population to levels known to cause cancer in the workplace. Nailing that down is very tricky though, especially in developing countries where epidemiological studies are just getting underway. Most of the research in China seems to concentrate on air pollution and lung cancer. Since the focus of my book was on cancer in the developed world, I may write a column in the future comparing the situation with China, India, etc. Making the case about pollution—a negative indicator—is difficult but just as much so with positive indicators. Nutritionists are always urging us to eat fruits and vegetables, especially those with anti-oxidant properties such as blueberries and cabbage but there has never been a rigorous study of diet and cancer. This has a lot to do with the near impossibility of conducting a demographically representative study of the effects of eating “good” food and bad. Since cancer can take many decades to show up, tracking its roots and development is a near impossible task. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Louis wrote " You simply don't understand a thing I wrote. Smoking does damage to your lungs. Asbestos is a carcinogenic just as much as the interiors of chimneys that caused testicular cancer in the boys who swept them in Charles Dickens's day. " "But when it comes to nuclear reactors or the crap that Monsanto sells, there is much more difficulty in establishing an open-and-shut case as there is with tobacco. And even with the case of tobacco, it took decades to finally nail the tobacco companies." Louis, I would was responding to YOUR comments about your claim regarding the difficulties "proving" dangers of carcinogens. I'm saying I believe you are confusing "proof" with "liability" and they are completely different. What is known the the medical community based on evidence, that is, it's "proved" is entirely different when it comes to "nailing tobacco companies", the legal framework for "proof". I'm only and have really only dealt with the medical side. There was NEVER any doubt as to the effects of tobacco. It took 40 years to prove it in court, but that is a different issue. Your false amalgam of nuclear reactors with Monsanto still shows you don't understand either about radiation or "proof". This goes to Jeff's fear of radiation as well: there is no evidence that small dosages of radiation that exist at background levels have a thing to do with cancer. Jeff is wrong when he suggest people might consider moving from areas of high levels of background radiation that occur naturally in many areas. Why? There is simply no evidence whatsoever that people who live in higher area of background radiation are at all at risk for higher rates of cancer. And this is what I'm talking about. Jeff's view, to say nothing of Louis', is like 30 years out of date. So much has been done in terms of the statistical and geographic locations of "high" radiation areas as compared to low areas as to show that cancer rates are hardly impacted by such things as higher than average background radiation levels (for those that are curious...we are *bathed* in radiation very minute of our lives. Oceans in particular have higher than average radiation levels do to the large amounts of uranium dissolved in seawater: 1 ton per km3). Louis...radiation studies...unlike those around Monsanto and other Big Ag polluters and insecticide/herbicide/pesticide producers...are well known and fully vetted. We *know* that nuclear power plants do not cause rates of increased cancer. Certainly not beyond what is occurring already due to capitalist enterprises like coal, gas and industrial production in general. Fully 45% of US residents will contract cancer in their lifetimes. Even if overall mortality goes down from cancer it an alarming number. If you totaled up the number of produced child hood leukemia and breast cancer due to the claims of living near a nuclear power plant, it would amount to about .0001% of all cancer cases. Yet coal kills, very years, 16,000 Americans...minimum...and probably 20x that number who contract respiratory diseases. Yet nuclear is the surest way to get rid of coal plants, just as they replaced oil generation power plants in the 1970s here in the U.S. and in France. the radiation phobia of the left as I noted in my previous message is doing real damage considering what does face us in terms of our tasks in phasing out fossil fuel (especially the greenwashed natural gas industry). It means shuttering the worlds *largest* source of low carbon energy in favor of fossil fuels. And this is why the politics of energy are so important and why the left, at least in developed countries, are ass-backward on their priorities. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 12/6/17 4:24 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: We absolutely KNOW that cigarette smoking causes (or greatly increases the risk of) lung cancer, heart disease, and many many other lethal and/or serious medical disease. We KNOW that exposure to asbestos causes mesothelioma. We KNOW that high exposure to lead paint chips by children will cause lasting poisoning of their nerves and brains. You simply don't understand a thing I wrote. Smoking does damage to your lungs. Asbestos is a carcinogenic just as much as the interiors of chimneys that caused testicular cancer in the boys who swept them in Charles Dickens's day. But when it comes to nuclear reactors or the crap that Monsanto sells, there is much more difficulty in establishing an open-and-shut case as there is with tobacco. And even with the case of tobacco, it took decades to finally nail the tobacco companies. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * So let me take some time here to respond to Louis though this goes to support Jeff in his very last comment here about method, nuclear energy notwithstanding Louis wrote: *"The problem is with cancer, however. Trying to find an environmental smoking gun is virtually impossible. Cancer clusters are just one example. Put yourself in the position of a breast cancer victim living near a nuclear power plant. You are shit out of luck."* That is simply untrue. One CAN establish high degrees of confidence regarding whether or not there is a cause and effect relationship between diseases seen in populations. And it's critical to do so if the harm done by real environmental influences is to have any chance of being reduced or eliminated. We absolutely KNOW that cigarette smoking causes (or greatly increases the risk of) lung cancer, heart disease, and many many other lethal and/or serious medical disease. We KNOW that exposure to asbestos causes mesothelioma. We KNOW that high exposure to lead paint chips by children will cause lasting poisoning of their nerves and brains. What do these known and established facts have in common? (1) The effect observed is HUGE, to is easy to see and study. As opposed to a case of claiming that a given environmental exposure causes a few extra cases of a rare disease, which can be near impossible to prove: Too big a study is needed, too long a study is needed, and it becomes near impossible to rule out the effects of random variation. (2) Proper methods were employed. We not only identified statistical associations... we were able to highly control for other issues that might be causing the diseases. In the absolutely spectacularly brilliant original study of cigarette smoking, a population of British physicians served as the study group... a group that was very homogeneous in all other respects OTHER THAN the division into those who smoked cigarettes and those who did not. The LAST thing the public... including the working class...especially socialists, need, is hysterical and false claims of causation, acted on by crippling critical means to bring humanity safe and clean electrical power! We don't want medicine / science / epidemiology - ignorant and hysterical true believers determining our energy policy. For the result of that can and will be thousands to millions or even hundreds of millions of deaths... from fossil fuel use, from the effects of global warming, etc. Ignorance of medicine and science and epidemiology... fears sown based on single case reports, speculation, emotion attached to single cases of disease in oneself or a loved one... as in Louis' statement... are not merely wrong or mistaken. That are malignant. They can kill. So...for Louis' example of a women getting breast cancer in the quote above I used from his post it is as valid in *every way possible* as: "Put yourself in the position of a breast cancer victim living near a water tower. You are shit out of luck." Because "anecdotal evidence = no data" as British anti-Big Pharma activist and doctor Ben Goldacre is fond of saying. Does she live near a highway? What does she eat? Are there a million other factors involved in the person getting breast cancer including a history of cancer in her family? Have there been a noticeable number of other women and men getting breast cancer. That is how a real study is done not "my aunt got breast cancer and she lives only 10 miles from a nuclear power plant...". You see...with smoking you both have the carcinogen long known to cause cancer before it was 'proven' legally in court...there actually wasn't a dispute about this among oncologists and cardiologists, AND we know the delivery system...the cigarette. With so-called cancer clusters around nuclear power plants you have zero indication of increased contamination and certainly not of background radiation. You also have a very small increase in cancers one is studying (unlike incidents of lung cancer from smokers!). A few years ago two studies were released. One in Germany and one in France. They both purported to show very small cancer clusters of childhood leukemia for those living within 5 miles of nuclear power plants. The authors of both studies however concluded that they could not *in anyway* show a causal relationship between the nuclear plants and the increase. A French study group took the data and did something the original researchers didn't do...they studied the incidents...all very small...but cross referenced the result with those that lived upwind and downwind from the plants. Odd results: the incidents of leukemia in children living *downwind* from the plant
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2017-12-06 18:28, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: The problem is with cancer, however. Trying to find an environmental smoking gun is virtually impossible. Cancer clusters are just one example. Well the sad thing is that I probably agree totally with Louis in regards to the policy issues regarding nuclear power (more than I would with David) and other environmental dangers expressed in the remainder of his post, below. But that has nothing to do with my point: knowledge gained empirically (and confidence in that knowledge) can be obtained using the scientific method, not through simply compiling what Louis admits is "circumstantial evidence," and what you learn (or don't learn) is a separate matter from what action you propose in relation to that knowledge (or lack thereof). Although our practical concerns are the same, I'm afraid Louis doesn't appreciate the use of statistical inference in establishing scientific conclusions, which is the only way he could say that doing so is "virtually impossible." Statistics is an exact science (well, actually mathematics) concerning inexact phenomena (which is almost everything in reality). And by "statistics" I don't mean numbers that are measured or thrown around (aka "raw statistics") but the science whereby empirical measurements of random phenomena can lead to (or fail to lead to!) conclusions concerning the underlying system. Yes, there are many ways that statistics, even without making any errors in the math, can be intentionally misused or innocently misapplied, resulting in invalid conclusions. That goes for anything. But statistics has a bad reputation, because rather than the science of statistical inference, a propagandist will throw out numbers to non-statisticians and expect them to come to conclusions in their minds matching the intentions of the propagandist. But that is not how statistics is used in scientific research. People might imagine that scientists make measurements and then perform calculations based on those numbers. But that's only half the story. Often you'll spend as much or more time not on those numbers but on analyzing the errors in your measurements and the resulting strength of your conclusions. For instance, I may measure a 2 degree increase in temperature when I add X to a solution of Y. That might mean that the reaction between X and Y generates that much heat. But before I could say that, and certainly before I could publish it, I would have to ask how precise my thermometers are. It could be that my thermometers are so crumby that either of their readings has an expected (rms) error of 1 degree. Then I could hardly reach any such conclusion; even if there had been no heat generated in the reaction there is an 8% a priori probability of measuring a temperature increase as large as 2 degrees just due to the measurement error of my thermometers. On the other hand, even if those were the best thermometers I could obtain, I could repeat the experiment 50 times (making 100 measurements using the crumby thermometers). If the average measured temperature increase found from them is 1.32 degrees then I could conclude with extremely high confidence (in other words, I would stake my life on it) that there is an actual temperature increase. I could go further and claim 95% confidence limits for the actual temperature increase being between 1.26 and 1.37 degrees. Having a 95% confidence means that using this proper procedure I would have successfully bracketed the actual value with a probability of .95. These statistical conclusions are all exact numbers based on sound mathematics but concern an underlying process that itself is never known with absolute precision. That is totally different than me casually saying "I measured this big number and it really looks convincing, doesn't it" So I'm sorry, but you very much can determine that radiation exposure leads to cancer without ever knowing that any single case of cancer was due to radiation. From a mathematical point of view you could do that best with a controlled experiment where 100 people are exposed to radiation and comparing them to a test group of 100 who weren't. Of course that experiment is unethical (but has been done with animals) so you have to collect epidemiological statistics and these are more subject to confounding factors. The cancer rate increased from 3.3% to 4.1% after the nuclear reactor was installed. For a community of several thousand, that would be a statistically significant increase. But there was also a chemical plant opened during the same period. And the ability to
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 12/6/17 10:00 AM, Jeff via Marxism wrote: My main concern in these regards is that leftists, especially Marxists who proudly (and justly!) assert that our understandings are scientifically supported, do not make fools of themselves when it comes to the hard sciences. If you're not really sure about a scientific fact, then please just say so and don't try to conclude that scientific claims which happen to favor your political agenda are valid for that reason. Because if you do, then in the end what you claim to be a "Marxist" position will be disproved by what is properly concluded using the scientific method, and all claims we make within the social sciences will appear no more trustworthy than our careless claims in the hard sciences. - Jeff The problem is with cancer, however. Trying to find an environmental smoking gun is virtually impossible. Cancer clusters are just one example. Put yourself in the position of a breast cancer victim living near a nuclear power plant. You are shit out of luck. Even if the data indicates higher than usual contamination, how can you establish it led to thyroid or breast cancer? The same thing is true of pesticides and herbicides. How can you establish that Monsanto is guilty of jeopardizing our health by selling products that after leaching into the soil cause bladder cancer, was the case with Sandra Steingraber? You can certainly prove that drinking a fifth of whiskey every day can cause cirrhosis of the liver but what kind of experiment can prove that living near Indian Point causes thyroid cancer? It is only "circumstantial evidence". Meanwhile, the best course of action is to overthrow the capitalist system and build a society based mostly on alternative energy sources. Even if the evidence is only circumstantial, that's no reason to risk the health of the human race. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2017-12-06 14:30, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: On 12/5/17 12:52 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: This paper (from the link posted by Louis P.) has "junk science / quack medicine" stamped in red all over it, for a number of reasons. This is ridiculous. The study, which was conducted under the auspices of Columbia University and not Gary Null, simply states: "The data do not represent conclusive proof Exactly. In order to be published in a scientific journal it couldn't state conclusions that are unsupported by the data. But in a popular science article there are no rules on what can be published, so if one is publishing in order to advance an agenda then any sort of innuendo may be employed -- and does not amount to lying! -- such as simply questioning "Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame...?" That's like me simply questioning "Is Louis Proyect actually a space alien? Would that not explain X, Y and Z about him?" It was also clear to me almost as soon as I started reading the article that it qualified as "junk science", or perhaps "junk journalism" based on an otherwise properly published paper whose data couldn't support any firm conclusions, but when exported to the popular press can, for instance, include testimonials from individual cancer patients as if their individual perceptions had any weight. But even as a properly published scientific paper, I'd already be more suspicious of a paper whose authors are working for an advocacy group; it would be as if I were investigating the dangers of smoking and began by reading papers published by (yes, actual) scientists working for the tobacco industry. I understand that David and Marty Goodman are pro-nuclear Right, and so I would also not base my knowledge just on what they assert. That is the entire reason that the scientific method was developed: to be able to make actual conclusions (and attach levels of statistical confidence to them) and separate those from beliefs or careless generalizations even when the "evidence seems compelling." But look (and I'm pretty sure David will agree), it has been pretty well established that there has been radiological health damage from nuclear weapon testing, uranium mining and processing, nuclear reactor accidents, and nuclear waste disposal. What political/policy conclusions you want to reach about nuclear power (etc.) is a very separate pursuit from these scientific studies and neither should be held hostage to the other. My main concern in these regards is that leftists, especially Marxists who proudly (and justly!) assert that our understandings are scientifically supported, do not make fools of themselves when it comes to the hard sciences. If you're not really sure about a scientific fact, then please just say so and don't try to conclude that scientific claims which happen to favor your political agenda are valid for that reason. Because if you do, then in the end what you claim to be a "Marxist" position will be disproved by what is properly concluded using the scientific method, and all claims we make within the social sciences will appear no more trustworthy than our careless claims in the hard sciences. - Jeff _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 12/5/17 12:52 PM, DW via Marxism wrote: This paper (from the link posted by Louis P.) has "junk science / quack medicine" stamped in red all over it, for a number of reasons. This is ridiculous. The study, which was conducted under the auspices of Columbia University and not Gary Null, simply states: "The data do not represent conclusive proof of a cause-and-effect association, but are a reminder of the need to conduct more studies addressing the issue of potential spatial relations between environmental iodine and local risk of thyroid cancer." I understand that David and Marty Goodman are pro-nuclear but really... _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Fwd: Is a Controversial Nuclear Plant to Blame for Soaring Thyroid Cancer Rates in New York? | Alternet
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Forwarded from from an associate, a revolutionary Marxist and Medical Doctor. --David Walters This paper (from the link posted by Louis P.) has "junk science / quack medicine" stamped in red all over it, for a number of reasons. 1. Overwhelmingly and most important, first off, we see absolutely *no* presentation of measurements of I131 (iodine 131) or other alleged exposure levels by people in the region to anything this radiation-hysteria-monger might claim is a causative agent here. No evidence is actually presented. And presentation of an exposure dose, and comparison of it to what we know from past experience can and cannot cause disease, is a critical aspect of any legitimate paper on a subject like this. The absence of this is a *huge* red flag that informs the reader this is *Junk Science*, done to deceitfully promote a particular ideology adhered to on faith by the author. This is *not* the work of an intellectually honest individual. This is not an application of scientific method. 2. The second dramatic indication that this is Junk Science, is encountered when one reads in this paper the following citation: "The statistical aberration of increased cancer rates should be a concern to us all,” said Peter Schwartz, a Rockland County businessman diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1986. "After Fukushima, it finally occurred to me that my thyroid cancer was connected to Indian Point.” Medical / epidemiological papers that attempt to support their content by citing *single* case studies and invoke the *conviction* of the superstitious individual as evidence of the statistical association they are trying to establish (to say nothing of a cause and effect relationship!) are pretty near always the result of a partisan writing who has no interest at all in finding out what is going on, and is interested *only* in "proving" the theory he or she believes on faith and wants to promote. This is a sleazy effort to appeal to those not educated in science and medicine, and thus ignorant of what is and isn't important to proving such contentions. 3. The author writes "Little is known of thyroid cancer". Well... little is known of most things in medicine... the whole reality of scientific-based, evidence based medicine is a very new thing in human history. For the most part, it began in 1944 with the wide availability of penicillin, so it's well under a century old. That said, we *do* have a lot of experience with exposures to I131, the only radioactive agent specifically known to have the potential to cause thyroid cancer. We have experience with it both in accidental situations (Chernobyl) and in situations where people are *deliberately* exposed to it (in the thousands of people treated with I131 for thyroid nodules, including cancer). So it IS known what doses of exposure are and are not associated with no chance, a very tiny chance, and a higher chance of causing thyroid cancer. But the author doesn't want to go into that, because such information as what doses people encountered and what doses are known to be entirely harmless would show what deceitful crap his paper is. 4. Note that the estimate of number of thyroid cancers from nuclear testing he cites is a *theoretical estimate*, not something based on actual real world observation or measurement. And given the period of time from which that estimate dates, it virtually certainly was made employing as theoretical model LNT (Linear Non Threshold) hypothesis of radiation effects on humans. A theoretical model now known to be grossly false, and known to be promoted by scientists who it has been proven deliberately faked their data for ideological reasons. It's a model that gives results of sensitivity of humans to ill medical effects of radiation that are 100 to 1000 times greater than an honest and accurate model based on study and evidence shows. 5. After the Fukushima melt downs, the Japanese went to great lengths to look for an increase in thyroid cancer in children, which they were told could be the result of I131 release from the three nuclear disasters there.Hysteria was raised over utterly totally 100% false claims and significant physical harm done to children as a result. Here's why: (a) Methods used to search for nodules in children's thyroids were far more advanced and sensitive than any used in previous studies of incidence of such in children in the region. Also, a larger fraction of children were examined... the new surveys were far more thorough and extensive than the old ones from which the old, comparison data was obtained. So *of course* the result of the new studies was that more thyroid nodul