Category Archives: Commentary

Can Low Level Radiation Exposure Prevent Cancer?

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Those who believe in the idea that radiation exposure is harmful at all levels would answer the question posed in the title “Absolutely not!” and they would probably add some comments that the question is absurd. I’ll be presumptuous to add they would say something such as, “Everyone knows any radiation exposure is harmful.” Those in that camp believe the effects of low doses of ionizing radiation can be estimated by linear extrapolation from effects caused by high doses, and that biological damage will occur unless the level is zero. Their position is supported by the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory adopted by the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP) in 1959.

However, those who believe in hormesis (the word derives from the Greek word “hormaein,” which means “to excite”) would observe that many substances such as alcohol and caffeine that can be lethal at high levels have stimulating effects at low levels. There is compelling evidence that the same is true for ionizing radiation. I’ll mention that there is a cottage industry of investigators funded by government-sponsored research money looking for information to support the LNT theory. There are those in that industry who won’t like the information I’m relaying. You should also expect skepticism from people who have been taught (inculcated) that any amount of radiation is bad despite the fact that the world we live in and our own bodies are radioactive.

I am a subscriber to Access to Energy by Dr. Arthur Robinson, and he published a copyrighted article titled, Radiation and Health, in his May 2011 newsletter. It summarizes a paper, Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer? The paper was originally published in the spring 2004 edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. The abstract of that article begins, “An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life 5.3 y) was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years and unknowingly received radiation exposure.

Intensive studies were performed on the health of the exposed people. It was found that, “Based on the observed seven cancer deaths, the cancer mortality rate for this population was assessed to be 3.5 per 100,000 person years. Three children were born with congenital heart malformations, indicating a prevalence rate of 1.5 cases per 1,000 children under the age 19.” For comparison with people not exposed to the radiation in the buildings, “The average spontaneous cancer death rate in the general population of Taiwan over these 20 years is 116 per 100,000 person years…the prevalence rate of congenital malformation is 23 cases per 1,000 children.” Stated a different way, there was about 3% of the number of cancer deaths for the exposed people compared to what was expected for those in the general population. Birth defects were about 6.5% of what would be expected. Deaths from cancer of people living in the buildings steadily decreased as the time of exposure increased, and had been nearly eradicated after twenty years.

One conclusion of the report was, “It appears that significant beneficial health effects may be associated with this chronic radiation exposure.” (Emphasis added). The journal that published the article was, according to Dr. Robinson, “… immediately savaged … In this case, however, the credential lovers are overwhelmed.”  He then provides a list of the 14 authors and includes their impressive credentials. Dr. Robinson then proposes that “human cancer deaths…can be reduced 20- to 30-fold by increasing whole-body radiation they receive from their environment.”

Economic Recovery versus Red Tape

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The story of two pipeline projects provides one explanation of how a morass of government regulations is obstructing economic activity and recovery. President Obama proposed work on “shovel-ready projects” to spur economic activity, and it would be tempting to think that the number of shovels needed to build long pipelines would be viewed favorably by a government and country hungry for new jobs. One of the pipelines has been completed despite massive regulatory interferences, and will transport natural gas from the Wyoming to Oregon. The other is a planned 1711 mile pipeline that would transport crude oil from the tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas.

El Paso, a Texas-based company, constructed the 682 mile Ruby natural gas pipeline at a cost of $3.65 billion in the three-and-a-half years required to obtain regulatory approvals and complete the project. The project came in at 23% over budget and missed scheduled completion by four months, primarily because of delays in meeting demands of dozens of U.S., State, and local agencies.   The project created thousands of jobs and provided revenues for communities, counties, and state governments.

The Ruby project provided jobs not only to construction people but to environmental specialists who had to complete studies and publish a detailed Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The EIS had binding requirements for rights of way and endangered species such as the black footed ferret and the Ute ladies’ tresses orchids. There were also descriptions required on how the nearly 6000 workers would be housed. Paleontology rules required that the pipeline had to avoid the “rock stacks” used by Native Americans as navigational tools, even though the pipeline did not cross any reservations. It took two and a half years and 125 meetings and agency “scoping hearings” for El Paso to receive the final signoff to build the pipeline. There were 215 archeologists in the field at the height of construction to “mitigate affects to cultural resources,” as required by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. A Forty-four member team monitored migratory bird protection, and they did succeed at moving a nest containing four eggs. The ditch where the pipeline was being laid had to be outfitted with temporary ramps so wild horses and burros could climb out if they fell in. Apparently the workers couldn’t be trusted to hoist out an animal if one did fall in.

The expensive gamble by El Paso to build the pipeline was initiated in the face of natural gas prices that would be slashed in half during the construction of the pipe line. The workers, land owners where the pipeline was constructed, regulators, and environmental groups (who were paid to secure their cooperation) all profited from the risk taken by El Paso. Property tax revenues were boosted by 25% in some areas.  Pre-filling the pipeline has begun under the watchful eye of regulators. A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission director warmed El Paso that they are monitoring El Paso efforts to prevent the spread of nonnative foliage and will take corrective action if restoration doesn’t meet their requirements.

The other proposed pipeline, called Keystone XL, is intended to deliver tar sand oil from Canada to U.S. refineries. It is estimated that the $20 billion dollar project would produce 13,000 union jobs, and would seem to be the kind of “shovel ready” project that people looking to stimulate the economy would favor despite the fact the jobs aren’t “green jobs.” Applications were filed in 2008, and there have been dozens of public meeting with the entire large mix of regulatory agencies. Even State Department approval will be required because the pipeline would cross the 49th parallel. The draft EIS concluded the project poses little risk to the environment. The EPA didn’t like that EIS, and sixteen months later a new eight volume report that included consideration of “direct impacts to beetles” also concluded “no significant impacts to the environment.” The EIS now goes into a 90 day review to determine whether the project is “in the national interest.” In addition to environmental impact the project must prove economic, energy security, and foreign policy benefits to at least eight federal agencies.

The “green movement has geared up against the project, and there have been organized protests outside the White House. The Sierra Club is warning President Obama that he can’t count on their votes in the next election if he approves projects such as Keystone XL. We’ll see whether those 13,000 workers standing by with their shovels to build a pipeline take precedence over bureaucratic red tape.

Failures of the 1991 Russian Revolution

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I posted a review of “Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse,” as a companion to this posting. Members of the Soviet Union government who opposed Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms to decentralize much of the government’s power to the republics organized a coup attempt in August 1991.The coup collapsed in only two days in the face of a powerful outpouring of support for a new democracy and Gorbachev returned to power. The failed coup is considered to have led to the demise of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin won admiration for defying the coup attempt by climbing on top of a tank and calling on people to defend the freedom he had promised. Yeltsin promised to transform the socialist command economy into a free market economy and endorsed privatization programs. However, much of the national wealth fell into the control of a small group of oligarchs. People lost their jobs and savings in economic upheaval in 1992 and 1993 and blamed the reformers instead of blaming the legacy of the Soviet system. The result was constitutional crises in October 1993 and a political standoff and the killing and wounding of hundreds during shelling of the Russian White House. Yeltsin put a new constitution in place approved by referendum that gave strong presidential powers. He became widely unpopular and left office after appointing Vladimir Putin as his successor in the last hours of 1999. People were relieved to have a young and strong leader and overlooked Putin’s background in the KGB.

The title of a recent article from the Washington Post by Kathy Lally “1991 revolution’s goal is a thing of the past,” summarizes where things stand today. One observer is quoted as saying, “We saw the old train (Communism) was taking us in the wrong direction, but we thought all we had to do was change the conductor and we would have comfortable seats and good food. Democracy would take us where we wanted to go, not on our own effort. Sometimes you need to get off and push.”

Russia today does not have fair elections, courts are not independent, and political opposition is not tolerated. Corruption is rampant, and the gap between the rich and poor has widened. There are occasional demonstrations in favor of democracy, but they are mostly ignored except by the police. Opposition to the government is not allowed on the news, which relentlessly carries the message that life is better and Russia is stronger under Putin.  The only thing that keeps the country running is the bribes that are necessary to get anything out of the government. The hope that was created by the defeat of the coup in 1991 has been replaced by disappointment, frustration, and nostalgia. The saddest part of the story is that only a tiny percentage of the population, which is declining because of low birth rates, expresses an interest in changing things. The next presidential election is in March, and Putin is expected to make the decision about who will run.

American Tourists in the Bahamas

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We recently visited the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas with our kids and grandkids, and completely enjoyed the luxury of the accommodations, the extensive Aquaventure Water Park, interacting with dolphins and sea lions, the vast aquariums, amazing meals, and impeccable service (at a high but what I judged to be a fair price). The driver who took us back to the airport in Nassau after our vacation made me reflect on our trip when he told us we had missed out by not taking a trip into the town. He pointed out numerous historical sites of interest, including a statue of Christopher Columbus. I realized I had very little knowledge of the history of the Bahamas or its people. I did a bit of Internet searching, and found what I consider to be some fascinating facts I wish I had known when we were planning the trip.  The Wikipedia article I will extensively quote observes the information should be reviewed by an expert, but I didn’t find discrepancies on the official Bahamas history site.

The first inhabitants of the Bahamas were the Lucayans or the Taino people, who arrived between 500 and 800 A.D. from other Caribbean islands. Recorded history begins with the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Columbus intended to sail to India for spice trade, and when he landed on an island in the Bahamas he called it “Indies.” He then named the Lucayans “Indians,” and the error resulting from him not knowing where he was would be repeated when explorers encountered indigenous peoples throughout the Americas.

The peaceful nature of the Lucayans was exploited by the Spanish, who enslaved them and transported them to Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti). There were 40,000 people enslaved in twenty years. The Spaniards decided to transport the remaining Lucayans to Hispaniola in 1520, and found only eleven people. The islands remained uninhabited for 130 years. An English Puritan group from Bermuda founded a colony in 1649 and struggled with food shortages. The colony was supported with supplies provided by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

English privateers established themselves in the late 1600s, and Nassau eventually became the “pirate’s republic” with Blackbeard, Calico Jack., Anne Bonny and Mary Read using the islands as their base. A British governor, Woodes Rogers, arrived in 1718 and pardoned pirates willing to surrender and fought those who didn’t. The Bahamas fell to Spanish forces in 1782, but a British-American Loyalist expedition retook the islands without a fight. Most of the current inhabitants are descended from the African slaves brought to work on the Loyalist plantations established from land grants issued by the British. The slaves were freed after the British abolished the slave trade in 1807. The islands were deforested as plantations were built.

The Bahamas prospered during the American Civil War as a base for Confederate blockade runners. Rum running thrived during the American prohibition, and the enormous inflow of revenue ended with the repeal of prohibition.  Drugs eventually replaced rum, and at one time it was estimated that as much as 90 percent of the cocaine destined for the United States passed through the Bahamas.

The Hotel and Steam Ship Service act of 1898 inspired the beginnings of thriving tourism  by providing government support to the construction of hotels and subsidizes to steamship service. The closure of Cuba to Americans gave an additional boost to tourism. The Bahamas achieved self-government in 1964 and full independence on July 10, 1973, and is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Learning something about the history of the islands increased my appreciation of the friendly service by every single person we encountered at the Atlantis resort. We and the other thousands of other guests were obviously the source of great jobs for large numbers of Bahamians, and our experience was universally positive. However, I can’t quite escape an uneasy feeling about the divide between the wealth of the visitors and the economics of those providing all that wonderful service. That uneasy feeling was reinforced when my wife asked me to go the movie The Help. We joined about thirty women and watched the story of how black maids raised white children and did all the work in Mississippi households in an atmosphere of ruthless discrimination. I hope those who served us in Atlantis were comfortable that we were polite and appreciative of our interaction with them.

Commercial Mortgage Loan Turmoil

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I mentioned in a June 29, 2011 posting titled Financial Crisis–Part III that one component of the Dodd-Frank law was to create a new regulatory structure for credit rating agencies.  Erroneous credit ratings that were given to mortgage-backed securities resulted in billions of dollars of losses, and were one cause of the financial crisis.  The SEC has not fully staffed the new office mandated by the Dodd-Frank law that is supposed to address this issue, and the provision that would hold credit rating agencies legally liable for their ratings was reported to have been tabled. Of course the government is now angry at Standard & Poors (S & P) for downgrading U.S. debt from AAA. There was a recent event involving S & P that was given very little media attention, but shocked the commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) world into disarray. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup pulled a $1.48 billion dollar CMBS offering hours away from settling the issue after S&P announced they would not be able to deliver final ratings on the security. A Wall Street Journal article by Al Yoon quoted a man who has worked in real estate finance since 1995 as saying “I’ve never seen this happen, to the extent where a deal was so far along, ever.”

The process of issuing a CMBS involves issuers working with the rating agencies to determine final pricing based on a preliminary rating, which has been developed after months of diligence. As was the custom, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup priced the recent issue based on the preliminary rating. No rating agency has previously failed to issue the rating when the deal is about to close, but that string has now been broken. S&P muddied the issue even more by saying “…it won’t assign new ratings to transactions based on its current criteria” (whatever that might mean). Other deals had to be recently “sweetened” to reassure investors.

What does this mean, and why should we care? The drama of watching the President and Congress thrash around with how to come up with a way of keeping the government funded followed by a stock market swoon has consumed nearly all of the news reporting. The possibility that the commercial real estate mortgage market is in limbo has been hidden behind the screen of bureaucratic ineptness of our elected officials trying to figure out how to fund overspending by the government. I fear this mostly unnoticed event instigated by what must be a nervous S&P could further cripple an already fragile economy. For those who haven’t been watching, the real estate market hasn’t been doing very well, and killing the commercial market by causing funding to dry up will be harmful. I write that believing that I have mastered the art of understatement. One analyst was quoted as saying, “This is a debacle of epic proportions.”

Osama bin Laden and the CIA

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I’ve posted  of a review in four parts on that link of this web site  about the excellent book, “The Looming Tower, al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright. The book describes how U.S. intelligence agencies failed to share information after they finally understood the risks presented by al Qaeda. That failure was created by government actions and decrees. According to an MSNBC report, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick of the Clinton administration issued a memo in 1995 that gave detailed instructions to “…more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from…criminal investigations.” That memo resulted in what Attorney General Ashcroft later described as “…a snarled web of requirements, restrictions, and regulations… (that) prevented decisive action by our men and women in the field.” Ashcroft was testifying to the 9/11 Commission, and Jamie Gorelick, the author of the memo, was a member of that Commission. Ashcroft also told the Commission, “Government erected this wall. Government buttressed this wall. And before September 11, government was blinded by this wall.”

The CIA knew twenty months before 9/11 that there were at least two al Qaeda operatives in California and never told the FBI, perhaps because of the “wall” that had been built by the  Gorelick memo. Absent this artificial and strictly bureaucratic “wall” the CIA could have alerted the FBI that they knew al Qaeda members were in the United States and some were learning to fly planes. Absent the Gorelick memo, perhaps more attention would have been given to an e-mail from an FBI agent in Phoenix suggesting that Osama bin Laden was sending al Qaeda members to flight schools in Arizona. There also was a memo from FBI agents in Minneapolis focusing on activities of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person indicted as part of the 9/11 conspiracy. Perhaps communication between the CIA and FBI, if it had been allowed by law and not been prohibited by the Gorelick memo, would have allowed agents from the two agencies to “connect the dots” and prevent al Qaeda from flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Regardless of what might have been if the agencies had been allowed to act responsibly
instead of according to government rules, Osama bin Laden died not knowing that he had succeeded at killing two CIA employees along with several others during the al Qaeda bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. He had said the embassy was targeted because it was a CIA station. Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy were working undercover for the CIA in the embassy. Tom Shah was the son of an Indian immigrant father and an American mother.  He had received his doctorate in music from Ball State in Indiana. He was fluent in several languages including Hindi, Arabic, and Russian. He joined the government under the cover of being a diplomat, but was immediately sent for training to become a spy. He had been dispatched to Kenya with the assignment to determine theauthenticity of a senior member of Saddam Hussein’s regime, who had said he wanted to defect. Tom walked to a window at the embassy when he heard shooting, and was killed by shredding glass when the bomb exploded.

Hardy was the other CIA agent killed by the bombing. She was a 51 year old divorced mom who had travelled to Asia, South America, and Africa. She handled finances, including handing out money used to pay sources. She was looking forward to a trip to meet a new grandchild when the bomb killed her.  She and Hardy were listed as State Department employees, but sources said they received private memorial services at CIA headquarters. Leon Panetta said after the death of bin Laden, “Throughout the effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda, our fallen colleagues have been with us in memory and in spirit. With their strength and determination as our guide, we achieved a great victory three weeks ago.”