Summary of Ed Calabrese: The History of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) Model of Radiation | Tom Nelson Pod #85

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00:00:00 - 01:00:00

The Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation and its history are discussed in this video. Hermann Muller's mistaken belief that background radiation caused gene mutations played a significant role in creating and popularizing the LNT model, despite the limitations of his data and arguments. The flaws in Muller's work and the studies that supported his theory were often overlooked or ignored in favor of the LNT model. Despite evidence supporting a threshold, the LNT model became widely accepted in the field of radiation protection policy. The speaker emphasizes the influence of personalities and biases on science and decision-making.

00:00:00 In this section, the speaker introduces the topic of the historical foundations of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation and its influence on cancer risk assessment. He notes that this story is a combination of science and history, with a focus on personalities that affected the science, decisions, and policies. The speaker introduces the key players involved in the creation and modernization of the LNT model, which includes Nobel Prize winners and experts in radiation genetics and research. He emphasizes that despite their considerable contributions to science, these individuals were also human and made mistakes and missteps along the way.
00:05:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the historical framework of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation and how it relates to current challenges to the model. The story of the LNT model begins with Herman Mueller in 1927, who was the first to produce what he called gene mutations. However, the LNT model has its origins in two big mistakes that Mueller made, which the speaker calls "risk assessment's Original Sin." Mueller got the concept of evolution wrong and then integrated this mistake into the risk assessment process. The speaker explains how Mueller came to this mistaken conclusion, studying fruit flies, observing only 400 mutations out of 20 to 25 million flies and concluding that the genome was extremely stable.
00:10:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the history of the linear non-threshold (LNT) model of radiation, starting with Muller's induction of gene mutations in 1927 using very high doses of radiation. Muller believed that nature induced gene mutations to explain evolution and biodiversity. He used a dose that was much higher than background radiation dose, killing most of the fruit flies, sterilizing others, and inducing actual gene mutations rather than just crossing over exchanges between chromosomes. Muller adopted Mavor's dosing scheme, a contemporary researcher, who was very close to inducing a mutation claim but was sterilizing 90 percent of his fruit flies. However, Muller did not intend to use low doses of radiation. He concluded that he had found at least one of the natural causes of mutation and hence of evolution by indicating that background radiation was a cause of evolution.
00:15:00 In this section, the speaker discusses how Hermann Muller's view became the prominent perspective in the field of radiation genetics and the adoption of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model. Muller won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of gene mutations induced by background radiation, but many notable geneticists disputed his claims, showing significant limitations in his arguments and data. Moreover, Muller's major breakthrough paper in Science in 1927 had no data to support his claims. The editor-in-chief who accepted his paper was a former professor at Columbia and good friends with Muller's advisor, Thomas Hunt Morgan. They also co-published papers in journals owned by the editor. Thus, Muller's relationship and his advisor's relationship with the journal's editors helped him win the Nobel Prize and propagate his views in the field.
00:20:00 In this section, the speaker discusses a letter written by Muller to the director of the Carnegie Institute genetics program in which he asked for permission to invite people to submit their papers to the American Naturalist for publication. The letter raises questions about a possible quid pro quo between Muller and the editor of Science for getting his paper published without peer review in the journal, which proved to be a significant advantage for him in a race with competitors to show gene mutations and secure a Nobel Prize. The paper, which had no data, no methods and materials, and no references or discussion of others' work, went against the usual standards of publication.
00:25:00 In this section of the transcript, the history of the linear non-threshold (LNT) model of radiation is discussed, which was born out of the need to explain evolution. A seminal work of Herman Muller is described where he produced transgenerational phenotypic changes, but with no mechanistic proof at the genetic level. Muller's incorrect gene mutation inclusion and assumption of no genetic repair led to the wrong single-hit model, which failed to consider the potential for damage, and was passed onto the EPA several decades later. It's noted that LNT became the fundamental dose response for radiation, and the only way for evolution to work was via gene mutation from background radiation requiring linearity at low doses and no repair.
00:30:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the origins of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation. He explains that the LNT model was ill-founded and originated from a 1935 paper by Hermann Muller, who had confused an observation with a mechanism. A radiation geneticist named Lewis Statler challenged Muller's perspective, and they both battled each other to see who could topple the other's argument. Muller then undertook an experimental initiative to test the mutation explanation and LNT to revitalize his belief system, which was eroded by the work of Statler and others. The study concluded that if it's the piggy bank theory or total dose, then the damage should be the same, and if it's the dose rate, then it would never add up to the total dose. The student actually got data that supported Muller's hypothesis.
00:35:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the flawed 1946 study that supported Hermann Muller's interpretation that mutations were not repairable or reversible and were cumulative, leading to the development of the LNT model of radiation. The study's serious limitations and flaws, including the untrained student, mixed genetic crosses, and multiple uncontrolled variables, were hidden from the scientific community, and almost nobody ever read the study or criticized it except for Calabrese himself, 70 years later. In addition, the study used radium that gave off gamma rays and, if placed in close proximity, required a lead Shield to prevent it from passing through to the control group, which was not done in the study.
00:40:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses a study conducted during the Manhattan Project that exposed cells to radiation to study the effects of mutations. The study was flawed, as the control group was exposed to 24 RADS of radiation due to a lack of lead shielding, a detail that was not mentioned in the final report. Despite these flaws, the study was used by scientist Hermann Muller to support his mutation discovery and linear dose-response relationship, which eventually led to him receiving the Nobel Prize. Calabrese argues that Muller's use of this flawed study was both intellectually deceptive and wrong. Muller eventually got a job at Amherst College, where he continued his research with fruit flies and studied the genetic impacts of radiation with the support of funding from the Atomic Energy Commission.
00:45:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese explains the history of the linear non-threshold (LNT) model of radiation and how it came to be accepted as the basis for radiation protection policy. He describes a study done by Warren Spencer which was published in the journal Genetics, but upon closer examination, he found that the study had serious flaws, poor temperature control, inconsistent instrument collaboration, poor matching of control groups, and treatments across experimental days and months, and combined treatments in the low-dose zone, making it a self-contradiction. The study was not peer-reviewed, and the editor-in-chief of Genetics at the time was Kurt Stern, who was also a co-author of the paper. Despite these issues, the paper became fundamental support for the LNT model, leading to its acceptance in radiation protection policy.
00:50:00 In this section, Calabrese discusses Ernst Kaspberry's fruit fly study and how his findings challenged the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation, which suggests that any dose of radiation, no matter how small, can increase cancer risk. Despite finding no damage in his experiment, Kaspberry's findings were dismissed by his advisor, Kurt Stern, who believed that the control group was biased. After Caspari showed that the control group was not biased, Stern still refused to accept the threshold theory, instead insisting on creating a discussion in the paper discounting Kaspberry's findings and trying to figure out why they did not agree with Spencer's earlier conclusions. This, Calabrese argues, allowed Stern to keep the LNT theory alive even though methodological differences between the two studies could not be resolved.
00:55:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the history of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation and how it became widely accepted, despite evidence supporting a threshold. He explains that a key study by Kettering Caspari in 1946 provided strong evidence for a threshold, but when this was presented to the scientific community, it was ignored in favor of the LNT model. Calabrese alleges that Arthur Compton and Hermann Muller, who were both awarded Nobel Prizes for their work on radiation, played a significant role in promoting the LNT model, even though Muller knew of the threshold supporting data before his Nobel Prize speech. Calabrese also discusses replication studies by Delta Opoff, who encountered problems replicating the original study by Caspari due to low control group values but the threshold conclusion was still dropped.

01:00:00 - 02:00:00

The Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation exposure has a controversial history, as discussed by Ed Calabrese in a video on The Tom Nelson Show. The model was established based on flawed studies that ignored contradictory evidence and were influenced by the Rockefeller Foundation and key leaders in the radiation genetics community. Despite evidence of data suppression and manipulation, the LNT model has been widely accepted and adopted as a precautionary principle for cancer risk assessment, ignoring more recent findings that genetics can repair damage from low doses of radiation. The video argues that the scientific community needs to address the flaws in the LNT model and the suppression of data to ensure accurate risk assessment.

01:00:00 In this section, the speaker discusses a series of experiments carried out by Delta up off, which aimed to prove a linear dose-response relationship between radiation exposure and cancer risk. However, two of the studies had low controls and were uninterpretable, while the third showed responses that were too high, indicating irregularities in the findings. Despite this, Stern decided not to share the results with the scientific community and disowned the low control group studies, claiming that they were now interpretable. He then published a paper in the Journal of Science claiming a linear dose-response relationship, which was fraudulent. Although rumors circulated that the control group was aberrantly high, unpublished data by Muller supported the kaspberry control group, but Muller contradicted himself on this matter in later attacks.
01:05:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the controversy around the Kaspberry paper, which established the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure. Calabrese argues that Mueller, a scientist who opposed Kaspberry's findings, knowingly spread misinformation to rally other radiation geneticists and discredit the paper. Furthermore, data from two key experiments by Upcott and Stern, which supported the LNT model, have been missing for 70 years and cannot be found today. Calabrese also highlights the flawed methodology of the Delta Opera studies, which were used to establish cancer risk assessment by the National Academy of Sciences committees. The committee was created at the request of the Rockefeller Foundation to address fallout concerns and atomic energy risks.
01:10:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the history of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation and how it came to be widely accepted. The Rockefeller organization had a significant influence, as they controlled the direction of the National Academy of Sciences by having their president lead the academy and by funding a study on radiation. In addition, a new genetics panel was created, chaired by the director of research at the Rockefeller Foundation, who chose 13 geneticists, most of whom he had funded and who all strongly supported the LNT model. They adopted the LNT model on the basis of an assumption that it was true, with no debate or scientific basis provided. This decision was challenged by people outside of the academic community who requested more documentation.
01:15:00 In this section, the video discusses the history of the Bear One Committee and its decision to use the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model for radiation risk assessments. The committee, which was supported by the president of the National Academy of Sciences, did not provide any documentation for their conclusion, which is highly unusual in the scientific community. Additionally, the committee ignored a 10-year study conducted by the US and Japanese governments on the effects of the atomic bomb on survivors and their offspring, which concluded there was no statistically significant increase in the occurrence of mutation birth defects. The committee also did not evaluate the study led by their own committee member, Jim Neal, and based their work on drosophila instead of the human studies, reverting back to the Delta uppost studies.
01:20:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the history of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model of radiation and how it was established despite disagreement among geneticists. Warren Weaver, the director of the National Academy of Sciences' Division of Medical Sciences, made nine geneticists estimate the number of mutations and birth defects that would take place in the US population if they were exposed to 10 rads of radiation in one generation over ten generations using a linear dose-response relationship. However, there was so much disagreement among the geneticists that only six of them agreed to participate. Ultimately, James Crow removed the three most deviant estimates, which happened to be two from the human radiation group and one from bacterial geneticists, to reduce variability. This reduced variability only to 750-fold, so they stated that the group thought that the variability in the human population was 100-fold without any documentation and published this record in scientific reports.
01:25:00 In this section, we learn about a report by the Bayer genetics panel in 1956 that was misrepresented by the National Academy of Sciences. The public report, which was widely distributed, was not written or reviewed by the panel, but by an independent third party. Despite multiple panel members acknowledging the serious errors in the report, they never acted to correct the matter. This report had significant consequences, including the immediate lowering of occupational exposure standards by two-thirds and the establishment of a new federal agency called the Federal Radiation Council. The recommendations of the Bayer committee provided the foundation for cancer risk assessment worldwide and were the result of an orchestrated deception by key leaders in the radiation genetics community.
01:30:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the history of the linear-no threshold (LNT) model of radiation and its advocates, who were committed to supporting and advocating for its use in risk assessment. One significant advocate was Ed B Lewis, a Caltech professor who wrote a paper on leukemia and LNT despite having no education in radiation cancer biology, leukemia epidemiology, risk assessment, or biostatistical modeling. Lewis's paper was published in Science in May 1957 and strongly advocated for LNT, despite his inability to prove his low dose LNT leukemia assessment. His work was later determined to produce major gene deletion and not gene mutations, and yet he still received a strong editorial endorsement from Science. Lewis's paper's publication was significant because it led to his appointment to the National Committee for Radiation Protection, which recommended the use of LNT.
01:35:00 In this section, Ed Calabrese discusses the impact of Lewis's paper on the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation in cancer risk assessment. However, Lewis's paper failed to analyze the Hiroshima Nagasaki data properly, which other radiation groups exposed to leukemia population groups had very high doses. The j-shaped dose response was actually reported by researchers from UNESCO in 1958 in the scientific literature, and it was discussed and debated by the bare genetics committee, who also reported a j-shaped dose response but was afraid to report it because it was inconsistent with the political paradigm. Nevertheless, Lewis ignored the conclusion of study authors that their findings would not provide any support for the LNT model.
01:40:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the scientific flaws in the report by Ed Lewis on mutation data, which used old data that were not relevant to the low dose radiation being studied. The entire report was strongly criticized by numerous high-level scientists and did not consider the capacity of multiple other factors that could affect disease incidents. Furthermore, Lewis's use of mutation data was shown to be incorrect, and he made multiple unverified exposure assumptions that lacked scientific grounding. Despite these criticisms, Lewis's report was later adopted by regulatory agencies as a precautionary principle for cancer risk assessment. The speaker also shares the major findings of Bill Russell, who found that the dose rate is what matters in determining genetic repair, and at low doses, repair can occur almost as fast as damage is being generated. Additionally, Russell found that the radiation cancer study with mice was suppressed by government consultant Russell and Arthur Upton, who hid the results from Congress and the committees.
01:45:00 In this section of the video, the speaker discusses the suppression of data regarding radiation exposure and the flaws in the linear non-threshold (LNT) model. The speaker shares the story of how William Russell and Art Upton suppressed the results of a study that showed no impacts on longevity or cancer risk from massive doses of radiation exposure. The data was only brought to light decades later when Upton consulted for the British nuclear industry and they used the data to win a court case. The speaker notes that this paper could have come out in 1960, but it was suppressed, only to pass peer review 35 years later. The video emphasizes the flaws in the LNT model and that the real enemy is endogenous metabolism, not background radiation.
01:50:00 In this section, the speaker discusses the controversy caused by John Goffman and Arthur Champlin that led to the formation of a new National Academy Committee in 1970 to resolve the issue. This committee rejected the conclusion that mutation rate was independent of dose rate and accepted the new findings of Russell. However, they retained LNT and answered to the US EPA that had adopted the recommendation for linearity based on beer one. The speaker also mentions that in 1996, Paul Selby found a series of genetic cluster mutations in the control group in Russell's records from 1955 that were somehow never actually reported, which brings up concerns about the accuracy and integrity of the data.
01:55:00 In this section of the video, the history of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) Model of Radiation is explored, specifically the controversial research conducted by Bill and Liane Russell. Paul Selby discovered that several significant mutations had been hidden by the Russells, which would have greatly diminished the significance of their findings. Ultimately, the correction made by the Russells acknowledged a 120 percent error in their control group. This would have resulted in the female showing a harmonic response and the male showing a threshold response, not support for the LNT model. The video argues that Muller's highly-stable genome theory and single-hit model have been proven flawed and deceptive and that the NAS panels have not adequately responded to these findings.

02:00:00 - 02:05:00

In this video, Ed Calabrese exposes the errors, omissions, and scientific misconduct that were involved in creating the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation. He argues that despite evidence suggesting a threshold or hormetic dose response, the LNT model was promoted and influenced by politically charged events like the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Calabrese points out that there has been a failure by the scientific and toxicology communities to address the flaws in the LNT model, and regulatory programs and public education activities are based on deceptive historical practices. He stresses the importance of self-reflection, accountability, and scientific debate in order to properly align our thinking and combat flaws found in respected leaders, institutions, and factors.