C.W. Mays
troduction - 3
iodine 131 doses again come out high.
1963 hearings,
At the time of the
the Public Health service announced the
initiation of a survey in which all children, in a
restricted area of Utah would be examined for thyroid
abnormalities which might have been caused through
exposure to iodine 131.
This survey is now in progress;
it is the particular purpose of Dr. Mays'
article
to point out that far more than the present restricted
sample needs to be examined,
since, with a much larger
population at risk, many more cases might be uncovered,
Currently, about 3400 children have been examined and
amongst these no malignancies have been found.
Twelve
cases of thyroiditis werecfound, but these could well have
arisen from many other causes.
If all of the 250
thousand children in Utah are included in the study the
effects of the radiation might be detectable,
and an
important contribution would be made to our knowledge
of the relation between radiation and its effects.
sven
the absence of any detectable thyroid cancer would be a
valuable scientific result in allowing us to describe
more accurately the relation between small radiation
doses and their effects.
The earlier aspects of this topic have been covered
in S/C in many articles: august 1963 (Vol.5 No. 9)
contained a summary of the testimony presented by Dr.
Eric Reiss on behalf of CNI to the Congressional Hearings;
November 19643 (Vol.6 No.1) contained further testimony
from the Hearings as well as an exchange between CNI and
Dr. Gordon M. Dunning of the AEC.
Readers of S/C were
kept up-to-date by articles in the September and November
1965 issues, in articles by G.D.
Carlyle Thompson (State
Director of Public Health in Utah) and Virginia Brodine
and Dr. Walter Bauer (of CNI).
Since then, there have been a few relevant publications
Two papers in Nature
1,2
have dealth with fractionation of
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