Radiation may raise childhood leukaemia risk

They found that male mice exposed to high doses of radiation had damaged sperm and produced offspring which had a greater chance of getting the blood cancer.

``There is no doubt that the group of animals that were the product of preconceptional paternal irradiation (PPI) had a greater susceptibility to the induction of leukaemia,'' Dr Brian Lord, the head of the research team, told a news conference.

Lord, an expert on the effects of plutonium on the development of the blood system, emphasised that the study was done on mice and did not explain the outbreak of clusters of the disease in children living near nuclear power plants.

``But what it does show us, for the first time, is a potential way -- a mechanism -- in which paternal irradiation can lead to an increase in leukaemia risk for the next generation. It shows us how DNA defects can be passed from generation to generation,'' he added.

The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, showed that the radiation produced genetic changes in the makeup of the cells, and some of the damage was passed on to the next generation of mice. The risk of developing leukaemia had nearly doubled in the PPI mice.

The damage in the bone marrow cells alone was not enough to cause the leukaemia, but it increased vulnerability to the disease. Leukaemia developed earlier and more frequently in the cells when they were exposed to a powerful cancer-causing chemical.

Scientists are not sure what causes cancer. Genes certainly play a part and certain chemicals, substances called carcinogens, are also involved.

Professor Gordon McVie, the director general of Britain's Cancer Research Campaign charity, said the latest research supports the double-hit hypothesis of cancer -- that two elements or causes may be needed for the disease to develop.

``These laboratory tests take us on from the debate of paternal irradiation with the important addition that the inherited cancer risk must be activated by a second cancer trigger to the offspring,'' McVie said.

The radiation increases susceptibility to leukaemia but the researchers said another factor, perhaps a virus or something inherited from the mother, combines to cause the disease.

Scientists have been debating whether radiation causes childhood leukaemia for many years. A controversial study in 1990 claimed that a cluster of cases in northern England resulted from parents working at the Sellafield nuclear power plant.

Other studies of atomic bomb survivors and people who have had radiotherapy found no evidence to support the theory. Recent British research concluded that exposure to infection that resulted from a high mixing of the population was a likely cause of the disease clusters.

``These scientists' line of inquiry may be different but their work is complementary and both will help us understand more about the causes of cancer,'' McVie said. The population mixing theory, he added, supports the established fact that viruses can cause cancer, although the particular virus has not been identified.

REUTERS

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Comments of Preston Truman "J" --microbiologist---Utah Downwinders president:

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All;

This is exactly what I have always thought was the case. And in the end they will find the damned retro-virus that radiation exposure activates and which then causes the cancers. THIS IS ALSO IN MY OPINION WHY THERE ARE CLUSTERS OF CANCERS IN CERTAIN EXPOSED FAMILIES, AND NOT IN THOSE JUST ACROSS THE STREET.

You can do the classic experiment in mice any time that the government's scientists did first in the 1950's and don't want to talk about. I do this every few years just to remind myself of the truth of what is going on, and to shock people. Expose a couple of dozen mice to whole body radiation of around 200 to 300 rads -- will not kill them. Within 60 to 90 days 80% will have leukemia. Take a cell free filtrate of their blood -- passes nothing larger than a virus -- and inject it into another group of mice without the radiation. 60 to 90 days later the same number will be dying of leukemia! Bottomline, the leukemia was virus caused, and this is where most of the cancer causing retroviruses in mice have been discovered.

This is also why some of the old crowd of government scientists can stand up and say and mean it, that radiation didn't cause leukemia. It didn't, a virus did, but they don't go on to spill the truth that it was the radiation in the first place that allowed it to, or activate it to cause it.

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Continuing comments on this topic:

Here one can begin to see well the connections of DNA endogenous retro- viruses to disease of the blood, bone marrow, and immune response. Many of these retro-viruses are familial and are passed from one generation to the next----hence the clusers of illnesses in like exposed toxic areas.

There is a huge flaw in using mice to do some of these studies------mice work well for bone marrow studies of alpha radiations----like plutonium-------however in looking at organ group cell damages studies using internal beta emitters serious underestimates result as the mice don't forcast what happens in man do to the larger absorption of larger bones.

The radiation folks group gamma/X-rays and beta emissions together-------this is not to bad for mice studies because the mice have small bones and the range of the beta induced x-rays leave the bone area. This is an extremely flawed techique when applied to larger red blooded creatures like man------here the beta induced X-ray leave all this energy in the bone marrow and it is extremely prone to activate bone marrow retro-viruses and also cause blood cell immunedysfunctions.

This failure to employ the size factors in bone absorptions in mice vs. man for internal beta emitters is a very serious flaw in the dose modeling relating to things like Sr-90 in the environment. It is one the national labs and many of the dose modelers know of but resist changing-----because it relates to another endogenous retro-virus called HIV (as suggested in Deadly Deceit by Gould). Here one can see how the science has failed to protect the public.

Other factors have been things like failing to include the high calcium rich diets of the Japan survivors in rice and fish that offset the absorption of Sr-90 from the environment.

The U.S. National Labs have known of the endogenous retro-viral problems for a long time actually-----they were found by Rife in the 30's using X-rays to grow viruses in blood cultures. In the development of the atomic bomb this was also a major concern in the very high doses involved and internal contamination effects. The fear was some sort of viral plague would erupt along with the use of the bomb on populations. This was a central purpose of secret experiments at the A-bomb tests on live humans------they wanted to know the high dose effects-----to see if serious infectious diseases were a concern. These are the alien autopsy type studies---human experiments issues.

The National Labs designed the Human Genome Project to map these endogenous retroviral signatures in the human DNA to forcast those being susceptable to toxic effects from radiation or similar heavy metals genetic damages. The genome project carried into full scale could predict the health and toxic susceptability of persons from their DNA sequences containing these retroviral signatures. Most of the disease in the world today have a certain viral signature with each disease.

The failure to correctly model the beta effect in mice vs man, the failure to use the correct "Q" factor in the dose modeling for larger organs, and the failure to model the layer effects in the lung doses are extremely serious modeling failures that easily contribute error factors of more than 1,000 to 1. Failures that have brought the world to its knees from atomic project errors.

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