Radiation: the other conspiracy of silence

It is now well established, for anyone who has bothered to seek information without being influenced by the opinion of the media, that the coronavirus lab leak hypothesis was the subject of a conspiracy of silence. This conspiracy of silence operated on several levels: scientific, media and societal. Most of us couldn't imagine such a thing was possible. However, a similar case has already happened, presumably in the same way. This case concerns the effects of radiation, and has dramatic consequences, since radiation from radiological examinations is probably one of the main causes of cancer in developed countries.

The massive use of diagnostic X-rays dates back to the beginning of the last century. Awareness of the carcinogenic role of ionizing radiation (such as X-rays) has emerged gradually over the last century, but although the mechanism is now very well known (it involves DNA breaks), the level of risk remains unknown to most physicians. For this, there is a simple reason: it is a taboo subject.

The first person to take a systematic interest in the subject (because it was precisely what he was asked to do) was John Gofman, the physician and physicist who had discovered the relationship between lipoproteins and coronary heart disease(1). Gofman had been commissioned by the US Atomic Energy Commission to assess the risks of radiation. His conclusion, that not only were there risks of cancer at low doses, but that the risks were proportionately higher at low doses, so displeased US Defense that his research credits were withdrawn and he been turned into an outcast who had to give up all research work(2). Gofman, however, had done nothing more than gather data from the medical literature.

John Gofman

The findings presented in his book, which was published 20 years later, were that 75% of breast cancers in American women were related to medical radiation(3). One might have expected such statements to be contradicted by other data. It is not so. Gofman was portrayed as a crank, his articles were rejected by medical journals, and « experts » were tasked with explaining that Gofman was wrong.

The arguments used to deny the importance of the risk were of three types:

1) The dose received during this or that examination is equal to the radiation dose from the natural background radiation for 3 months and therefore the risk is negligible. As if taking one’s prescribed medication for 3 months at once was safe because there is no risk in three months.

2) We have a model which makes it possible to evaluate the risk of cancer for each dose (the Linear-No-Threshold model; LNT). However, this model is not based on any observational data for low doses.

3) People who undergo radiological examinations do not have the same intrinsic risk of cancer as others. Only this argument had some value.

The study of the effect of mammography screening in elderly women in countries that have implemented it over a short period of time has made it possible to have an estimate of the risk of cancer for each mammogram without this risk selection bias as it shows an increase in incidence for the whole population(4,5). These studies find a number of cancers more than 100 times greater than the prediction of the LNT model. And it is also an illustration of the fact that it is a taboo subject, since the main author (myself) was fired from his permanent position at Inserm (the French equivalent of the NIH), following his discovery.

After Gofman’s work, other studies have reported risks in agreement with his finding. In a study from 2019, a single abdominal CT scan in girls is associated with a 3 fold increase of breast cancer risk(6). This study has not received the media coverage it deserved.

According to Gofman, medical radiation could be not only a major cause of cancer, but also coronary disease(7). This seems to me to be reason enough for society to demand an independent investigation into the risks of X-rays free from the pressure of lobbies and conflicts of interest.

References:

1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gofman

2)https://ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html

3)https://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PBC/

4)Breast cancer incidence as a function of the number of previous mammograms: analysis of the NHS screening programme | bioRxiv

5)Corcos & Bleyer, NEJM, 2020.

6) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2749234

7"Radiation from Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease" Book, by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph. D., 1999

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