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The role of genes in susceptibility to ionising radiation

Genes Determine People’s Susceptibility to Radiation, Prison Planet, Washington’s Blog March 10, 2014

Children are much more vulnerable to radiation than full-grown adults.

And yet standards for “acceptable” levels of radiation exposure are based on the ridiculous assumption that everyone is a healthy man in his 20s … and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body.

Similarly, there is a lot of variation between adults in terms of susceptibility to radiation.

For example, Howard Hughes Medical Institute – the second-best endowed medical research foundation in the world – reported in 2009:

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have identified a group of genes that influence a person’s sensitivity to radiation……..

he most widely-accepted and prestigious publication on radiation – the U.S. National Academy of Science’s 2006 report on Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2 – includes an 11-page discussion on genetic vulnerability to radiation, concluding: 

At the level of whole populations it is feasible that certain inherited combinations of common low-penetrance genes can result in the presence of subpopulations havingsignificantly different susceptibilities to spontaneous and radiation-associated cancer.

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The key issue is … the extent to which genetic distortion of the distribution of this risk might lead to underprotection of an appreciable fraction of the population.

While the commonly-accepted, mainstream scientific consensus is that even low levels of radiation can cause cancer and other injury, governments world-wide have reacted to the Fukushima crisis byraising “acceptable” radiation levels. And see this. 

http://www.prisonplanet.com/genes-determine-peoples-susceptibility-to-radiation.html

March 14, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, Reference