WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 If you have any questions for Politics and Science, you can direct them by email to politicsandscience@madriver.com. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:38.000 Politics and Science can be heard weekly on WMRW LP1 95.1 FM, airing on Mondays at 5pm, and in the Bellows Falls area can be heard on WULL LP Bellows Falls at 101.1 FM, airing from 3 to 4pm on Sundays and from 9 to 10am on Mondays. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:46.000 The following program does present the opinions of its participants and it does not necessarily reflect an official opinion of any other person or organization. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:51.000 This edition of Politics and Science features an interview with Dr. Raymond Peat. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:59.000 Raypeat.com is the website, raypeat.com, and it was recorded on the 20th of April 2009. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:08.000 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of Politics and Science. 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:14.000 This is the 20th of April and it kicks off a new series on Politics and Science about radiation. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:24.000 We'll be discussing nuclear ionizing radiation, focusing on its use in our culture and weighing its potential usefulness in relation to its cost to our health and environment. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:34.000 I'm very happy to have on the show again today Dr. Raymond Peat, who is an endocrinologist and physiologist and science historian from Eugene, Oregon. 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.000 You can find more information about Ray Peat on his website, raypeat.com. 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:42.000 Ray, are you there? 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:43.000 Yes. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:45.000 Excellent. Can you hear me all right? 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:46.000 Yes, fine. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:47.000 Good. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:54.000 Welcome back and I know you have quite a bit to say about radiation. 00:01:54.000 --> 00:02:06.000 And I was wondering, first of all, I think it's a confusing subject for people because often when people talk about radiation, say at the dentist or at the doctors, 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:13.000 they're always trying to make you feel safe about using it and they always compare it to other kinds of radiation. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:21.000 For instance, sunlight, they say it's, you know, bone scans are no more than two days or two hours in the sun. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:28.000 Or I think you've used the example of a flight to Denver to New York comparing it to cosmic radiation. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:38.000 And I was just hoping to start off, you could just address the different kinds of radiation that exist and how do they compare? 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:54.000 The medical profession and then the government and the nuclear industry made up a lot of stories to convince people that radiation doesn't hurt them. 00:02:54.000 --> 00:03:09.000 And the sunlight is probably the basic oldest story that if it doesn't kill you to absorb so much energy of sunlight, 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:19.000 then why should it kill you to absorb the equivalent of an hour or something in the form of radiation? 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:36.000 And it's that they've known really for close to 200 years that there are very different kinds of radiation that beyond the blue end of the spectrum, 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:43.000 the invisible light in 1800 they knew was chemically active. 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:58.000 They for a long time called that the chemical rays because they could produce changes in silver nitrate and later in photographic emulsions and so on. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:05.000 And that is the beyond the blue, the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:19.000 And so they knew that the warm rays and the colored visible rays were harmless compared to these chemical burning rays, which can sunburn you. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:30.000 And then at the end of the 19th century, when the Curies and Becquerel and others were exploring radium, 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:38.000 Becquerel carried a vial of it in his pocket and got a horrible burn on his chest. 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:51.000 And immediately the medical profession saw that as something even more fun than surgery and cautery. 00:04:51.000 --> 00:05:04.000 And so almost immediately when they saw it caused a horrible burn, they decided it was good for medical purposes like burning off warts and so on. 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:21.000 But at the same time, Thomas Edison in 1904, his main assistant died of radiation, X-ray poisoning, after years of amputations and burns and surgery and so on. 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:32.000 So by 1904, Thomas Edison was already an opponent of the use of ionizing radiation in any form, 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:39.000 but the medical profession was just starting to see that it was a profitable tool. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:49.000 And so even though they knew very well the differences in types of radiation, to sell it, 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:57.000 they had 100 years to invent stories to convince people that they wouldn't get lethal burns. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:06.000 And so they invented the story that there was a threshold below which no damage at all was done. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:22.000 And that was greatly expanded on by the government when they wanted to show that they could explode atomic bombs in Nevada and no one would be harmed. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:37.000 Forty years later, Congress investigated and concluded that about 15,000 people minimum in the United States alone were killed as a result of those atmospheric tests. 00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:46.000 But the government had its agents out convincing people that below the threshold there was no harm at all. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:59.000 And that the amounts were similar to what you get when you live in Denver or fly in an airplane or sit in the sun. 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:16.000 Even Linus Pauling, who opposed exposing the population to radiation, was convinced that it was worse to live in Denver than at sea level 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:24.000 because cosmic rays were more intense, supposedly, at Denver and sunlight was more intense. 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:35.000 And the facts showed that cancer of all kinds is less common at the higher you go in altitude. 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:48.000 But someone as sophisticated as Linus Pauling neglected that property of radiation that it's called linear energy transfer. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:56.000 And it happens that cosmic rays at high altitude don't deliver much energy or damage to your tissues. 00:07:56.000 --> 00:08:06.000 But at lower altitude where they're less intense, they're more able to react with your tissues and cause damage. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:21.000 So the cosmic rays are harmful, but when you are in the skyscraper, for example, it's even worse than being at a low altitude 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:28.000 because the cosmic rays are slowed down and produce secondary and tertiary particles. 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:37.000 So you get much more intense radiation at low altitude, sheltered by massive structure. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:43.000 Maybe, Ray, we should back up just a little bit and talk about what radiation actually is. 00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:51.000 I mean, why, like the cosmic ray example you just used, confuses me because it seems like at lower altitudes, 00:08:51.000 --> 00:08:58.000 it should be actually be weaker because it's going slower implies less energy to me. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:02.000 So why is that the case? What's actually happening that's causing damage? 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:22.000 Yeah, the ordinary photon type of radiation, which includes infrared and visible light and ultraviolet, that is an electromagnetic vibration. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:39.000 And the nuclear particles are actual protons or nuclei or whole atoms minus the electrons. 00:09:39.000 --> 00:09:46.000 Cosmic rays are typically iron atoms without their electrons. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:10:00.000 So they're very massive particles, but going at a very high speed, they pass through the body without doing anything except a trail of ionization 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:07.000 that you can see when they go through an atmosphere that is saturated with water. 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:15.000 The ionization causes a streamer of particles to appear. 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:17.000 Who can see that? 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:27.000 In a cloud chamber, you have humid air and adjust the pressure so that it's just about to start condensing into rain. 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:42.000 And at that point, the particles going through it, ionize it, cause nucleation that condense droplets of water like a streamer of fog appears. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:49.000 And any ionization will do that, but cosmic rays are constantly going through. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:54.000 So you can visualize using a cloud chamber. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:11:05.000 The particles are they at lower energies will even stop in your tissue rather than passing through. 00:11:05.000 --> 00:11:18.000 And I don't think anyone really understands why the faster ones interact less, but it's put to use in linear accelerators, for example. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:28.000 They can adjust the voltage of protons or other particles and shoot them into your body at a given energy, 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:35.000 designing it so that they all slow down and stop near a tumor. 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:40.000 And where they're slowing down and stopping, they're causing the most damage. 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:45.000 When they go through quickly, like a cosmic ray at high altitude, 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:56.000 they just leave a slight trail of ionization rather than a very intense cloud of secondary reactions. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:12:16.000 And a typical physics professor's explanation for that is that if you imagine the substance as a meteor swarm and a spaceship traveling through that, 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:22.000 if the spaceship goes very slowly, it's sure to get hit by a swarming meteor. 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:28.000 But if it zooms right through, it has a chance of getting past without interactions. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:39.000 The trouble is that it doesn't apply to photon absorption because all photons go at the same speed. 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:49.000 But in fact, the higher energy photons penetrate more deeply without interacting so much. 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:58.000 So the cosmic rays are worse in a skyscraper because they're being slowed down by hitting the walls of the skyscraper? 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:04.000 Yeah, and they cause nuclei to disintegrate into secondary particles, 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:10.000 and those particles cause other disintegrations into tertiary particles. 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:19.000 And so it's like a more intense shower of lower energy, but still lethal particles. 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:29.000 The Chinese did experiments with rabbits, putting them under in cages with a lead roof of different thicknesses, 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:44.000 and around half an inch to an inch thickness of lead on the roof caused the rabbits to fairly quickly become sterile and miscarry. 00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:52.000 If they were pregnant, when they put them under the roof, they would miscarry, just like you're giving them a birth control pill. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:57.000 And if you kept them under it, they didn't conceive at all. 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:00.000 And why was that? 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:05.000 Radiation poisoning tertiary or secondary cosmic rays. 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:10.000 So the cosmic rays were getting through the lead, which I was assuming for some reason would be blocking them. 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:19.000 Well, at a certain thickness, you maximize the tertiary and secondary particles. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:35.000 There's a certain probability as the lead gets thicker that one of them will have a direct hit on the nucleus and cause it to split into more particles. 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:43.000 I see. And then it's making them sterile because it, I think we'll get into its effects on tissue in a little bit, but basically it's adding stress. 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:58.000 Yeah. With a shorter dose, the litter would simply be reduced in weight and some of the animals would be dead and others would survive. 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:13.000 And even though that was particles, some of the radiation, when the lead nuclei split, you get some gamma rays and x-rays produced as well as particles. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:25.000 And a study of dentistry in Seattle looked at a large population of people getting different types of dental work. 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:35.000 And they used lead shields to cover their body so that nothing but their face was getting the x-ray directly. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:16:03.000 But when they looked back at the results of their treatments, a pregnant woman who would get a full set of oral x-rays would expect to have a lighter birth weight baby as a result of the systemic poisoning produced by x-raying just her head. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:20.000 So the lead group experiments in China were exposing the whole animal, but just exposing one part creates enough stress to reduce fertility to the extent of having a smaller baby. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:29.000 Well, that's to my mind making the cosmic rays and x-rays sound somewhat equivalent, are they? 00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:37.000 Well, in biological effect, yeah, they're equivalent to poisoning and stress. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:17:03.000 And biologically, in my dissertation work, I looked through the biological effects of different kinds of radiation and found that I couldn't distinguish the biological damage caused by overdosing estrogen from the radiation poisoning effects. 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:09.000 So it's a very general type of biological damage. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:27.000 In fact, many biologists thought that radiation was causing the pituitary gland to make the ovaries overproduce estrogen because the radiation was so identical to estrogen poisoning. 00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:41.000 But people did control experiments and irradiated just the head and the whole animal would show an estrogen effect as in the dental x-rays. 00:17:41.000 --> 00:17:58.000 But others x-rayed only a foot or an arm and so on, and still the whole body went into an estrogenic state, showing that it's a toxin produced by any tissue interacting with the radiation. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:05.000 So you don't have to just target an area, it's actually going to have an effect on the whole animal. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:12.000 Yeah, it spreads through the bloodstream and probably in other ways. 00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:34.000 Now, going back to comparing the different kinds of radiation, cosmic radiation, so is it fair to say that an x-ray at a dentist is comparable, or I think this is a bone scan was the example, equivalent of flying from Denver to New York in exposure? 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:53.000 No, if living in Denver gives you less cancer than living in New Orleans, and living at 10,000 feet in Colombia or Bolivia gives you even less cancer than in Denver, 00:18:53.000 --> 00:19:13.000 and if you could spend your life flying around in an airplane, you'd be even better off with less cancer. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:26.000 The whole story, even though it fooled Linus Pauling, it's been known to be contrary to the facts since 1900 at least. 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:40.000 Now, x-rays are widely used medically, dental x-rays and CAT scans and bone scans, and you probably can think of a couple others that I'm not thinking of right now. 00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:47.000 And people, doctors say they're invaluable for diagnosing and treating different diseases. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.000 Do you find that they are sometimes useful? 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:58.000 And what exactly, I should, this is actually two questions, what exactly, besides the estrogenic effect, what else do they do to your tissues? 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:18.000 Well, the estrogenic effect is just part of a general type of tissue excitation that involves, in different ways of measuring it, it involves a chronic inflammation being set up. 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:41.000 And that, depending on the dose and length of time involved, leads to tissue atrophy and fibrosis, and the atrophy and fibrosis are what predispose you eventually to cancerization. 00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:57.000 At first, the US government sponsored interpretations of the exposure to atomic bomb radiation in Japan. 00:20:57.000 --> 00:21:09.000 What they did was draw circles around the bomb and look at people at one mile and ten miles and so on, out in a circle from the bomb. 00:21:09.000 --> 00:21:14.000 But in fact, the radiation went with the wind. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:31.000 And when they took the people who really got the radiation in one part of the radius and averaged it out with the people all at the same distance but in totally different directions, 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:40.000 they made the radiation damage disappear. So it seemed that it wasn't causing any cancer at all. 00:21:40.000 --> 00:22:06.000 But when people more honestly looked at the data and got the actual exposure, they saw that, for example, 20 years later, looking at people who had been exposed as babies or fetuses, their brains were much smaller than normal. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:11.000 And that was the same effect seen in the Chinese rabbit studies. 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:17.000 And with the women in the study in the dental places? 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:26.000 Yeah, the Japanese, they actually measured their heads and their whole head was smaller if they were exposed in utero. 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:40.000 And that amount of radiation was being used medically for a long time in the US. And Alice Stewart was the one that showed that it was causing leukemia and other childhood cancers. 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:52.000 But no one has traced US brain damage to medical x-rays yet, even though it has been established in other countries. 00:22:52.000 --> 00:23:10.000 Now, you spoke of nuclear atmospheric tests. X-rays are actually waves, is that right? They're not actually particles, but I imagine anything that's being carried by the wind is actually a particle, a radioactive particle? 00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:26.000 Yeah, and those particles get ingested. It isn't that they radiate at you from the dust outside you, but they get in your food and water and air and enter your particle as a food atom. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:41.000 And then they still follow the same course of nuclear decay and break down into radiation and particles inside your tissues. 00:23:41.000 --> 00:24:08.000 And in that situation where they emit an alpha particle or a helium nucleus, if it is emitted right inside the cell, it's going to cause total damage and be absorbed within just a few cell diameters from where the radioactive particle decayed. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:22.000 The nuclear industry said, "Why worry about alpha particles leaking out of our power plants or coming out of the bomb test fallout?" 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:48.000 They would have an alpha emitter and an amplified detector with a space between them. They would put a sheet of typing paper and the sputtering of the detector would stop when they put the paper in the path of the alpha radiation beam. 00:24:48.000 --> 00:25:07.000 They said, "See, it just takes a sheet of paper to stop the beam." But the difference is when you have ingested the particle that emits those beams, there is no paper between the particle and the cell that gets poisoned. 00:25:07.000 --> 00:25:13.000 I see. So every time a nuclear facility has a leak, particles are actually being emitted. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:22.000 And people breathe them in and then when they disintegrate in the body, the reaction happens. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:37.000 Just two or three years ago, someone compared the blood serum of Japanese who were still alive but who had been exposed to the atomic bomb. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:53.000 They showed that they could demonstrate lingering photochemical emission differences in their blood serum 60 years after the exposure. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:26:01.000 So it lingers that long. Are there still radioactive particles in them? 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:18.000 No, it's still unstable biochemical material that spreads the influence and persists unless something intervenes to correct the whole process. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:25.000 But these people 60 years later still were different from unexposed people. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:32.000 And this is something that has been coming up in the last 10 years or so. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:58.000 If you irradiate cells in a dish to produce mutations and then put those cells with unexposed cells in another dish, those unexposed cells keep mutating long after from something emitted by the irradiated cells. 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:14.000 And if you irradiate fish, they will emit into the water some of the toxic materials that cause biochemical disturbances in the other fish. 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:35.000 The genetic instability is really the most horrifying part of the exposure because it's called the bystander effect that is transmitted as some kind of signal from the injured cell, 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:51.000 which then injures the cells that receive this material and that transmitted effect destabilizes the chromosomes generations later. 00:27:51.000 --> 00:28:14.000 No one really knows how long that can go on, but in the lab situation, it can be passed through many generations of cells as a tendency to mutate and produce defects in cells that were many generations removed. 00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:25.000 Now, what about, there was just a study done, I think in Germany, and a fellow was here around central Vermont speaking about it. 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:28.000 His name was Eisenstein, I believe. 00:28:28.000 --> 00:28:39.000 And I don't actually know the details of the study, except that it did show that around nuclear power plants, there was definitely a higher leukemia rate among children. 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:49.000 And why is it that children and young, I guess all young living things are more susceptible to damage from radiation? 00:28:49.000 --> 00:29:08.000 It's that instead of being played out like a genetic blueprint being read out literally to form each stage of development during growth, 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:29.000 that was the word genetics dogma was used conveniently by the physics dogma to say that if it didn't mutate your DNA, then it didn't cause any damage because DNA controls everything. 00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:53.000 But the bystander effect is produced by doses in the micro gray region where they used to call 50 gray exposure or 500 rems the dangerous toxic dose. 00:29:53.000 --> 00:30:01.000 A millionth of a gray is now known to produce these bystander effects. 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:18.000 And the developing organism is never simply a matter of a blueprint in the DNA being played out step by step. 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:28.000 Doctors used to say what a mother ate had no influence on the quality of the baby being developed. 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:39.000 That as long as the mother ate enough to live to give birth, the baby was not going to be affected by the mother's poverty or starvation. 00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:50.000 And that was because of this doctrine that environment has nothing to do with it. The genes totally determine what the organism is. 00:30:50.000 --> 00:31:03.000 But in fact, even the formation of the ovum is environmentally determined by the conditions in the mother's physiology. 00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:18.000 The way the cytoplasm of the oocyte is assembled, even before there's a fertilized egg, this is modified by the environment and the mother's experience. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:30.000 And then once the fertilized egg starts developing, it's still progressively modified at every stage by its environment. 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:41.000 And so if estrogen is introduced during the pregnancy and the dose is small enough that the pregnancy can survive, 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:56.000 the change in the environment, for example, the reduction of available glucose, causes the brain to develop differently. 00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:04.000 And for example, the cortex of the brain is thinner in proportion to estrogen exposure. 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:10.000 And the radiation exposure caused the whole brain to be considerably smaller. 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:24.000 But just a fairly seemingly insignificant imbalance towards estrogen causes the cortex to be thinner than normal. 00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:32.000 And so it's because the young organism is in a developmental stage. 00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:43.000 It hasn't decided exactly what it can become because the environment at every stage is part of what it can become. 00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:58.000 And so if you introduce inflammation and stress anywhere along the line, the younger the organism, the more deviation from its ideal possibilities there will be. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:07.000 I see. We're talking to Dr. Raymond Peat, endocrinologist, physiologist, and science historian from Eugene, Oregon. 00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:15.000 So it sounds like if that's the effect on younger beings, human and otherwise, 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:27.000 it sounds like it's by all means a good idea to avoid any kind of radiation exposure, including x-rays and dental x-rays and things like that. 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:36.000 Yeah, but even the time of day can influence your ability to tolerate stresses, including x-ray. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:46.000 For example, if you go for a jog before breakfast, your chromosomes are going to be more susceptible to breaking. 00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:56.000 And if you had had some juice before you went for a jog, the low blood sugar makes your chromosomes break more easily. 00:33:56.000 --> 00:34:06.000 And so having your radiation injury in the late afternoon, you're going to have much less risk of damage. 00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:13.000 I see. When your body is basically fortified against different stresses. 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:19.000 Well, maybe towards the end of the show we can talk about what you can actually do to mitigate the effects of radiation. 00:34:19.000 --> 00:34:35.000 I guess I'd like to also have you talk about the efficacy of using medical radiation for diagnostic and I guess treatment also. 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:57.000 One article published in JAMA about 10 years ago criticized the use of the bone scans because they showed that they were thrown off by any consistent change in the ratio of fat and water. 00:34:57.000 --> 00:35:14.000 Fat doesn't absorb x-rays as much as water does. And so if you reduce the amount of fat in your bone marrow, bone marrow is normally extremely fat rich. 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:31.000 And if you exchange that for water and make a sort of sick, anemic waterlogged bone marrow, which estrogen can do, you're going to seem to have more dense bones. 00:35:31.000 --> 00:35:41.000 So especially for measuring the effects of estrogen, x-ray bone scans are simply not scientific. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:57.000 And there are ultrasound bone measuring devices that can actually determine the strength of the bone from the elastic sound transmission through the bone. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:03.000 It doesn't just measure the density. You can have soft but highly calcified bones. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:07.000 And so the ultrasound really measures the bone quality. 00:36:07.000 --> 00:36:18.000 And incidentally, each ultrasound treatment is likely to make your bones stronger because it stimulates healing and regeneration. 00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:26.000 Where each exposure to x-ray is going to increase your stress and make your bones weaker. 00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:32.000 Well it sounds like, especially for bone scans, that x-rays are probably not a good idea. 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:56.000 Yeah. And ultrasound technology has existed for many years in which dentists could see cavities and have nice pictures of the insides of teeth without any x-rays at all. 00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:02.000 Yeah, I've looked into that without much luck finding anybody, at least in this country, who's doing that. 00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:10.000 No, it's just a technology that no one wants to use because they have x-rays and believe they're safe. 00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:23.000 So what about, I know Newsweek came out with an article not too long ago about CAT scans and actually was quite cautionary about people having too many of them. 00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:26.000 How do they fit into the scale of exposure? 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:28.000 One is too many. 00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:30.000 One CAT scan is too many. 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:31.000 Yeah. 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:33.000 Why is that? 00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:39.000 It's a lot of radiation. It's the equivalent of many, many chest x-rays. 00:37:39.000 --> 00:37:53.000 It's making an x-ray picture from many different angles so that you can look at it in the computer and see many different perspectives. 00:37:53.000 --> 00:37:58.000 Is there any time when you think an x-ray would be a useful tool? 00:37:58.000 --> 00:38:02.000 No, because the other technologies are better. 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:14.000 Magnetic resonance and ultrasound, the technology is there and it would be improved if people would start using it more. 00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:19.000 They're invested in their present machines. 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:27.000 So you're basically saying it's irresponsible that the medical authorities at this point are advocating continued use of x-rays. 00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:40.000 Well, it was irresponsible in 1920 and continuing for 100 years beyond when they knew it was harmful is worse than irresponsible. 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:49.000 Can you say a few words about John Goffman, somebody who did work for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency or the Atomic Energy Commission, I think? 00:38:49.000 --> 00:39:01.000 Yeah, I was aware of him from the 1940s on as one of the main government devils. 00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:13.000 For 30 years, he said how wonderful x-rays and other radiation forms are and that they're not known to be harmful. 00:39:13.000 --> 00:39:20.000 You can't prove that they're going to kill 15,000 people just by exploding some bombs in Nevada. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:32.000 For 30 years, he was a government spokesman and said that people like Linus Pauling were irresponsible fear mongers. 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:52.000 Later, I think it was 1968 or so, he said in the middle of one of his speeches where he was saying it hasn't been proved that these bomb tests are going to result in 20 years in death and disease. 00:39:52.000 --> 00:40:03.000 He suddenly realized what he was saying. He said he realized he was stupid or crazy to be saying such stuff. 00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:13.000 It took him 30 years to come to that realization, but once he did, then he became the government's greatest enemy. 00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:18.000 He started to campaign against the use of nuclear technology. 00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:34.000 And great medical technology. His last big book was demonstrating that breast cancer and heart disease are caused in the United States mainly by medical x-rays. 00:40:34.000 --> 00:40:56.000 Breast cancer is lowest in West Virginia where there are the fewest doctor visits by patients per capita and highest in the rich areas of California where there are most doctors and most chest exams per patient. 00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:00.000 That's very similar to what Samuel Epstein says about mammography. 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:02.000 Oh yeah, have you talked to him yet? 00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:07.000 Just on the phone briefly. We're going to have an interview with him on May 4th, I believe. 00:41:07.000 --> 00:41:21.000 Oh yeah. There was a study in Scandinavia a few years ago that showed that total mortality was higher in the women who got their breast scans. 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:28.000 That's kind of alarming because I know they're being recommended all the time to people I know. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:47.000 Especially I recently heard an example of not only was that done to somebody, but then a metal pellet was planted without their knowledge in the place that they'd performed a biopsy on. 00:41:47.000 --> 00:41:53.000 They left that pellet in there so they could mark the spot where they had been looking at. 00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:58.000 How does that strike you as a technique? 00:41:58.000 --> 00:42:16.000 Well, it's not a normal medical technique. Did you hear the NPR program a couple of days ago broadcasting a segment from Columbia Medical School's blessing of the white coat ceremony? 00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:19.000 No, I didn't know they were so religious. 00:42:19.000 --> 00:42:28.000 Yeah, they bless the white coats and then have the students put them on as they call them up like they're getting a diploma. 00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:52.000 It's an attitude that physicians are sanctified by their profession, so they really feel that they can't do any harm if they're sincerely being physicians. 00:42:52.000 --> 00:43:08.000 What I hear are mostly horror stories, women who are told that they're just going to have an exploratory surgery and then their ovaries are removed. 00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:17.000 It seems like the people I talk to have been really seriously abused by their doctors. 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:29.000 I know in a previous show a long time ago we talked about some of the history of the use of radiation by medical and military. 00:43:29.000 --> 00:43:32.000 Perhaps we should cover some of that at some point. 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:39.000 It's a horrendous story, which I don't actually like to talk about because it's so depressing. 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:52.000 I think it is good to know where the technology came from and how the professionals that developed it basically used it in a completely immoral fashion. 00:43:52.000 --> 00:44:00.000 I don't think that code of ethics has changed much. 00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:12.000 One of the things they're using now for ionizing radiation technology is for what they call they radiate food to preserve it. 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:15.000 Just the name of that technique is escape me. 00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.000 That's just irradiated food I believe is what they call it. 00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:27.000 They irradiate meat and they also irradiate fruit and maybe other vegetables as well. 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:31.000 What's your opinion on that? That makes meat last quite a bit longer. 00:44:31.000 --> 00:44:41.000 Sometimes it does and sometimes it immediately almost instantly spoils it to some extent. 00:44:41.000 --> 00:44:46.000 It stops other enzyme and bacterial changes. 00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:53.000 It will kill enough microorganisms that it stops some types of rotting. 00:44:53.000 --> 00:44:57.000 It also stops the natural defense processes. 00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:06.000 Apples for example will instantly turn color from the radiation and get soft and sour. 00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:19.000 It becomes susceptible to certain types of decay later because the natural defense processes of the cells have been destroyed. 00:45:19.000 --> 00:45:33.000 It activates some of the aging processes in meat and other tissues that increase the toxicity. 00:45:33.000 --> 00:45:37.000 Proteins are degraded into toxic compounds. 00:45:37.000 --> 00:45:42.000 Fats are made rancid and toxic. 00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:52.000 Every component in proportion to its oxidizability is affected. 00:45:52.000 --> 00:46:03.000 When they fed these processed foods to experimental animals, the animals show the effects of poisoning and malnutrition. 00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:16.000 The most susceptible components to damage are things like vitamin B2 and folic acid. 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:28.000 Vitamin A is almost totally destroyed by this irradiation. 00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:33.000 So it becomes a deficient food nutritionally. 00:46:33.000 --> 00:46:50.000 At the same time, the destruction of these compounds converts them into toxic reactive compounds that further reduce the nutritional value and increase the toxic effects of the rest of the food. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:47:02.000 Since prolonged feeding consistently causes damage in the lab animals, 00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:13.000 a lot of people have been devising techniques to test food to show whether it's been irradiated or not. 00:47:13.000 --> 00:47:29.000 These same tests that show the radiation damage in food can also show the same kind of effects that show lingering radiation damage in people. 00:47:29.000 --> 00:47:55.000 The thing they saw in the Japanese blood serum, photochemical luminescence, you can do that same test and show that the breakdown of the fats in particular causes photoluminescence in the degraded food product. 00:47:55.000 --> 00:48:10.000 If it was an animal, oysters, chickens, or fish, the bones capture the excited electrons. 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:33.000 All you have to do is dissolve the bone in a dark photo light detecting device and the irradiated foods will luminesce as the bones dissolve because electrons were trapped in an excited state in the bones. 00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:52.000 That has been used in people. You can show where you've had dental x-rays by heating a piece of the tooth that was exposed and it will luminesce as the trapped excited electrons are released. 00:48:52.000 --> 00:49:17.000 Now when you spoke earlier of you can detect the oxidized fats in meat that's been irradiated, does that mean that oxidation is just one of the side effects of radiation or is that really what's going on when you shoot in a bunch of protons that don't have electrons attached to them? 00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:40.000 To the extent that there is something present to receive the excited electrons, they will react and you'll have oxidation happening in which the electrons are going into a lower state. 00:49:40.000 --> 00:50:05.000 Even ultraviolet can cause some processes like that. If you get too much ultraviolet light from the sun, the vitamin B2 in your skin can get into an excited state. 00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:34.000 Then if you have eaten a lot of polyunsaturated fats, the excited vitamin B2 can extract electrons from the exposed double bonds on the fats and create breakage in the fats and the fats will spread and oxidizing process and attack the DNA and so on. 00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:38.000 So that's how you get skin cancer from ultraviolet? 00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:51.000 Yes, and the wrinkles and cancerization process from sunlight really highly correspond to the amount of polyunsaturated fats that has been in your diet previously. 00:50:51.000 --> 00:50:59.000 The wrinkles occur very quickly when you've been eating a lot of vegetable oil. 00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:20.000 So I suppose that's what you're describing there is how the medical authorities and I guess the nuclear atomic agency authorities, where they start using sunlight as the comparison with x-rays and nuclear waste environmental pollution because you can get cancer from both types of radiation. 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:41.000 Yes, it's such a flimsy connection though because you have to be predisposed to it and then you have to get an intense sunburn and not have the antioxidants in your diet and so on before it becomes carcinogenic. 00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:48.000 I see, whereas with the other radiation, there's really not much protection that you can have against it. 00:51:48.000 --> 00:52:07.000 Especially when isotopes have been ingested and the penetrating x-rays and gamma rays will affect tissues all the way through your system. 00:52:07.000 --> 00:52:18.000 Well, we have a few minutes left. We're talking to Dr. Raymond Peat, endocrinologist, physiologist and science historian from Eugene, Oregon. 00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:32.000 Ray, I thought maybe you could just sum up if you would be so kind with what people can do if they have to go to the dentist and have to get an x-ray, what they can do to gird their loins, so to speak, to protect themselves. 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:39.000 The first thing is to really reconsider why you need it. 00:52:39.000 --> 00:52:54.000 Dentists will tell you you need an x-ray just because they think their insurance requires that they protect themselves by having the x-ray record. 00:52:54.000 --> 00:53:03.000 Endodontists will tell you that you can't do a root canal without having an x-ray. 00:53:03.000 --> 00:53:21.000 I have talked to some endodontists who were very proud of the fact that they didn't need x-rays, but they would later do x-rays to prove to their doubtful colleagues that they had done it perfectly. 00:53:21.000 --> 00:53:26.000 It's a matter of skill and judgment. 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:34.000 You don't have to necessarily get it just because the doctor wants you to. 00:53:34.000 --> 00:53:51.000 More and more dentists are willing to, sometimes they will have the patient sign a paper that they refuse to x-rays, then the dentist has to use their skill and judgment. 00:53:51.000 --> 00:53:55.000 It's often the same situation. 00:53:55.000 --> 00:54:02.000 A lot of medical x-rays are really useless and pointless. 00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:15.000 Anyone before they get a mammogram should look into the research on it and maybe listen to Sam Epstein. 00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:36.000 What you can do if you are determined to get an x-ray is to try to schedule it in the late afternoon in the summer and have your blood sugar steady and high enough. 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:55.000 Have some gelatinous soup and orange juice and milk ahead of time and make sure your hormonal situation is adequate because you don't want estrogen effects interacting with radiation effects. 00:54:55.000 --> 00:55:04.000 Progesterone treatment has been found to protect against x-ray damage to some tissues. 00:55:04.000 --> 00:55:11.000 Thyroid is probably the most protective single thing. 00:55:11.000 --> 00:55:22.000 Having lots of magnesium in your cells, you need to have your blood sugar steady to keep the magnesium in your cells. 00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:32.000 Having a magnesium rich food before and after the x-ray. 00:55:32.000 --> 00:55:39.000 Coffee is protective against all kinds of radiations. 00:55:39.000 --> 00:55:52.000 Caffeine is the main thing in the coffee, but the coffee is also a good source of magnesium and niacin, both of which are radiation protectors. 00:55:52.000 --> 00:56:04.000 Niacin amide is a general tissue protector against stress including radiation. 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:18.000 The antioxidants, vitamin E, vitamin K, and ubiquinone or coenzyme Q10 are protective. 00:56:18.000 --> 00:56:25.000 We have about one minute left. Do you have anything else to add to that? 00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:30.000 No. 00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:36.000 Well, I think that's a good place to stop then. We'll leave it there for now and maybe pick it up next week. 00:56:36.000 --> 00:56:40.000 I want to thank you very much, Dr. Peat, for coming on again. 00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:41.000 Okay. 00:56:41.000 --> 00:56:47.000 Thank you for all your information and for your work. I'll give out your website again. 00:56:47.000 --> 00:56:48.000 Okay. Very good. 00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:50.000 All right. Thank you, Dr. Peat. 00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:51.000 Bye. 00:56:51.000 --> 00:56:52.000 Bye. 00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:59.000 That was Dr. Raymond Peat, endocrinologist, physiologist, and science historian from Eugene, Oregon. 00:56:59.000 --> 00:57:06.000 You can find out more about his writings on his website, raypeat.com, where he has many of his articles. 00:57:06.000 --> 00:57:15.000 And you can also subscribe to his newsletter, which is fascinating, raypeat.com. 00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:24.000 If you have any questions for Politics and Science, you can direct them by email to politicsandscience@madriver.com. 00:57:24.000 --> 00:57:29.000 That's politicsandscience@madriver.com. 00:57:29.000 --> 00:57:53.000 Politics and Science can be heard weekly on WMRW LP1 95.1 FM, airing on Mondays at 5 p.m. and in the Bellows Falls area can be heard on WULL LP Bellows Falls at 101.1 FM, airing from 3 to 4 p.m. on Sundays and from 9 to 10 a.m. on Mondays. 00:57:53.000 --> 00:58:03.000 Politics and Science presents the viewpoints of its participants and does not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of any other person or organization.