The importance of the new nuclear worker study results for the test veterans and radiation appeals

In August 2023 a paper was published in the British Medical Journal by twelve researchers from six national agencies from USA, UK, Spain and France, individuals who collectively represent the epidemiological cutting edge of the science investigating the health effects of ionising radiation.

Read the paper here - (https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074520)

The paper’s conclusions are a game-changer for the nuclear industry and the military. For the first time, these people, who have for the last twenty years doggedly denied the cancer causing effects of low doses of radiation, that is—below 100mSv, and continuously embraced the radiation risk model currently under-pinning all laws and beliefs by government, have totally reversed their collective position. The database, termed INWORKS, examined 103,000 deaths from 1944 to 2016 which included 28,000 cancer deaths. Unlike most previous nuclear worker studies, this one examined the relation between measured external dose and cancer. It found that doses as low as 10mGy cause a statistically significant excess cancer risk. It showed that contrary to the assumption of the risk model, that there is a direct relation between dose and cancer risk, a straight line, the relation is not linear-no-threshold, but shows a sudden increase from the very lowest dose, one that means that low doses are relatively more dangerous than high doses. There are some interesting questions. How is it that the paper appeared? Who allowed it into the system? Is the system itself changing its implacable reviewer-controlled fortress which excludes information that is fatal to the development and support of all things nuclear?

I like to think that the system has finally cracked. The evidence that ordinary people have developed cancer after low doses has increasingly been obvious from Chernobyl on. That the cancer epidemic itself was caused by the atmospheric tests in the 60s has also become apparent, as new data appears and the 60s generation move into the cancer age group, over 60. And I like to believe that I have had something to do with forcing this reappraisal. One of the UK authors of the paper, Richard Haylock, acted as expert for the MoD in the big 2016 test veteran case in the Royal Courts of Justice. I acted as representative for two veterans in that appeal, and previously I had acted for most of the 16 veterans, until Rosenblatts Solicitors suddenly pulled out. I provided 12 reports, but all were excluded by the legal team that replaced Rosenblatt, Hogan Lovells. I cross-examined Haylock under oath. He told the judge that the low doses of radiation experienced by the test veteran could not possibly cause cancer. Now he is author of a paper which states the opposite. The paper states:

The summary estimate of excess cancer mortality per Gray is larger than estimates currently informing radiation protection.

…some evidence suggests a steeper slope for the dose response relation in the low dose range than in the full dose range.

Let me unpack this. The current radiation risk model, that of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) is behind all legal dose limits to workers and the public. The model assumes that there is a straight line which it draws between effects at very high doses in the Hiroshima lifespan study and zero dose. It effectively excludes exposures to internal Uranium particles, and other internal exposures to Tritium and Carbon-14 which it assumes have no biological effects from chemical transmutation or various other

mechanisms. The Excess relative risk from exposure according to this model, according to the straight line, is 0.04/Sv (a 40% excess at a dose of 1000mSv. Thus, you need 1000mSv to get a 40% excess risk of cancer. Naturally, no test vet got such a hit (if they had they would be dead).

And this is the basis of the laws in Europe, USA and UK. However, the new INWORKS paper reports an excess relative risk of 1.38/Sv for all those who were in the <50mSv group analysed as a group, almost 50,000 deaths (this is in an appendix which you have to download separately). This makes the ICRP model wrong by a factor of 34.5. But the graph that comes with the paper reveals something more interesting. The data points for various doses are plotted against the Relative Risk. It is far from being a straight line. It goes up from the origin to a statistically significant peak (i.e. not occurring by chance) at 7.5 mSv. That is—for the nuclear workers, there is an excess risk of cancer at doses that most of the test vets in Australia received, and whose appeals were denied due to expert advice to judge Blake from Dr Haylock, who stated that the doses were too low. It is not that Haylock (who effectively runs the epidemiology section of what used to be the National Radiological Protection Board) didn’t know this in 2016. There had been a similar study in 2007 of a slightly smaller 15 country nuclear worker collection by Elizabeth Cardis and co-workers, and this tabulated the excess risk by dose group, revealing the same result. High risk at low dose.

I have represented three test veteran appeals in the last three years. All were lost on the basis that the dose was too low. In one case, Fl.Lt. Donne received a recorded dose of 240mSv (he flew though several mushroom clouds collecting samples, he went to hospital with radiation sickness). But the judge found against him because prostate cancer is not radiogenic (we provided several papers showing it was) and of course, the dose was too low. Then, I went in to the ring on behalf of the widow of Trevor Butler; he developed and died of pancreatic cancer during the 2016 combined appeals. The judge here, Horrocks (last year) denied the appeals because pancreatic cancer is not radiogenic (Haylock also from the witness box, also Geraldine Thomas from the witness box). I attacked Haylock in a letter to the Journal of Radiological Protection last year for omitting pancreatic cancer from his list of cancers in the earlier 2018 INWORKS paper which he published in JRP. We had four pancreatic cancers in 16 appellants in 2016. The probability of this is vanishingly small, but the Butler judge would not admit the statistical calculation because of Haylock’s evidence. And of course, the dose was too low.

IN 2022, I was asked to publish a review of the failure of the radiation risk model by a journal. This I did. Previously I had taken the Japanese Lifespan Study apart in another peer review journal—showing that it had been dishonestly manipulated. In 2016, I published an article showing that the LSS was dishonest, in that it had thrown out its zero-dose control group in 1973 when the cancer rate in that group was too high for the liking of the nuclear industry.

I have been turning up the heat under these people now for 30 years; and I believe that at last they are cracking. I wrote a letter about the importance of the latest INWORKS study for radiation protection to the British Medical Journal, where I cut out the low dose range from their graph and presented separately. To my astonishment, the BMJ promptly published it. In it I point out that black letter law in Europe and the UK require a total re-assessment of the

Justification of all things nuclear when new and important evidence appears. Of course, following Chernobyl, enough new and important evidence to win any unbiased court case has appeared and been published. But not by the big journals like the BMJ. This is a sea-change. Maybe at last there will be some justice. Maybe, at last, they will throw the ICRP and its dishonest experts under the bus. Maybe the experts are tiptoeing away from their increasingly difficult position. Maybe their consciences have at last got to them. Who knows? But certainly, after the 2016 case, none of them will appear in the witness box to be cross examined. The Secretary of State has produced no expert witnesses in any of the cases I have represented since 2016. The Tribunals have to make their own mind up about the complex science (and of course the Tribunals are not experts). This is a point of law that should go to the supreme court. Why didn’t the Tribunals call for an expert from the MoD, or appoint its own expert who could then be cross examined? This would be fatal for the Secretary of State for Defence.

Finally, I still have one critical case that is in with a chance. It is that of a nuclear submarine sailor who was a reactor technician on UK nuclear subs. I represent Mr Forbes’s widow. We have fought this case since 2013. At one point the Upper Tier Judge, May QC, ruled that the exclusion of my evidence by the English court under Judge Charles had been unlawful. Strong stuff. Now we have reached the last possible stage, with an appeal to the Scottish Supreme Court. The lower courts all dismissed or ignored evidence, refuse to admit my paper in USA showing that sailors on US Navy nuclear ships have a ten-fold excess risk of cancer. And of course, the dose was too low (Forbes had recorded external 14mSv).

We can take this to the Court of Sessions, but despite our watertight case, we may be up against the usual bias. And this time it will cost, as the courts can award costs to the MoD. So, we are looking for about £20,000 to do this. Also, I hope I am allowed to ask for some support in all this that I do. I have never asked before, but following the sudden death of my US supporter Stuart Smith I have fallen on hard times, so the research and publication has been cut down drastically. People can contribute to the Low-Level Radiation Campaign or, better, can make a standing order or a gift using the Donate paypal button on the Green Audit website www.greenaudit.org

Unfortunately, there is hardly any scientist taking on the nuclear military complex. I have fought them for 30 years, and successfully, but I am the Last of the Mohicans. If we win the Scottish appeal, and theoretically anyway, since the new evidence from INWORKS, all the test veteran appeals will have to be reviewed.

Chris Busby - 11th September 2023

References (not in order)

1. Richardson David B. et al (2023) Cancer Mortality after low dose exposure to ionising radiation in workers in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States (INWORKS): cohort study” by David B. Richardson et al. BMJ 2023;382;e074520

2. Busby C Letter to BMJ on Richardson et al INWORKS study:

ttps://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074520/rr-2

3. Leonard Abdale and Others vs. Secretary of State for Defence. Executive Summary of the Determination. https://www.judiciary.uk/uploads/2016/12

4. Busby Christopher. Ionizing radiation and cancer—the failure of the risk model. Cancer Treatment and Research Communications. 31 (2022) 100565.

DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctarc.2022.100565

5. Busby Christopher (2021) The Hiroshima A-Bomb Black Rain and the Lifespan Study; a Resolution of the Enigma, Cancer Investigation, 2021 DOI: 10.1080/07357907.2021.1977818

6. Busby Christopher (2020): High Cancer Risk in US Naval Personnel Serving in Nuclear Powered Ships, Cancer Investigation, 38(3) 143-149; DOI: 10.1080/07357907.2020.1731526

7. Christopher Busby (2022) Richard Haylock and the nuclear test veterans. J.Radiol.Prot. 42 044503. https://doi.org/ 10.1088/1361-6498/aca3b2

8. Busby Christopher. Letter to the Editor on “The Hiroshima Nagasaki survivor studies. Discrepancies between results and general perception.” By Bernard R Jordan. Genetics. 2016; 204(4) 1627-1629