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Comment by BHSPitMonkey | Hacker News Reader

> "Quite a few have died from cancer," he told reporter Bill Broad. "No doubt it was related to the testing."

Is there really no doubt? I didn't see any more details in the article pertaining to the deaths, but for the sake of not implying that correlation == causation, I would point out that most cancer patients were never involved in nuclear testing (and, conversely, the cameraman who said the above also shows contradictory results).

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As the saying goes (roughly): "correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's a good place to start looking".

Are cancer incidence rates higher among those around nuclear explosions? Yes. http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/health-effects/rad-ex...

Is there a plausible mechanism by which radiation exposure leads to cancer? yes. http://hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/intro_...

These two facts greatly increase the probability of linkage.

On the same tack of radiation, but a different situation, Nick Davies' Flat Earth News describes the Chernobyl aftermath. I can't remember the complete substance of his argument, but it was generally that the effects of these things was vastly overstated in the media.

Not that I'm trying to controvert your point. This is just an allusion to an enterprising journalist's research.

I've heard from anti-vaccine advocates that a number of diseases were on the decline, and that vaccine use was insignifcant in that decline. But the vaccines were introduced anyway so you could say it was the vaccines that did it but other factors were at hand.

Sometimes I think correlation not only doesn't equal causation, but counters causation, like a son doing well not because of his overbearing mother, but in spite of it. (She would claim the credit anyhow.) - I've read about vaccines causing diseases they are proclaimed to guard against - "weaponized vaccines."

See chart 1.

http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-internet-journal-of-infecti...

The case for the major vaccines is open and shut. In the past fifteen years the roster has been populated with some stuff that's less clear, but targetting diseases that are much less dangerous. If you are going to make arguments against vaccines like measles, polio, diphtheria, tetanus you _really_ must do more homework. These are very serious diseases and we really don't want casual free-riders avoiding vaccination.

Thanks, I am aware of Measles being useful. How about Hep A/B/C, Meningitis and others? More importantly, illnesses and syndromes correlating with increased vaccine usage? That's 1 illness and 1 paper.

I don't think vaccine usage is an open and shut case at all and there are many sub-issues and I'm not getting into a micro-discussion now on this thread.

If you want to make distinctions among vaccines that's one thing. Questioning "vaccine usage" generally is another. "Vaccines" have saved millions of lives from smallpox, polio, measles, DPT.

One of those three (A or C, I forget) has no vaccine. The other two do, both are serious, common, and life threatening in a global scale, even if not so much in well-off places.... but it's out there en-masse. Hep B is among the most virulent and widespread diseases in the world and LOTS of people out there have it.

Just because on popular pseudo-scientific theory was successfully debunked doesn't imply that all theories can be debunked. Arguing with the vaccination case here boggles my mind, it's so misguided.

OK let your mind boggle. Mine's fine. Some guys stand 10,000 or 18,500 feet away (depending on whether taken from text or video) from a nuke explosion then drive off. How much ionizing radiation were they exposed to? Probably very little. I'm not sure. Over the years in their job.. who knows. From my understanding, it's the fallout and contaminated food that is dangerous. As to vaccinations, I think it's an apt analogy. You get 1 jab and never get an illness. It must have been the jab, right?

Got kids? Travelled or live outside of the well-developed world?

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but causation DOES lead to correlation obviously.... and the reason those vaccines are done, idealistically, is because they've been proven to work. Epidemics of non-vaccinated people wiped out entire cultures.... The only reason we don't hand out smallpox vaccines is because it's considered by health authorities around the world to be eradicated..... the last known naturally-occurring case was in 1978. At that point, vaccination is more dangerous that not vaccinating - but if smallpox were to arise again, you want to vaccinate as many people as possible to protect everyone.

And later, we find that one of them is still alive at age 84, others died at ages 86, 83, 71, 63, and one unknown.

Those ages seem to me like pretty good, even mostly quite long lifespans for someone who was already an adult in 1950s.

I agree with your sentiments, but we shouldn't be looking at death, but incidents of cancer. Either way, the sampling is too small, and I suspect can only lead to misdirection.

i'd also point out that it was the 50's and they were probably all smokers....

> i'd also point out that it was the 50's and they were probably all smokers....

So were millions of other people, none of whom were subjected to that level of ionizing radiation. It's relatively easy to control for factors like that.

but did they? There's no mention of that in the story.

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