Sacks Bill, Siegel Jeffry A
PostFDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Green Valley, AZ, USA.
Nuclear Physics Enterprises, Marlton, NJ, USA.
Dose Response. 2017 Jul 14;15(3):1559325817717839. doi: 10.1177/1559325817717839. eCollection 2017 Jul-Sep.
The linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption is over 70 years old and holds that all ionizing radiation exposure leaves cumulative effects, all of which are harmful regardless of how low the dose or dose rate is. The claimed harm centers on the risk of future radiogenic cancer. This has been shown countless times to be fallacious, and hundreds of scientific studies-both experimental and observational/epidemiological-demonstrate that at low enough doses and dose rates, ionizing radiation stimulates an evolved adaptive response and therefore is beneficial to health, rather than raising the risk of cancer. Yet the myth of uncorrected lifetime cumulative risk still pervades the field of radiation science and underlies the policies of virtually all regulatory agencies around the world. This article explores some of the motivations behind, and methods used to assure, the extreme durability of the LNT myth in the face of the preponderance of contrary evidence and the manifest harms of radiophobia. These include subservience to the voice of authority, tactics such as claiming agnosticism on behalf of the entire field, transparent references to contrary evidence while dismissing the findings without refutation, and seeking shelter behind the legally protective medical standard of care.
线性无阈（LNT）假设有70多年的历史了，它认为所有电离辐射暴露都会产生累积效应，无论剂量或剂量率有多低，所有这些效应都是有害的。所谓的危害集中在未来辐射诱发癌症的风险上。这已被无数次证明是错误的，数百项科学研究——包括实验性研究和观察性/流行病学研究——表明，在足够低的剂量和剂量率下，电离辐射会激发一种进化而来的适应性反应，因此对健康有益，而不是增加患癌风险。然而，未经修正的终身累积风险的神话仍然在辐射科学领域盛行，并且几乎是世界上所有监管机构政策的基础。本文探讨了在面对大量相反证据和辐射恐惧症明显危害的情况下，LNT神话极端持久的一些背后动机和用以确保其存在的方法。这些包括屈从于权威的声音、诸如代表整个领域宣称不可知论的策略、在驳回研究结果而不反驳的同时透明地提及相反证据，以及寻求法律保护性医疗护理标准的庇护。
