Corporate Responsibility

	Book review on Wolves of Water by Busby, Chris (2006) Reviewed by Roger Taylor, 2008 published in Network Review No 97
	(order this book from amazon.co.uk)

This book is about corporate responsibility as it is applied to national governments. Part biography, part textbook, part warning, part entertainment and part celebration of life, it is an account of one man's decision to take on the might of the nuclear/military lobby using methods of science and epidemiology. Most of all it is a message to the planet and its inhabitants to take control of the science/policy interface before the products of scientific ways of thinking destroy us all. The book charts developments in Dr Busby's researches on the subject of radioactive pollution from the nuclear industry since his Wings of Death (1995) introduced the thesis that the releases of novel radioactive substances like Caesium­137, Plutonium-239 and Strontium-90 were the cause of the present cancer epidemic. Presenting his research on the health effects of Sellafield and cancer near the Irish Sea as a hook, Busby dissects the workings of the government advisory establishment, the biased science and institutional cover-ups of the causes of cancer and other illnesses.

From cancer near nuclear sites and contaminated coasts, he moves on to radioactive dust in middle England, plutonium in your children's teeth, buried nuclear reactors under housing estates and the effects of Uranium weapons on people living thousands of miles from battlefields. Packed with graphs, songs, quotations, graphs and tables of data, this colourful, informative and empowering work is recommended reading for epi­demiologists, environmental activists, scientists, philosophers, politicians, regulators, lawyers and perhaps criminologists.

This, from the blurb on the back of the book, puts the broad sweep of this book very concisely. Lest anyone think the author is merely an enthusiastic 'Greenie', ignorant of the real issues, his CV at the end of the book details his qualifications, membership of many learned societies, employment, research experience and publications. He has been on many official committees, being appointed among others as UK Representative of European Committee on Radiation Risk, UK Government Committee Evaluating Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters and UK Ministry of Defence Oversight Committee on Depleted Uranium. Also listed are 64 invitations to speak, all within an eleven year period.

With 518 pages, its very size is likely to put some readers off. Nevertheless, if he was to present a convincing case, it seems to me he had no other option: any remaining loopholes could be seized upon by the government/corporate machine to dismiss his case. Even if rather few scientists and other influential people read it immediately, this book will continue to stand as an enduring resource for the future. One has to admire Dr Busby for what is clearly an immense labour - of love really, since much of it attracted little or no funding, and he was, at times, reduced to the basics of survival. Anyone wanting to criticise his conclusions would have to examine a mass of meticulously presented and statistically supported evidence. He  makes some strong points from the science of radiobiology, which have been studiously ignored by proponents of the nuclear industry. One is the role of radioactive particles (i.e. dust) in causation of cancer- so-called 'internal radiation'. If an alpha emission from just one such particle damages both strands of DNA such that both copies of a gene are destroyed, then the cell has no way to repair the damage. And if this takes place in a critical gene, it can initiate the complex sequence of events leading to full-blown cancer. Conventional assessment of radiation risk is based principally on data obtained from relatively short-term ('external radiation') much of it from laboratory animals, and from Hiroshima. Whereas the beta and gamma rays can be picked up by Geiger counters, the very low energy alpha rays (which are all that's necessary for induction of cancer) cannot. To assess the risk from these requires far more laborious analyses of soil, plant and water samples. Busby, and his few heroic helpers (mainly unpaid), took large numbers of such samples, mostly from coastal regions around the Irish Sea, and with analyses by some helpful laboratories, were able to correlate cancer incidence with distance from the sea. The conclusion was that particles containing alpha-emitters were being driven inland by wind-blown spray - mainly from where they had accumulated in the offshore silt. The same was found even on the other side, in Ireland.

Another telling point is the so-called 'bystander effect', whereby a cell with radiation damage becomes genetically unstable - and also induces such instability in neighbouring cells - so that the likelihood of carcinogenic mutations from a single alpha emission is much greater than might have been thought. Furthermore, as he emphasises, some isotopes commonly found in fall-out, such as Strontium, Barium and Uranium are particularly potent mutagens because they bind to DNA.

In order to make the necessary correlations, they had to obtain statistics for cancer incidence in the critical areas. Here we begin to get some inkling of the powerful influences he was up against. The blow-by-blow account of his attempts to get this data makes it very clear that high-level moves were made to stop the release of certain critical figures. It was only by an oversight, apparently, that a disk was sent by the Wales Cancer Registry before this was closed down. This body was replaced by the WCISU, who then claimed they had wiped the data. The rest of the large section on 'Denials', makes a fascinating, and disturbing, study on the sociology of science in relation to power groupings. We often hear, these days, of the 'Cancer Epidemic'. And yet mainstream medicine constantly tells us only good news: e.g. increases in 5-year survival of this or that type of cancer. What is the truth? Dr Busby amasses a solid base of evidence showing very considerable increases, especially in the last thirty years. Some of it correlates quite specifically with certain events, such as the Chernobyl disaster, and the emissions from Sellafield. Of the many graphs, one could note the 30% increase in cancer (in terms of standard registration ratios) in Wales between 1972 and 1987. It becomes entirely believable, as he surmises, that radioactivity is now the main causative agent - even over and above all the chemicals in our environment.

In spite of its length, Dr Busby's book is highly readable. I read most of it, and particularly enjoyed the poems, and the little asides of black humour. But the overall message is deadly serious. We, and our world, are in peril from many threats - not only nuclear pollution, but (among several others), '...economic pollution, power pollution, objectivity pollution, cynicism pollution...'. The large section on denials makes it clear that we cannot rely on official bodies, or even official science, to put things right. This can only be done through alternative institutions. We must circumvent official institutions, and have our own researchers drawing conclusions based on quantitative evidence, and making them public by any means possible. The book ends, as it begins, with the poem by Louis MacNiece: 'Wolves of Water', whose last verse reads:

Come then all of you , come closer, form a circle

Join hands and make believe that

Joined Hands will keep away the wolves of water

Who howl along our coast. And it be assumed

That no-one hears them among the talk and laughter.

 

Dr Roger Taylor is a former research immunologist.

 

 

 

 

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)