Society News Archive
15 December 1999
"It was a daunting task to reconstruct doses from 50 years in the past, " Dr. Roy Shore told a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advisory committee December 15, a day after a new report from the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies was released that reviewed the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study (HTDS). Nevertheless, Shore said that there were shortcomings in the HTDS study.
Shore, Chair, NRC's Subcommittee to review the HTDS final results and draft report, told the CDC Advisory Committee for Energy-Related Epidemiologic Research that the study was well-designed, but the study's researchers reported the findings as more conclusive than they were. He also said his subcommittee found that a number of other errors were made in communicating the findings of the study to the public.
The final draft report of the HTDS study was released last January. It indicated that there was no association between levels of radioactive iodine exposure from Hanford and thyroid disease rates in the exposed population. Many citizens were upset about the negative findings of the study. Shortly after the release of the draft, the CDC requested that the National Academies' NRC make an independent appraisal of the study methodology and how the results were interpreted and presented to the public.
The text of the full report of the academies' review is available at http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9738.html.
Shore, Chair, NRC's Subcommittee to review the HTDS final results and draft report, told the CDC Advisory Committee for Energy-Related Epidemiologic Research that the study was well-designed, but the study's researchers reported the findings as more conclusive than they were. He also said his subcommittee found that a number of other errors were made in communicating the findings of the study to the public.
The final draft report of the HTDS study was released last January. It indicated that there was no association between levels of radioactive iodine exposure from Hanford and thyroid disease rates in the exposed population. Many citizens were upset about the negative findings of the study. Shortly after the release of the draft, the CDC requested that the National Academies' NRC make an independent appraisal of the study methodology and how the results were interpreted and presented to the public.
The text of the full report of the academies' review is available at http://books.nap.edu/catalog/9738.html.