Collective Dose Fallacy

I have spent more than 45 years working in a variety of areas in nuclear science and technology, with a number of them in radiation protection. It was a pleasure to read Theodore Rockwell's article (Opinion, The Scientist, March 3, 1997, page 9). It is high time for the scientific community to look at the data supporting the Linear No-Threshold model (of which there are none) and the data supporting a threshold model (of which there are a great number).

Also, the concept of "collective dose" does not make any sense when you apply an example like aspirin. That is, a dose of 100 aspirins to one individual will cause that individual's death, but that does not mean that if you give each of 100 people one aspirin, then there will be one death in that group of people.

Thank you for printing Rockwell's article.

Charles C....