Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 79
10
Conclusions
The committee explored in detail the feasibility of an epidemiologic study
examining the association between adverse reproductive outcomes and paternal
exposure to ionizing radiation. Such a study would be of great interest not only
to the 210,000 veterans exposed to atomic weapons radiation but also to many
other individuals who have received low doses of radiation at their places of
employment or elsewhere. The committee's assessment is that it will be ex-
tremely difficult, if not impossible, to find and contact a sufficiently high and
representative percentage of veterans' families, to establish a good measure of
dose for each veteran, to identify and accurately document reproductive prob-
lems that occurred over a fifty-year interval, and to measure other factors that
cause reproductive problems and therefore might confound any observed rela-
tionship between radiation exposure and reproductive problems. These difficul-
ties become even more acute with regard to the grandchildren of these veterans.
The cohort of Atomic Veterans does not provide a practical opportunity for a
scientifically adequate and epidemiologically valid test of the hypothesis that
paternal exposure to ionizing radiation has increased the frequency of adverse
reproductive outcomes among their children and grandchildren. The committee
recognizes the real concerns of the Atomic Veterans as expressed by their repre-
sentatives, but it must conclude that epidemiologic studies cannot adequately
address these concerns.
79
OCR for page 80
Representative terms from entire chapter:
paternal exposure
