You should check the work by Suresh Rattan (http://origo.imsb.au.dk/~rattan/
or Medline). He's a leading expert in hormesis: how mild repeated stress by
harmful factors -- e.g. radiation, toxins -- can lead to lifespan increases.
There's a good deal of papers on the subject in the literature.
----------
>De : Brian Atkins <brian@posthuman.com>
>À : extropians@extropy.org, transhumantech@egroups.com
>Objet : Aging, cancer, and why radiation might be a good thing
>Date : Sam 14 avr 2001 7:18
>
>There is an interesting article in the March 17 New Scientist called "Cruel
>to be Kind" about the research work of Thomas Johnson. His lab site is here:
>
>http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/tj-lab/index.html
>
>unfortunately I can't find the article online so far. But it talks about
>how a little bit of radiation and other kinds of stress might actually be
>a good thing. For instance studies of thousands of nuclear workers that
>are exposed to something like 10 times the normal background radiation
>live on average 17% longer than "normal" people, and have HALF the amount
>of cancer. Also of interest is just the general fact that cancer used to
>be far less common in the 19th and earlier centuries. Some people claim
>this is due to people living longer in 20th century and other factors like
>widespread smoking, but could it also be due to the fact that we are living
>such stress-free (in terms of physical environment, not mental stress...)
>lives that our immune systems are slacking off? The EPA is running a study
>now on whether low-level radiation would be beneficial... by 2003 you may
>be encouraged to take vitamins containing radionuclides.
>--
>Brian Atkins
>Director, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>http://www.singinst.org/
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:46 MDT