The letter that the TSA doesn't want you to read
Once again, this letter was written by Drs John Sedat Ph.D., David Agard, Ph.D., Marc Shuman, M.D., Robert Stroud, Ph.D., all from the University of California.
Here is their background as described in the letter:
Dr. Sedat is a Professor Emeritus in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, with expertise in imaging. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The other cosigners include Dr Marc Shuman, and internationally well known and respected cancer expert and UCSF professor, as well as Drs David Agard and Robert Stroud, who are UCSF Professors, X-ray crystallographers, imaging experts and NAS members.
Here are the highlights of the letter along with my comments and explanations:
"We are writing to call your attention to serious concerns about the potential health risks of the recently adopted whole body backscatter X-ray airport security scanners. This is an urgent situation as these X-ray scanners are rapidly being implemented as a primary
screening step for all air travel passengers."
Translation: The naked body scanners may be dangerous to your health.
"Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has
been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed."
Translation: The safety of these naked body scanners has never been demonstrated, and especially not by an independent panel of qualified scientists.
"The physics of these X-rays is very telling: the X-rays are Compton-Scattering off outer molecule bonding electrons and thus inelastic (likely breaking bonds)."
Translation: The ionizing radiation emitted by these devices can alter your DNA.
"Unlike other scanners, these new devices operate at relatively low beam energies (28keV). The majority of their energy is delivered to the skin and the underlying tissue. Thus, while the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high."
Translation: The danger of these devices is significantly higher than what might be assumed from the TOTAL radiation emissions. This is why those who claim "you get more radiation just from flying" are flat-out wrong in their conclusions.
"This comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X-rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent
tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight / volume, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high."
Translation: This is a further explanation of why the ionizing radiation from the naked body scanners may pose a much higher risk of cancer (two orders of magnitude higher!) than what might be assumed from the total radiation emissions.
"In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist. A search,
ultimately finding top FDA radiation physics staff, suggests that the relevant radiation
quantity, the Flux [photons per unit area and time (because this is a scanning device)]
has not been characterized. Instead an indirect test (Air Kerma) was made that
emphasized the whole body exposure value, and thus it appears that the danger is low
when compared to cosmic rays during airplane travel and a chest X-ray dose.
In summary, if the key data (flux-integrated photons per unit values) were available, it
would be straightforward to accurately model the dose being deposited in the skin and adjacent tissues using available computer codes, which would resolve the potential
concerns over radiation damage."
Translation: The FDA screwed up the safety testing (gee, really?) by assuming the emitted radiation was distributed across the entire body rather than focused on the skin.
It brings up the question: When and how were these devices ever approved by the FDA anyway? Naked body scanners are clearly "medical devices" as they emit X-rays that penetrate body tissue. Did the FDA ever conduct long-term clinical trials demonstrating the safety of these devices? (Of course not.)
to read full article,
http://www.naturalnews.com/030607_naked_body_scanners_radiation.htmlAnother thing that has become abundantly clear in all this is that the real terror threat is the TSA itself. "Terrorism" is defined as using fear to achieve a political purpose. I can't think of a better example of that than the TSA and its fear-mongering campaign engineered to justify its huge power-grabbing expansion of personnel and authority. This is a government agency that had fewer than 200 employees a few years ago but now directs over 60,000 agents (it's like a whole new army of domestic secret police).
The fact that this thought appears in your head (and admit it, it does) should be a huge red flag that you now live in a police state. People who live in truly free societies do not fret over being molested by their own government security agents.
Think about it: The way you and I feel in a TSA security line in many way reflects a small part of the way a Jewish citizen must have felt in Germany, in the 1930's, when a Nazi party member knocked on their door and demanded to see their papers. You never know: Am I going to be arrested? Molested? Detained? Deported? Or even killed?
Remember: Terrorism hinges on the ability of those in power to leverage fear in order to achieve their political goals. And right now, that seems to be a word-for-word blueprint for what the TSA is doing to the American people.
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030607_naked_body_scanners_radiation.html#ixzz173Z1NAgp"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson.
And Winston Churchill famously said:
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
President Ronald Reagan: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help you.
Learn more:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030607_naked_body_scanners_radiation.html#ixzz173b4RIkt
