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To the Editor: 

Thank you for printing comments on my letter regarding the dangers of cumulative radiation; too bad no one responded to the gyst of it. There is no doubt that my views are not mainstream, but shouldn't be confused with local environmentalists now branded as hysterical by those who claim to have more scientific 'knowledge" than you or I. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand human health, you may chose to study nature. 

While scientists may be able to explain the composition of tritium or any other substance, they cannot explain the effects that these substances have on the human organism, especially with numbers and statistics. Fortunately, the human body does not operate according to the laws of science (if it did we'd be robots). The human body operates according to the laws of nature.  

Until we fully understand this, we will continue to be baffled as to why cancer, AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, etc...have reached such epidemic proportions, despite all the continued medical research being conducted at LBNL and elsewhere. $30,000,000 later, disease runs rampant and researchers cite the viciousness of cancer, rather than to re-evaluate their approach in light of such failure. The money continues to flow to find a 'cure."  

Cancer statistics, cited by David M. Smith, tell us very little; we all have different tolerance levels based on various factors, one of them being immune function. Since we have not determined the pre-existing health of the residents near LBNL, it makes no sense to come to any conclusion based on cancer rates alone. Certainly public policy should not be determined by such faulty, incomplete data. We should not be made guinea pigs nor our community turned into a scientific experiment based on numbers. 

Because my viewpoint differs from David A. Smith does not mean I am hysterical about tritium, have "no knowledge," that I need "education," have exhibited "no concern," and that I "provide(s) ammunition to...conservatives and corporations." It means that I reject the commonly held belief that life itself can explained from this overly-scientific approach that dominates our world today. It is not tritium, per se, or any other substance that is so dangerous; it's our own arrogance.  

Michael Bauce 

Berkeley