Christopher Busby

Furthermore, it was established in 1906 (The Law of Bergonié and Tribondeau) that cells in the G2 Phase are more resistant to radiation than cells in the M Phase (Radiosensitivity and Cell cycle).

The Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) report, on which Busby was one of twelve members, exhaustively examined the biological plausibility of SET and commissioned an independent consultant to conduct a literature review.

Christopher Busby (born 1 September 1945) is a British scientist primarily studying the health effects of internal ionising radiation.

Busby is a director of Green Audit Limited, a private company, and scientific advisor to the Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC).

He claims that these theories demonstrate that the widely accepted linear no-threshold (LNT) model substantially underestimates the risk of low level radiation (the LNT model is largely constructed from the 1958 to 2001 'Life Span Study' of the 120,321 Japanese Atomic Bomb Survivors (hibakusha (被爆者)) who were exposed to a powerful external burst of neutron and gamma radiation).

Busby claims that in the low dose regime, radiation moderately above background causes more cancer than much higher levels of radiation i.e. a biphasic (bimodal) curve; a claim based on the work of Russian biologist Elena Burlakova.

From 1987 onwards Busby has written on the health effects of ionizing radiation and developed what he has named "second event theory" (SET) and "photoelectric effect theory" (PET).

Busby initially proposed the Second Event Theory (SET) in 1995, in his self-published book Wings of Death: Nuclear Pollution and Human Health claiming that isotopes which decay sequentially, emitting two or more particles in a short decay chain, have far greater genotoxic effects than predicted by the LNT model.

According to this theory, the 90Sr-90Y decay chain would be ~30 times more carcinogenic than predicted by LNT.

According to SET, primary exposure to a beta particle alters a cell to the G2 Phase, which Busby claims would render the cell highly radio-sensitive and more prone to malignant changes when exposed to a second particle.

CERRIE also considered and rejected by 10 to 2 consensus the biphasic (bimodal) curve of Burlakova et al. (1999), due to the study's "substantial shortcomings"; tables were so ambiguous that the risk-dose response could be interpreted as linear, biphasic or even promoting health (radiation hormesis).

SET was criticised by Cox & Edwards (2000) who stated that if Busby's "biologically implausible" theory was correct and all irradiated cells undergo transformation to the G2 Phase, it would cause an increased risk factor of just 1.3 times and predict, on the contrary, substantial risk reduction at low doses for single emitting radioisotopes.

Busby was a member of the British government sponsored Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters (CERRIE), which operated from 2001 to 2004.

In 2001, he was appointed to the UK Ministry of Defence Oversight Committee on Depleted Uranium (DUOB).

Busby served on the UK Government's Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE), which operated between 2001 and 2004, and included medical professionals, scientists, delegates from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and Richard Wakeford representing the nuclear industry.

Busby ultimately disagreed with the committee's conclusions and published a "minority report" with another committee member from LLRC.

On the LLRC website page selling the minority report, it's claimed (without citation) that north Sweden cancer rates have increased by 40% since Chernobyl.

Between 2003 and 2007 he was a Fellow of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Liverpool, in the Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Biology, and he was visiting professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences until his retirement in 2012 University of Ulster.

He was then Guest Researcher at Jacobs University Bremen for a year and is currently Scientific Director of Environmental Research SIA in Riga, Latvia.

Busby is a former National Speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party of England and Wales.

In 2004 CERRIE rejected the SET by a 10 to 2 majority consensus (Busby and non-scientist Richard Bramhall, dissented).

The rejection was made for following reasons:

A doctoral dissertation from 2007 was reported as saying that the area "has shown a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of cancer".

Antone Brooks (former Technical Research Director of the US Department of Energy's Low Dose Radiation Research Program) has also had differences with Busby.

In a 14 March broadcast on BBC, Busby was interviewed along with Ian Fells, and characterised the accident as "exactly the same scenario" as Chernobyl.

While admitting that the containment structure for Fukushima Dai-ichi was more much advanced than that at Chernobyl, he claimed there could be "nuclear explosion" rather than (as reported) a hydrogen explosion, if fuel elements had melted down and collected at the bottom of the vessel.

He also asserted that radiation levels measured at a reactor north of Fukushima Dai-ichi (i.e. Onagawa) indicated that "up to 100 kilometers away, we are getting concentrations of plutonium, cesium and iodine" (sic – presumably radionuclides thereof) released from Fukushima Dai-ichi, making the releases comparable in his opinion to Chernobyl, in terms of human health impact.

In response to Fells' characterisation of the worst immediate effects being loss of power to an advanced industrial society, Busby said "this is a radiological catastrophe already", asserting in particular that plutonium releases were a major cause of concern.

Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Busby established a television and internet presence where he discussed the risks of ionizing radiation and the Japanese Government's handling of the disaster.

A Japanese language website marketed tests and a mineral supplement (dubbed an "anti-radiation" pill, and condemned by leading scientists as "useless") that Busby advised could mitigate the effects of ingested radioisotopes.

Busby obtained a BSc in Chemistry with First Class Honours from the University of London.

He later gained a PhD in chemical physics at the University of Kent, researching Raman spectro-electrochemistry.

In 2011, Busby began selling a minority report for £25 on his website, in which he claimed that cancer risk from internal exposures to low doses of radiation is 300 times greater than predicted under the LNT model, that the LNT model is meaningless, and that cancer incidence rates in Sweden and Belarus increased by 40% since Chernobyl.

Later work by Busby focused on the health effects of ingested depleted uranium particles and the photoelectric effect theory (PET).

The photoelectric effect theory proposes that ingested uranium particles vastly increase the potency of natural background radiation, by 500 to 1000 times, via the photoelectric effect.

On 30 March 2011, Busby first appeared on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) stating that the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster was worse than being reported.

However, subsequent computer simulations by Pattison (2013) indicate that radiation enhancement via the photoelectric effect is minute, the radiation enhancement effect due to one 10 μm-sized DU particle in 1 cm3 of tissue is just 2 in 10 million greater than a particle not being present.

Busby is the author of two self-published books on cancer incidence in Wales, Wings of Death and Wolves of Water.

The books were criticised in the Journal of Radiological Protection as "erroneous in consequence of various mistakes".

According to Richard Wakeford, the editor-in-chief of the journal, a fellow CERRIE committee member representing the nuclear industry, and a specialist in the health effects of low-dose radiation (formerly with British Nuclear Fuels), Busby's work is "Deeply flawed".