So who actually tries to make this a "debate"? The world effectively agrees (from your link):
"Reports by the United States National Research Council and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) argue[16] that there is no evidence for hormesis in humans and in the case of the National Research Council, that hormesis is outright rejected as a possibility despite population and scientific evidence.[17] Therefore, estimating Linear no-threshold model (LNT) continues to be the model generally used by regulatory agencies for human radiation exposure."
There's no even any logical proof that the radiation, that even in the lowest dosages destructs the DNA whenever it hits it, can make beneficial mutations instead of simply producing a cancer. That the "chemical agents" can be beneficial in low dosages isn't the issue as the radiation isn't a chemical agent but a DNA destruction agent.
Note: "Radiation hormesis is the hypothesis that low doses of ionizing radiation (within the region of and just above natural background levels) are beneficial."
You are misinformed. There is absolutely a debate about the effects of radiation at very low doses. This is not like Climate Change where there is a scientific consensus. Look at e.g. the 2009 April edition of Radiology, which featured the competing articles,"The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data" [1] and "Risks Associated with Low Doses and Low Dose Rates of Ionizing Radiation: Why Linearity May Be (Almost) the Best We Can Do" [2].
There is a "debate" like in all areas where there are big money interests. How much of scientists are on "there's nothing" and how much are on the "there's a debate" side?
Linearity in the observed statistics is absolutely not the same as "beneficial." Even if the statistics gets "fuzzy" for low enough doses who can actually claim the real benefits?
Also: the actual dosages matter. The low enough dosages are something where we simply don't have anything to compare to as "full absence". We get some level of radiation all the time. Even eating a banana gets you a little of the radioactive stuff. And we (as animals) get cancer all the time.
> The low enough dosages are something where we simply don't have anything to compare to as "full absence".
Which is exactly why the Wiki article I originally linked discusses laboratories specifically built to reduce background radiation in order to further this research. (Which is certainly a strange step to take, given that there's apparently no debate.)
No, independently of your claims, these proposed and never performed experiments theoretically could provide insight of how much of the observed mutations occur due to the existing radiation to which we're permanently exposed. We simply never observed organisms under so low radiation as the experiments planned to do.
Really? That very quote says that they reject it "despite population and scientific evidence."
And from further down in the article:
"Until the [...] uncertainties on low-dose response are resolved, the Committee believes that an increase in the risk of tumour induction proportionate to the radiation dose is consistent with developing knowledge and that it remains, accordingly, the most scientifically defensible approximation of low-dose response. However, a strictly linear dose response should not be expected in all circumstances."
There's a lot of confounding factors that make studying low-level radiation doses hard, including background radiation and the long timelines involved. I'm perfectly fine regulatory agencies working with an assumption of a LNT model until conclusive proof otherwise is provided. These agencies should be focused on safety and lean conservatively when in doubt. But attempting to call it not a debate is misleading at best.
Read the linked text, don't cherry pick. "Evidence" as in "one single study, contrary to all other studies" and as "the DNA was less damaged with the lower doses."
It's a long jump from "the destructed DNA is in percentages better repaired at low radiation doses than at higher ones" (if even that is provable, compared to simply "the DNA was less hit") to any reliable proof that the low doses are actually beneficial.
Again, who actually has the interest in presenting this unsupported "beneficial" claim as the "debate"?
I'm not cherry-picking anything; these are quotes from the published opinion. And both leave space for doubt, because the science is not conclusive. As I said, I support their decision; it's definitely a "better safe than sorry" situation.
And why does there have to be an agenda, as opposed to simply being an unresolved scientific point of contention? We don't know if there's life on Europa either, and I'm sure there's scientists on both sides. But I wouldn't say any of them have an agenda except for making the best educated guess they can, lacking any solid evidence one way or another.
EDIT: Also, to reply to an earlier point:
> There's no even any logical proof that the radiation, that even in the lowest dosages destructs the DNA whenever it hits it, can make beneficial mutations instead of simply producing a cancer.
It can also just kill the cell. If it kills problematic or pre-problematic cells more proportionately than healthy cells, then the net effect could be positive. Such disproportionate effects are the very basis of otherwise indiscriminate treatments like chemotherapy [0].
> And why does there have to be an agenda, as opposed to simply being an unresolved scientific point of contention?
Because there's no way that the radiation particles don't destruct DNA if they hit it. The "debaters" don't have any scientific explanation how it can be even "harmless" not to mention "beneficial."
Chemotherapy is just "let's kill enough of this guy's fast replicating cells to kill the cancer cells before they kill him." There's absolutely no any connection there to the radiation effects on the DNA.
We're constantly bombarded with radiation by simply living. We wouldn't make it to adult hood if all DNA damage was lethal. DNA damage is more likely to be repairable or outright kill a cell than cause cancer, just by pure numbers.
> Chemotherapy is just "let's kill enough percentage of this guys cells to kill the cancer cells before they kill him."
That's exactly what I said with "otherwise indiscriminate treatments." Our body is not a homogenous mass of one type of cell; different cells react differently. If cancer cells react disproportionately negatively to a substance than other cell types, then that substance could be useful to treat cancer. All forms of hormesis are basically an extension of this idea: that the harm done by a substance can be otherwise offset by positive effects.
> If cancer cells react disproportionately negatively to a substance
The radiation is not a "substance" it's a radiation, the destructive and completely non-selective bombardment of all the molecules reached by it. It's not a chemical effect at all, but a nuclear one.
I suggest that those who claim the additional low dosages are beneficial start to expose themselves to such. Somehow I doubt they'd do it. It's always for somebody else.
I was using the chemical process of chemotherapy as an example of a disproportionate effect of a process. The specific process chosen by me was immaterial to the argument, except that it was a convenient example of the effect I wished to describe. My use of the word substance was perhaps imprecise, as it is usually reserved for items with mass, which ionizing radiation does not have. But it was, again, immaterial to the idea of a disproportionate effect, which is what I was actually conveying. And I am choosing to label as pedantic the attempt to disarm my point by discussing the word chosen as opposed to the point being made.
Damaged DNA gets repaired. The proposed mechanism for hormesis is that low levels of radiation stimulate the repair process and get the immune system to step in earlier. I have no idea if this is really true, but it doesn't seem absurd on its face.
There's no observed instance of such "earlier repair," it's just an invented "hypothesis." Only the non-linearity is observed, and not even by majority of the experiments. The explanation for the observed non-linearity is that the single impacted cells simply have time to die (or be targeted by the white cells) at low levels, whereas at higher dosages there are enough cells for cancer to progress more often. It's just the game of probabilities at the levels at which we have enough noise (low enough doses).
"Reports by the United States National Research Council and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) argue[16] that there is no evidence for hormesis in humans and in the case of the National Research Council, that hormesis is outright rejected as a possibility despite population and scientific evidence.[17] Therefore, estimating Linear no-threshold model (LNT) continues to be the model generally used by regulatory agencies for human radiation exposure."
There's no even any logical proof that the radiation, that even in the lowest dosages destructs the DNA whenever it hits it, can make beneficial mutations instead of simply producing a cancer. That the "chemical agents" can be beneficial in low dosages isn't the issue as the radiation isn't a chemical agent but a DNA destruction agent.
Note: "Radiation hormesis is the hypothesis that low doses of ionizing radiation (within the region of and just above natural background levels) are beneficial."
No proof of that.