Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters

MINORITY REPORT published [Click here for flier - a printable pdf)
CERRIE MINORITY REPORT; Minority Report of the UK Department of Health / Department of Environment (DEFRA) Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (CERRIE);
with additional material
Richard Bramhall (CERRIE member), Chris Busby (CERRIE member), Paul Dorfman (CERRIE Secretariat).
Introduction by Michael Meacher MP,
Sosiumi Press Aberystwyth. ISBN 0-9543081-1-5

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Publication of the CERRIE Final Report finally happened on October 20th 2004 (over a year late). The report however excludes LLRC's Dissenting Statement. See

• Sunday Times report of 1st August 2004,
• Independent 8th September 2004
• Guardian 8th September 2004
• BBC Radio 4 You and Yours Friday 10th September 2004.

The launch of the main report was covered by

• Guardian (Correction - Busby and Bramhall did not resign)
• Channel 4 News
• BBC

On Friday 22nd October 2004 the Guardian's Comment and Analysis carried an article called Counting the Dead, highlighting the increase of infant leukaemia after Chernobyl
CERRIE's Chairman ("Professor" Dudley Goodhead) and COMARE's Chairman Bryn Bridges responded in The Observer (24th October), with a disgraceful and mendacious personal attack on two members of CERRIE and the Minister who commissioned it. Click here for more information and links to the text of the articles

The Minority Report is available at £UK25 (30 US dollars, 30 Euro). Email to: SiteManager@llrc.org to order. Students and campaigners can apply for copies at a concessionary price. Please email and tell us who you are and how much you can pay.

Link to Executive Summary
Link to more detail of the background to the Minority Report
Link to page on infant leukaemia in several countries after Chernobyl - part of LLRC press briefing on launch of CERRIE Main Report
Link to simple exposition of where all this gets us.

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Earlier background (from 2003)

During arguments about the Euratom Directive and the LLRC campaign to oppose transposition of the nuclear waste charter into UK law, LLRC developed a dialogue with the UK Environment Minister, Michael Meacher. Following meetings with Chris Busby, Richard Bramhall and Molly Scott Cato, the Minister agreed to set up, jointly with the Department of Health, a new government committee whose remit would be to examine disagreements about the safety of the health risk models which presently underpin the regulation of discharges of man-made radiation to the environment. With the failure of the government science advice committee on Mad Cow Disease very much in mind, the Minister agreed to set up the new committee, CERRIE, with an oppositional or dialogical structure, as suggested in Molly’s book I don’t know much about Science (Aberystwyth: Green Audit, 2000). This meant having four members from the radical side, four from NRPB or the nuclear industry and four ‘neutrals’. The Chair of this committee was Prof. Dudley Goodhead and the secretariat was presumed neutral. The final report was defined at the outset as containing all sides of any argument together with clear statements about any disagreements and recommendations for research which would help clear up these points.

The time and energy CERRIE has taken up since it began in late 2001 has stretched LLRC's resources. This explains why we have not reported on this ground breaking development more fully. In the last issue of Radioactive Times we drew attention to the way in which the process has been subverted (see this link to Rat report).

In July 2003 the Committee held a three day workshop at St Catherine's College Oxford (July 21 - 23 2003). On this site we have LLRC's presentations (see this link to LLRC's CERRIE Workshop material.

Link to Radioactive Times Volume 6, Number 1 (May 2005), which reports as much of the truth about this committee's bizarre proceedings as any normal person could take in without suffering a brain haemorrhage.

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Link to CERRIE website