DISCUSSION 



Dr. Fowler : Mr. Chairman, in his opening remarks. Dr. Loutit made the statement 

 that the Western world is seeing an increase in leukaemia at a steadily increasing 

 rate. I am sure that Dr. Loutit will agree with me that to an audience such as this, 

 which contains a good many non-medical members, that statement should be 

 qualified to read that — recorded incidence of leukaemia shows a rise in Western 

 nations. The statement depends upon vital statistics which are subject to certain 

 errors — death certificates often show the error of incorrect certification from diag- 

 nostic difficulties, and an error is introduced by the fact that the statisticians make no 

 difference between lymphatic leukaemia and myeloid leukaemia, which appear to 

 be two distinct diseases. Dr. Loutit's implication, of course, was that life is changing, 

 as he puts it, and we are being subjected probably to more radiation as a population. 

 But radiations appear to cause myeloid leukaemia rather than lymphatic leukaemia 

 in man, and lymphatic leukaemia is characteristic of old age, so that if you use the 

 age incidence as indicative of lengthy exposure to rays, you seem to me to have a 

 contradiction on pathology. I had hoped that perhaps Dr. Keogh would be present 

 today to tell you that a study of his on the population in Victoria shows distinctly 

 that over the last ten years there has not been an increase in the incidence of leukaemia. 



Dr. Loutit: I am glad that this point has been brought up because when I was 

 preparing the material I was unable to find any Australian statistics, and therefore 

 I noted in the script, at any rate, that my rise referred only to conditions in Western 

 Europe and the United States of America. It is heartening to learn that there is one 

 part of the Western world where in the last ten years there has apparently been no 

 rise. 



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