Eric Brown writes: “ Steve, if you're asking for evidence, you missed my 
point.  It's because of all the evidence we *DON'T* have that the "nothing 
but good" claim is 
preposterous.”

   Eric, I think the reason I may have missed your point was because I was 
thinking more of irradiation as it applies to getting rid of persistent 
diseases on used equipment, and not as it applies to irradiation of honey 
for consumption by humans.  As has been pointed out on this thread, the 
latter would be unnecessary, and in any case I don’t think that was what 
Jim Fischer was referring to in his post.

“As an aside, it should be noted that what evidence we do have is largely 
limited by (and potentially biased by) financial incentives to fund the 
research.”

I agree it is wise to be skeptical of studies that are done by non 
independent parties, but financial incentives can include fear of getting a 
class action suit against you if it is shown that you did not perform due 
diligence before introducing a product that could harm consumers.  I don’t 
think you can automatically throw out studies of this kind, but they can 
and should be subjected to the highest level of peer review that good 
science demands.

“the reasonableness of maintaining doubts about the safety of irradiation 
in the absence of complete knowledge (omniscience), especially given the 
newness of the technology.”

Maintaining a healthy degree of skepticism is always a good idea in 
anything where “omniscience” is lacking.  However since complete certainty 
is seldom the case in anything (at least for me), rejecting or even calling 
into question, something that is new and presumably exists because of some 
potential benefit that it might offer, should require at least some 
evidence or basis for hypothesizing that it could be harmful under the 
prescribed conditions.  All I am saying is it would be nice to know if 
there are substantiated reasons to think either that a technology under 
discussion is potentially harmful or that it is absolutely 100% 
beneficial.  Stating that because asbestos turned out to be harmful, we 
should be suspicious of irradiation doesn’t get it for me, nor do I take it 
for granted that because Jim Fischer, a very knowledgeable guy, said it is 
nothing but beneficial, it must be so.

Steve Noble        

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