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 ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************