Paternal Irradiation and Leukemia in Offspring

Lord and Hoyes (1) report the results from a series of mouse experiments in which the male mice were either injected with plutonium or exposed to γ radiation prior to the conception of offspring which were then treated with a known leukemogen, either methylnitrosourea (MNU) or γ radiation. They conclude that paternal preconception irradiation can influence the susceptibility of offspring to a leukemogenic agent, although they acknowledge that the interpretation of the results is not straightforward [see, in particular, their Fig. 2 (1)]. We wish to examine the cautious suggestion by Lord and Hoyes (1) that their findings might be relevant to the cluster of childhood leukemia that has occurred in the village of Seascale, adjacent to the Sellafield nuclear facility in the county of Cumbria, England. They refer to a paper by us (2) in this...