Adult leukemia following diagnostic x-rays

Bross, et al, have developed a new statistical methodology to re-analyze data from a tri-state leukemia study. They report adult leukemia and heart disease to be related to diagnostic x-ray skin doses of between 0.1 and 10 rad, and conclude that previous risk estimates underestimate radiation hazards by a factor of 10. Although we agree that medical x-rays should not be performed without reason and that certain host factors may increase susceptibility to radiation effects, we feel that the conclusions of the article (e.g., that a dose-effect curve was demonstrated in the one rad range) are not justified by the analysis or data reported