A trilogy of books comprise the “Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation” (HEIR) Reports:
These books provide essential analysis that is only slowly being acknowledged and addressed in the medical field as well as technologies involving the use of ionizing radiation. As stated on the back side of Preventing Breast Cancer's Title Page:
Research in this field is not commercially viable. Most radiation research, analysis, and publications are sponsored by government grants. CNR neither requests nor would accept any government funding. The low price of the HEIR Reports is made possible by the foundations and individuals who generously support these scholarly works, and by the refusal of the author to accept royalties or payment of any other sort from CNR.
Dr. Gofman’s essay, Bio-Medical “Un-Knowledge” And Nuclear Pollution: A Common-Sense Proposal, was written on the occasion of his receiving the Right Livelihood Award in 1992 for his pioneering work in exposing the health effects of low-level radiation. In Section 4, Some Basic Rules of Believable Bio-Medical Research, he emphasized the necessity of A Trustworthy Database: A Sacred Obligation of Humanity:
A database from a major accident such as Chernobyl becomes a precious and irreplaceable health-resource for humanity. It seems reasonable to assert that humans have a sacred obligation to produce a database which meets the most rigorous standards for believability. By database, we mean the original raw data on radiation exposure-estimates and on the health status of participants in the database.
If the database itself is false—either from careless work or from intentional bias—it poisons every conclusion which emerges from it. A false database causes innocent analysts of such data to fill the medical journals and textbooks with un-knowledge. It renders all its users into agents of possibly deadly mis-information.
The Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Reports are ever more relevant today, decades after their publication, given ongoing catastrophes that can not be contained—much less “cleaned up”—of Fukushima, Chernobyl, Sellafield, as well as the continuing poisoning of the earth from uranium mining, the entire nuclear fuel cycle, and the intent by the governments of countries possessing nuclear weapons to modernize their respective nuclear arsenals.