A Hypothetical Stochastic Mechanism of Radiation Effects in Single Cells

This paper is a sequel to an earlier one (Neyman & Puri 1976), which deals with a hypothetical structural stochastic model of radiation effects in living cells. This model incorporates two important details of the mechanism overlooked in its mathematical treatment by the previous workers. The first is that the passage of a single ‘primary’ radiation particle generates a ‘cluster’ of secondaries which can produce ‘hits’ that damage the living cells. The second detail concerns the time scales of radiation damage and of the subsequent repair. The events of arrival of a primary particle, its generation of secondary particles and their causing ‘hits’ on the sensitive targets within the cells, all occur for all practical purposes instantly. On the other hand the subsequent changes in the damaged cell, such as repair, appear to require measurable amounts of time. While the biological and physical justifications for some of the underlying assumptions of the model were discussed in the previous paper referred to above, the present paper is concerned mainly with the mathematical details and also with how the model attempts to explain some of the empirical findings available in the literature.