awareness of possible danger ahead that lay behind
Australia's very quick response to the Thai crisis, and the Reserve Bank's
willingness to put funds from its balance sheet at the Government's disposal
to ensure that Australian participation was not delayed. It also explains why
Australia is the only country other than Japan to be a part of all three Asian
support packages – those for Thailand, Indonesia and Korea.

Australia has done what it can to help minimise the Asian fallout, but clearly events
have turned out worse than we had hoped for. The crisis has spread further
than was at first thought likely, it is resulting in larger falls in output
and employment in the countries concerned, and finally it has been compounded
by the relapse of the biggest Asian economy – Japan – into recession.
What startedconsisting of 120,321 exposed and non-exposed individuals selected from respondents to the national census of Japan in 1950 calling for survivors exposed to the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and from residential surveys in the cities after the national census. Mortality in this population has been investigated since the 1950s by collecting information through the national population registry (koseki) and death certificates obtained throughout Japan. Cancer incidence data was available from population-based cancer registries since 1957 in Hiroshima and since 1958 in Nagasaki ([@b17-ijmm-38-06-1623]). Next to the availability of these data, the large size, the presence of both genders and all ages, and well-characterized individual dose estimates makes this cohort a valuable source for risk estimation. Another cohort, the Adult Health Study (AHS), was established in 1958 and