  We examine the one loop effective potential in a recently proposed (by
Chernodub et. al.) alternative approach to mass generation in the Higgs-gauge
sector of the electroweak theory, which does not make use of a classical Higgs
potential. We show that the interpretation given by these authors, of the Higgs
boson as the conformal degree of freedom in a background conformal gravity
theory, is invalidated because genuine one loop radiative effects cancel the
local functional measure of the Higgs field taken to be the basis of this
interpretation. Functional evaluation of the one loop effective Higgs potential
leads to a minimum away from the origin, thereby providing yet another
radiative mass generation scheme for weak gauge bosons. In arriving at the one
loop effective potential we make use of the gauge free formulation of
electrodynamics introduced by us earlier, which obviates any need for gauge
fixing.
