Radiation Hype
Last month one of the largest natural disasters of our lifetime struck Japan in the form of a 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami comparable to the one that hit Thailand and Indonesia several years ago. Unfortunately a nuclear power plant was in the path of destruction. From Day One, it seems that almost all the news coverage overlooked the terrible human toll (perhaps 18,000 dead and half a million homeless) and focused on the nuclear plant and the radiation disaster supposedly unfolding. There is no explanation for this distorted reporting than the anti-nuclear bias of the ruling elite and its mainstream media toadies.
During the five years in which I served as Director of Medical Education at Valley Presbyterian Hospital, I always kept a couple of talks in my back pocket in case the speaker didn’t show up for our Tuesday conference. One that I actually gave was on smallpox, which after 9-11 became the subject of renewed interest as a terrorist weapon. The other was on the phenomenon of hormesis, which you may have read about recently if you’re an Ann Coulter fan.
The term refers to a remarkable ability of humans, and presumably all species, to deal with sub-lethal doses of not just radiation but also toxins of other kinds. The atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed tens of thousands of people; that was their purpose. However, the Commission setup by our government to study long-term effects found amazing results. In the outer circles of the blasts, miles away from the explosion, cancer rates were lower- much lower- than what would have been expected over subsequent decades. In the 80s the Chernobyl explosion occurred in Russia. As you would expect from a Soviet project, there were no safety precautions taken beforehand; reactors were not shielded, construction was sloppy and the response of the government was indifferent. However, fewer than fifty people were killed, and since the blast a generation ago there have been no excess deaths in the surviving population. The area around it still looks like a moonscape, but so does the area in Canada where nickel is mined to build those batteries so Americans can feel virtuous by driving Priuses, which are actually more destructive to the environment than SUVs.
Some forty years ago a natural “experiment” occurred on the island of Taiwan. Huge housing units were built and occupied by thousands of families in one busy area. It was then discovered that radioactive cobalt had been incorporated in the steel. The authorities disclosed the problem to the public but decided to study the effects rather than tear down the entire edifice. Again, cancer rates among the exposed people have been remarkably lower than normal.
In parts of the world included little-publicized places in the United States, people pay premium dollars to go to spas located deep underground where they are exposed on purpose to high levels of the radioactive gas radon. Many people swear their arthritis has been cured and they’ve never felt better. Now, I see ridiculous claims for all sorts of weird treatments every day on the internet, and I’m not rushing off to Montana for the cure. But the general principle seems to hold consistently that we can improve our ability to deal with the environment by experience, just as our immune systems respond to antigens by building resistance. Leakage from the Japanese reactor has the environmental extremists yelling “The sky is falling” as they always do, but my sense of the threat is that except for the poor souls who drowned when the tsunami struck the plant, there will be no excess deaths, the food supply will be safe, and the resourceful Japanese will recover. Leaking radiation from a damaged but well-constructed nuclear plant is to an atomic bomb what a lava lamp is to a volcano.
Radiation is with us every day. Airline pilots are exposed to considerable levels at the altitudes they prowl, but no ill effects have been noted. The harnessing of radiation has benefited mankind tremendously in medical diagnosis. I hope nuclear power will not be set back by this event because we need it so badly.