A GLOWING REPORT ON
RADIATION
By Ann Coulter
AnnCoulter.com
With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami
that have devastated Japan, the only good news is
that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the
nuclear power plants is now probably much less
likely to get cancer.
This only seems counterintuitive because of media
hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince
Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There
is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess
radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.
As The New York Times science section reported in
2001, an increasing number of scientists believe
that at some level -- much higher than the minimums
set by the U.S. government -- radiation is good for
you. "They theorize," the Times said, that "these
doses protect against cancer by activating cells'
natural defense mechanisms."
Among the studies mentioned by the Times was one in
Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected
to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of
breast cancer than the general population.
And there are lots more!
A $10 million Department of Energy study from 1991
examined 10 years of epidemiological research by the
Johns Hopkins School of Public Health on 700,000
shipyard workers, some of whom had been exposed to
10 times more radiation than the others from their
work on the ships' nuclear reactors. The workers
exposed to excess radiation had a 24 percent lower
death rate and a 25 percent lower cancer mortality
than the non-irradiated workers.
Isn't that just incredible? I mean, that the
Department of Energy spent $10 million doing
something useful? Amazing, right?
In 1983, a series of apartment buildings in Taiwan
were accidentally constructed with massive amounts
of cobalt 60, a radioactive substance. After 16
years, the buildings' 10,000 occupants developed
only five cases of cancer. The cancer rate for the
same age group in the general Taiwanese population
over that time period predicted 170 cancers.
The people in those buildings had been exposed to
radiation nearly five times the maximum "safe" level
according to the U.S. government. But they ended up
with a cancer rate 96 percent lower than the general
population.
Bernard L. Cohen, a physics professor at the
University of Pittsburgh, compared radon exposure
and lung cancer rates in 1,729 counties covering 90
percent of the U.S. population. His study in the
1990s found far fewer cases of lung cancer in those
counties with the highest amounts of radon -- a
correlation that could not be explained by smoking
rates.
Tom Bethell, author of the
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science
At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder,
people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining
pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the
EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50
people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from
chronic pain and autoimmune disorders.
Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at
Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the
deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the
plant who died in the explosion. Although news
reports generally claimed a few thousand people died
as a result of Chernobyl -- far fewer than the tens
of thousands initially predicted -- that hasn't been
confirmed by studies.
Indeed, after endless investigations, including by
the United Nations, Manhattan Project veteran
Theodore Rockwell summarized the reports to Bethell
in 2002, saying, "They have not yet reported any
deaths outside of the 30 who died in the plant."
Even the thyroid cancers in people who lived near
the reactor were attributed to low iodine in the
Russian diet -- and consequently had no effect on
the cancer rate.
Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor,
who were not evacuated, are "thriving," according to
scientists quoted in the April 28, 2002 Sunday Times
(UK).
Dr. Dade W. Moeller, a radiation expert and
professor emeritus at Harvard, told The New York
Times that it's been hard to find excess cancers
even from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, particularly
because one-third of the population will get cancer
anyway. There were about 90,000 survivors of the
atomic bombs in 1945 and, more than 50 years later,
half of them were still alive. (Other scientists say
there were 700 excess cancer deaths among the
90,000.)
Although it is hardly a settled scientific fact that
excess radiation is a health benefit, there's
certainly evidence that it decreases the risk of
some cancers -- and there are plenty of scientists
willing to say so. But Jenny McCarthy's vaccine
theories get more press than Harvard physics
professors' studies on the potential benefits of
radiation. (And they say conservatives are
anti-science!)
I guess good radiation stories are not as exciting
as news anchors warning of mutant humans and scary
nuclear power plants -- news anchors who, by the
way, have injected small amounts of poison into
their foreheads to stave off wrinkles. Which is to
say: The general theory that small amounts of toxins
can be healthy is widely accepted --except in the
case of radiation.
Every day Americans pop multivitamins containing
trace amount of zinc, magnesium, selenium, copper,
manganese, chromium, molybdenum, nickel, boron --
all poisons.
They get flu shots. They'll drink copious amounts of
coffee to ingest a poison: caffeine. (Back in the
'70s, Professor Cohen offered to eat as much
plutonium as Ralph Nader would eat caffeine -- an
offer Nader never accepted.)
But in the case of radiation, the media have
Americans convinced that the minutest amount is
always deadly.
Although reporters love to issue sensationalized
reports about the danger from Japan's nuclear
reactors, remember that, so far, thousands have died
only because of Mother Nature. And the survivors may
outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed,
radiation-free America.
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