Slouching Towards Oblivion

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Upside Down And Backwards

Every time something happens that contradicts the conventional wisdom, we get a whole squad of spokesmodels who swarm to the airwaves trying to countervail the obvious.

The double whammy of earthquake and tsunami is causing a major problem at the Fukushima nuke plant that threatens to become a full-blown catastrophe. People look at what's going on there, and start to have some doubts about nuclear energy here in the US; which threatens the profitability of some very powerful commercial interests - and that simply won't do. The thinking of the citizenry must be brought back under control.

Here's Ann Coulter to argue that doses of radiation which are higher than the gubmint recommends are not only safe, but good for ya! And, of course, Baghdad Bill tries to play the roll of skeptical journalist, but that's just part of the show. He "resists" Coulter's claims just enough to give her lots of chances to make the points she's being paid to make.



One minor problem with the study Coulter cites:
In popular treatments of radiation hormesis, a study of the inhabitants of apartment buildings in Taiwan has received prominent attention. The building materials had been accidentally contaminated with Cobalt-60 but the study found cancer mortality rates 96.4% lower than in the population as a whole. However, this study compared the relatively young irradiated population with the much older general population of Taiwan, which is a major flaw. A subsequent study by Hwang et al. (2006) found a significant exposure-dependent increase in cancer in the irradiated population, particularly leukemia in men and thyroid cancer in women, though this trend is only detected amongst those who were first exposed before the age of 30.

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