Fukushima, Japan: Medical Media Indictment

Dr. Mark Sircus, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

If you want the latest nuclear news, Arnie Gundersen is the one to listen to. He is on a mission of truth and can be depended upon for valuable and balanced information. That is not the case with anyone else I will mention in this post.

Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in mid July that the catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NRC), caused by an earthquake and tsunami in March, appears to have resulted in “no immediate health impacts.” One wonders when one listens to the video of Jaczko speaking if he knows anything about anything but certainly it’s clear that he understands nothing about nuclear medicine.

Dr. Jay Lehr, an editor of the Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia, told CNS News that the most significant impact on human health as a result of the Fukushima disaster would result from stress, not radiation. With the way some people speak and think about radiation one would wonder why they even bother to wear protective suits around Fukushima. Might as well set up a resort or detoxification clinic near Fukushima to handle the stress for the locals since the radiation really is nothing to worry about!

If you wanted to do that in the Tokyo area it might be safe, but as long as you did not have the clinic on the ground level. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the ground seems to have 58 times the amount of radiation than the air; and that does make sense since radioactive particles do settle to the ground. You would think that the government would be warning people to take extra precautions with their footwear by telling them not to bring their shoes into the house. But that is not happening.

In Philadelphia they have found higher levels of radioactive iodine in their water systems than anywhere else in the United States and baby deaths did increase dramatically after the onset of Fukushima. Worrisome levels of iodine-131 had been detected long before the Fukushima disaster in several Philadelphia drinking-water samples taken as part of an obscure monitoring program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Seems like the medical industry, as I maintain, is competing with the nuclear power industry to see who can pollute the most number of people’s bodies by injecting radioactive iodine as a contrast dye for many medical tests, and also as a treatment for thyroid cancer. In fact radioactive iodine is called “the magic bullet” for thyroid cancer treatment even though it’s really a “tragic and very toxic bullet.”

Nationwide, the number of thyroid cancer cases is rising. But because most are early-stage cancers, “the tendency is to treat less with radioactive iodine,” said James. A. Fagin, chief of endocrinology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, and president-elect of the American Thyroid Association. Interestingly, Dr. Fagin is saying that they are treating with less insanity for it is insane to treat thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine because radioactive iodine can actually cause thyroid cancer. Doctors and everyone else are kidding themselves about iodine. Ninety-five percent of the public are deficient in this most vital mineral, putting them at risk. American’s thyroids are sponges—sitting ducks for radiation contamination from radioactive iodine.

There has been a sharp unexplained rise in iodine-131 levels at three Tokyo sewage plants. With an eight-day half-life, the iodine-131 should be long gone by now if you believe what the government is saying. TEPCO has probably injected many gases in to the reactors recently that would spread more radiation through a wider area in Japan. It could also come from infiltration of rainwater into sewers. If it is in the waste sludge, it means that people were exposed to it.

You know it used to be that when someone was in the hospital and got radioactive treatments of any kind, doctors and nurses had to be very careful around them and in fact they were treated like lepers. Because of the dangers to the environment and other people, these patients were kept in the hospital for a specific length of time; they wouldn’t be let them near family or children especially; their wastes were handled with special procedures, etc. Now they let these patients out quickly and are even thinking about raising the limits of “safe exposure.” Doctors, health officials and the federal government do not want to even consider that the increases in thyroid cancers are being caused by the doctors themselves who are injecting radioactive iodine.

The medical media has been quite pathetic through these four months of live fission from multiple core meltdowns and has not wasted any opportunity dragging their experts out to center stage telling us not to worry and that there is no reason to load up on supplements.

Dr. William McBride, professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Cancer Center was quoted by the LA Times telling people not to bother doing anything to protect themselves. “There’s no evidence, he says, that anything at a health food store or grocery store could really protect you from nuclear fallout. And in some cases, he warns, the remedies could be more dangerous than the radiation,” published the Times.

The Christian Science Monitor is full of good news about Fukushima saying, “The crippled reactors, three of which went into partial meltdowns, are stable more than four months after the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked the north, says the government and plant operator. Now the reactors appear to be on track for a cold shutdown. If the short-term prognosis for Fukushima has improved, Japan’s leaders have conceded that the cleanup and decommissioning could take much longer than expected.” Actually so bad is the disaster that the Japanese government is now turning itself away from nuclear power, or at least that is the prime minister’s most recent announcement.

Evacuation orders are currently issued when residents are at risk of receiving radiation of at least 50 millisieverts per hour, but the government said that arrangement assumed only brief exposure. What is happening in Japan is constant, chronic exposure that seems guaranteed to be around for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Chronic and persistent exposures need to be calculated into the far future meaning people are going to have to be removed from wider and wider areas. “The standard does not take into account the effects of accumulative exposure,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said. “We are discussing what standards to use for accumulative radiation.”

The disaster is hitting the Japanese where it really hurts by destroying their crops and fish, and we now have contaminated meat from cows in the area. This is only the beginning and we should know what to expect—governments and the media will not be honest with the public—and this is just another in what is destined to be many nuclear incidents.

We have already had too many catastrophic nuclear accidents and we are destined to have more, probably many more as earthquakes continue to push and shove on fault lines. It just turns out that one of the nuclear industry’s favorite places to build these nightmarish nuclear plants is on fault lines. Aren’t we lucky to have governments that allow them to do that?

I wrote both books, Nuclear Toxicity Syndrome and Iodine, to address the dangers we now face. If you don’t feel like worrying or doing anything about the radiation that continues to circulate around the northern hemisphere then worry about the mercury, which is also circulating around in much the same way radiation does. Just living in a city or downwind of any coal-fired power station or municipal incinerator will do you in as will chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

People do not worry enough about what causes cancer thus almost everyone has a close friend or family member who has died either from cancer or the very aggressive and toxic treatments used by oncologists that rarely cures the disease. Cancer gets more difficult to treat the further out of control it gets until only miracles can pull people out of their decline.

Dr. Mark Sircus is a natural health expert and self-sufficiency advocate.  He is the author of several must-read books including titles such as Survival Medicine For the 21st Century, Winning the War on Cancer, and Humane Pediatrics.  You can find all of Mark’s informative articles at his website IMVA.