The major issue at Fukushima is with the spent fuel pool (SFP) at reactor 4 is that the structure has been heavily damaged by the earthquake and hydrogen explosions in reactors 3 and 4.  This combined with the risk of another magnitude 7+ quake is possible the time to deal with this could be running out.

From what I have heard, some have said the cleanup could take  30 years to complete, especially when you consider reclamation of Tokyo. Earthquake experts have said there is a 70% chance Japan will receive a 7+ earthquake in the next 4 years. I hate to say it but if it takes that long to secure the spent fuel, we are all in for it.

So what can we do if this happens? Anti-nuclear physician Dr. Helen Caldicott and nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen both recommend moving to the Southern Hemisphere.

Oh is that all…

So the question is what can be done to prevent the collapse of SFP 4, well probably nothing. They have reinforced the floor of the pool with concrete, but the concern is that the building which houses the fuel pool is damaged and could fail, taking the fuel pool down with it.

The only solution is to reduce the amount of radioactive material in the SFP when it does finally collapse. The process of moving the spent fuel (SFP 4 contains 1500+ fuel rods) and placing them into dry cask storage off site is not simple, nor cheap, some have estimated it to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The current plan is to create a concreat building around the damaged structure to operate a large crain in order to aid in the removal of spent fuel as the dry casks weigh tonnes.

But I guess the question to ask yourself is, if we do not spend the money now to avoid such a situation, what would it cost to deal with the fallout?? I would think that to be impossible.

Keep in mind, Tokyo has been found to have multiple hotspots from multiple independent sources, but instead of evacuating people, which of course would cost a lot of money, people are left to develop whatever cancers and just deal with it. Children, who are much more radiosensitive than Adults are playing in contaminated playgrounds in Tokyo, and a recent study showed 1/3 of japanese children tested, had lumps on their thyroid, only 10 months into the crisis.

Can we actually expect the nuclear industry to pay to clean up this business?? It was recently brought to my attention that when these plants are licensed, the owners are not required to even look at the costs associated with mass evacuations in the event of an accident similar to what has occurred in Japan. And another scary fact, the US has 31 Mark I or Mark II reactors, and experts have said they store much more spent fuel in the SFP than what we are seeing in Japan, the only bonus is that earthquakes aren’t as likely, but obviously not impossible.

From what I understand the issue is in deciding where to put the spent fuel, back when these plants were constructed there was supposed to be a large storage facility, I believe in Texas to house spent fuel. But surprise surprise, Texans don’t want that shit in their back yard. So instead we are risking irradiating the entire planet to save a few hundred million. Do you think some of these multi billionaires could spare a couple million or two to help the world out??

Another issue raised is that the collapse of SFP 4 could affect the common fuel pool, which has 6,375 more fuel rods located only 50 m from reactor 4, and would no doubt contain MOX fuel which has plutonium (the most deadly compound known to man). This would certainly cause a global catastrophe. The total number of fuel rods in the Fukushima site not in pressure vessels is 11,421. Are you scarred yet?

It amazes me in a time when governments seem to be falling over themselves to incite fear in the electorate, why isn’t this crisis being used to force legislation though using the fear to distract from the insanity of the legislation (ala patriot act). I guess that wouldn’t be condusive to the nuclear industry, and who do you think gives millions to congress.

Here are a few more facts I recently learned from Arnie:

- Spent rods only have to be cooled for a few years after being used, but reactor 4 has recently used fuel meaning that 4 more years of cooling is required in the spent fuel in reactor 4 SFP

If the water in the SFP goes dry, the spent rods will catch fire. Once the fire starts you cannot use water to put it out as this will cause the water to break into Hydrogen and Oxygen likely leading to another large hydrogen explosion.

- If a large release were to occur, workers at the site also risk radiation due to what is called “sky shine” where gamma rays are reflected of air molecules bathing the site in gamma radiation which goes right through the protective suits worn on the site.

Here is a link to Ron’s Page (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2111975_2111976_2111999,00.html), although if this is your first introduction to “Dr. NO” you must have been living under a dinosaur media rock.

“Hi Kids! Welcome to the Biotechnology Basics Activity Book. This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology — a really neat topic…. You will see that biotechnology is being used to figure out how to: [1] grow more food; [2] help the environment; and [3] grow more nutritious food that improves our health. As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world. Have fun!”

Okay so there are a few claims above lets look at them and the validity of each one:

Biotechnology is a really neat topic… lol just kidding…
GMOs (1)grow more food, (2)help the environment and (3)grow more nutritious food which improves health. GMOs also apparently help people live better lives and create a healthier world.

I think one of the easiest ones above to debunk is the claim to help the environment. Studies are now showing that Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn is actually contaminating the soil with Glyphosate which are actually part of the toxin which kills ‘pests’. The key here however is that the Glyphosate is not toxic to roundup ready plants, meaning if you grow round up ready corn once, you will not be able to grow anything else not roundup ready, for many years; although more study is obviously required, but not likely.

“[G]lyphosate stimulates the growth of fungi and enhances the virulence of pathogens such as Fusarium, and “can have serious consequences for sustainable production of a wide range of susceptible crops.” They warn that “Ignoring potential non-target detrimental side effects of any chemical, especially used as heavily as glyphosate, may have dire consequences for agriculture such as rendering soils infertile, crops non-productive, and plants less nutritious.”

When asked if glyphosate is “environmentally benign” as claimed by proponents, he answered “Absolutely not. That’s an outright mistaken notion. Glyphosate is the single most important agronomic factor predisposing some plants to both disease and toxins. These toxins can produce a serious impact on the health of animals and humans.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/glyphosatePoisonsCrops.php

The Mississippi Rice Council (MRC) has sounded a national alarm over damage caused by aerial drift of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup, calling for severely restricted aerial application.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24775

The claim that GMO plants are more nutritious is bunk as well:

One way in which glyphosate can affect human health is that “micronutrients such as manganese, copper, potassium, iron, magnesium, calcium, and zinc are essential to humans. All of them can be reduced in availability by glyphosate; so glyphosate treated GT plants as well as other plants exposed to glyphosate have less mineral nutrients. “We are seeing a reduction in nutrient quality [in our food].”

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/glyphosatePoisonsCrops.php

This is such a big issue, some are finding that GMOs are not only not as nutritious as non-GMOs, the features that are being engineered into organisms may themselves increase toxicity:

Monsanto’s pipeline of upcoming […] (GMOs) includes several new varieties specifically engineered with “stacked traits,” which means they contain multiple genetic modifications and built-in resistance traits as opposed to just one. […] these new multi-trait GMOs appear to be exponentially more harmful to humans than single-trait GMOs because of their synergistic toxicity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/035093_GMO_genetic_traits_toxicity.html

But the real kicker in the new research is the combined toxicity from exposure to both Roundup and Bt toxin which, according to the study, is tremendous. In their conclusion, researchers noted that “modified Bt toxins are not inert on nontarget human cells, and that they can present combined side-effects with other residues of pesticides specific to GM plants” (http://www.greenmedinfo.com).

It is even a lie that they grow more food, most farmers are seeing significantly lower yield on GMOs:

In 2010, Louisiana Rice Man noted that the pressure from bacterial panicle blight, leaf scald and leaf smut “was about the worst I have ever seen.” Though he attributes it to abnormally high temperatures, most likely the cause is glyphosate and/or glufosinate, which destroy soil microflora that assist in plant defense.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24775

Although, what research is being done paints a much bleaker picture than the misinformation found in the Brainwashing Childrens activity book.

Another scientist warning about glyphosate and featured in the film is Andres Carrasco. In 2010, he released a summary of scientific evidence on genetically modified soy and the herbicide glyphosate, and its impact on humans. In Science Under Attack, Carrasco reports that glyphosate causes brain, intestinal and heart defects in fetuses.

The summary includes a “study on human cells [which] found that all four Roundup formulations tested caused total cell death within 24 hours. These effects were found at dilution levels far below those recommended for agricultural use and corresponding to low levels of residues found in food or feed.”

Of note, “The adjuvants in Roundup increase the toxicity of glyphosate because they enable the herbicide to penetrate human cells more readily.”

But don’t expect research to be picking up any time soon, look away nothing to see here:

“Unfortunately, most researchers are forbidden to do work in the area. They don’t have access to isogenic lines [conventional and Roundup Ready plant lines that are otherwise genetically identical], the materials are denied to researchers.”

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/glyphosatePoisonsCrops.php

Furthermore, Monsanto claims that its injection of foreign DNA into its GM crops is also automatically safe because, get this, DNA is present in natural crops as well. Never mind that the injected DNA is foreign and unnatural, and is used to alter the entire genetic structure of GM crops — according to Monsanto, its unnatural DNA is automatically non-toxic because every other plant also has DNA. Case closed.

Using this same absurd illogic, injecting foreign animal DNA into a developing human baby, for instance, must also be safe because that baby contains DNA, right? Or how about drinking antifreeze, which is made of atoms, because your body is also made of atoms? Based on Monsanto’s pseudoscientific nonsense, everything can be considered non-toxic and safe because it is all made of atoms, just like our bodies!

http://www.naturalnews.com/034745_Monsanto_GM_foods_safety_testing.html

For more on the dangers of GMOS click on these links:

• http://www.prisonplanet.com/forget-asteroids-and-volcanoes-chemically-induced-infertility-threatens-human-race.html
• http://www.prisonplanet.com/scientists-warn-epa-over-monsanto%e2%80%99s-gmo-crop-failures-dangers-read-more-httpnaturalsociety-comscientists-warn-epa-over-monsantos-gmo-crop-failures-dangersixzz1otqe68kj.html
• http://www.prisonplanet.com/monsanto%e2%80%99s-roundup-is-killing-human-kidney-cells.html
• http://www.prisonplanet.com/usda-green-lights-field-trials-of-monsanto-drought-resistant-corn-after-admitting-it-performs-no-better-than-natural-corn.html

So we must bomb a country pre-emptively based on the chance that they may get a bomb and may use it on Israel. That is of course similar to the faith required of us in the run up to the Iraq war. “They have a bomb and they are willing to use it.” It was just too bad that Saddam had gotten rid of most of the weapons the US sold to him. I mean does this pre-emptive eye for an eye mentality make sense to anyone else. Given the threats that have been coming from Israel, wouldn’t you want to ensure the safety of your country with mutually assured destruction, the deterrent that helped take nukes off the table during the cold war? I mean doesn’t Israel have like 200+ nukes themselves, who they are kidding that they need our help to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age. I mean we hear the misquote of Ahmadinejad all the time, that he called for Israel to be wiped off the map, when what he really said was that the Zionist regime in control of Israel will not last the test of time. Probably because Israel keeps picking fights with Middle East Nations.

So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in Farsi:

“Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”

The full quote translated directly to English:

“The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

On an interesting side note Netanyahu actually did say something similar during their attack on Lebanon:

“Congratulations Mr. Netanyahu, my first question is that does the beginning of the large train line’s construction confirm the announcement of the dissident Syrian Intelligence Office that you will strike Lebanon?”

In reply, Netanyahu stated:

“Yes, and it is not a secret that it will happen with U.S.-Gulf support and that is why they have been warned, but before you ask, you have a look at the new map of the world and see that there is no nation with this name.”

Source: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/01-03-2012/120646-No_Lebanon_will_be_on_map-0/

Think about it this way, would you shoot an unarmed man dead based on the perceived threat that if he got hold of a gun he might shoot you?? Israel would, and given Harper’s need to please these people, he will likely support this idea because, as he has said many times, Israel has a right to exist which leaves Iran with the right to be bombed apparently.

Well here is a message to Harper, I would much rather go to jail for draft dodging than help you in your military strike on Iran (ala Libya). Are we going to call this a humanitarian mission as well? So if you institute a draft that is exactly what you will get, productive members of Canadian society in jail because we don’t want to go to war to die so Israel can feel safer sitting atop their large pile of nuclear weapons.

My message to Israel, if a strike on Iran is such a good idea, go ahead and do your worst, but don’t expect me and my American Brothers to act like a human shield protecting you from the wrath of Iran, which, based on the fact you fired the first shot, you disserve IMO.

Another thing to keep in mind, only one country has ever used nuclear weapons against another country and even they aren’t rushing to push the trigger.

The biggest thing is the supposed link between global temperatures and CO2, which we are told is causal, that CO2 causes warming, however the data I’ve seen suggests otherwise. The first issue, is that when you look at the data, CO2 levels tend to be behind warming trends by about 5 – 10 years, this is the biggest lie I have seen from the Al Gore crowd, they put the graphs up and say, look they are nearly identical, other than the lag of CO2 levels which are then sold to you as the cause of the warming.

So what happens is that the Earth warms likely due to normal solar cycles and as the Earth warms, plant matter that has been trapped in Northern glaciers decays releasing CO2, one of likely many natural causes leading to the increased CO2 levels we are seeing.

In Bio you learned about buffers right? They are chemicals which remain in the body with little to no effect on the basic process of for example digestion, until there is a significant change in pH then these chemicals kick in to regulate the pH back to normal levels. IMO there are many parallels between the way in which our body regulates conditions for various biological processes, and the Earth which has similar tools.

One very interesting one (google plant grown in high CO2) is the fact that increased levels of CO2 actually stimulate plant growth, and as a result, the amount of conversion to oxygen. This means that if levels of CO2 get too high from the perspective of the Earth, she will handle this herself, bring CO2 down and increase O2. Now the problem is, since so much time has been wasted on CO2, we really don’t understand the other side of the buffers for temperature. One of the few we do understand comes from the most abundant greenhouse gas on the planet, know what it is? Steam. As temperatures increase, the water cycle will increase the amount of cloud cover, which will deflect sunlight which will eventually lead to global cooling. Although this gas works like other greenhouse gases which (we are told) traps heat in, the effect of reflecting sunlight is more significant. Sources of heat loose energy as they heat the planet, so trapped heat provides slightly less energy on its ‘second pass’ then what is reflected and never enters our atmosphere.

Now the problem here is that people with my views have been painted as somehow anti-environment and as a strong environmentalist I take offence to this. The fact is, elements within governments around the world see AGW as a cash cow, if they can make us afraid of our own planet, and we take the blame for it, they will also be able to convince us to pay to save us from the warming. Personally I am against ignorance and the fact that leaders use our own ignorance, usually a direct result of the information we are fed by those same individuals to pull the wool over our eyes. It is amazing to me that governments who are trying to regulate how much CO2 each of us contributes (no person is carbon neutral, carbon dioxide is human exhaust) turn a blind eye to the numerous chemicals which are constantly dumped into our environment. No need to worry about big corporations and what they pollute the world with, carbon dioxide is the culprit the only way to stop introducing CO2 as a human being is to stop breathing. Studies have shown that in the last few decades, since the increase in use of anti-depressants and other pharmaceuticals, the water table has been increasingly contaminated with these chemicals. Mostly because we don’t think to test to see what the levels are. As a human being, when you take a drug like Prozac, you will expel, through urine, any of the chemical your body does not process. This ends up in the water we flush down the toilet, and municipal water treatment does not treat for pharmaceuticals such as Prozac. I just read an article yesterday about sea life that are not only dieing at an increased rate, there is evidence they are actually committing suicide. So it seems to me that AGW is used as a distraction, to try to get environmentalists up in arms against CO2 emitters with little to no attention paid to other polluters. Want to know who one of the biggest polluters in the world is??? The US Military, mostly because they consider themselves outside the rule of law so you cant think that environmental regulations mean anything to them. Just think about all of the pollution from a nuclear powers ship/sub which is sunk. Just think as it begins to decay there are forms of oil, solvents, and of course nuclear waste. The fact is, it is much cheaper for the US to sink a ship, then to decommission it. Just saying…

I think a campaign need to be started in order to break environmentalism away from anthropogenic global warming since the fraud of GW scientists (Michael Mann’s Hockey stick graph anyone??) will give environmentalists a black eye and these scientists will take the environmentalists down with them destroying their credibility. We have been focused for far too long on this issue and what evidence they thought they had is loosing credibility faster than they could build it. I mean they have been shouting global warming from the rooftops for years and if the warming doesn’t happen as they are telling us it will, people sure as hell wont believe them when they start talking about the coming ice age but that, my friends is a topic for another rant.

So the article talks about how CSIS, Canada’s CIA basically, is allowed to use information extracted from suspects through torture which goes against earlier claims that they never use such information.

I have to say, unfortunately, this is a tough one, it seems cut and dry at first but it is very easy to talk yourself into accepting this practice under the guise that it may make us more secure. (Which in my experience tends not to be true, no security is gained through torture only the mirage of security)

First off, Canada should NOT torture under any circumstances, in my opinion this is not up for debate, this is the easy part. There is no credible excuse for such behaviour and since most information gained out of such techniques tends to be unreliable, there is little value added with such interrogation techniques and both our countries integrity and the safety of our armed forces to loose. Canadian soldiers will be in great danger of themselves being tortured abroad if Canada adopts torture. Period.

That being said, the issue here is of the use of information received from regimes around the world where torture is an excepted practice. I think first of all, I would assume it can be tough to get foreign countries to admit that torture was used to get the information, so in the case where CSIS is unaware that information was gained through torture, we will give them a proverbial pass on this although I think it would be in their best interest to discern if this is the case or not due only to its relation to the reliability of the information.

I’ve been over this a few times in my head, and I keep going back and forth. So maybe a quick thought experiment will help.

Okay so CSIS receives information from a foreign country, and after some consideration determines that the information was obtained through torture, oh wait enhanced interrogation techniques, there more PC right. Anyway, so we have information, we know was gained through torture, should CSIS be using that information? Some would say if they use the info they are only encouraging countries to torture and as the article puts it:

this directive is sending the wrong message to dictatorial regimes; you torture and we will return the favour by accepting and using your information.

-source

Personally I think that information gained through torture requires a grain of salt (maybe two). I don’t think we can afford not to at least entertain the possibility that the information is true, but we have to treat any action taken as a result of such information is likely to be a dead end and a waste of resources. Publicly, we must refuse to use information such as this, due mostly to the fact Canadians consider ourselves civilized (whether we are or not remains to be seen) and no person deserves to be tortured by their government. Think about it the other way for a second. Canada decides you may have information seen as valuable to another country, for this example I will use the US. If they arrest you and torture you based solely on the charges against you from the US, I see this as equal to the US encouraging torture by proxy. However, if Canada arrests me for local crimes and through their locally approved interrogation, however much it resembles torture and they uncover a plot that has effects in the US, I think the US should be free to use that info as they see fit, although treating it as possibly suspect.

Letting it be known to the world that we accept information gained through torture we are not only embracing such techniques we are giving our approval of such techniques.Canada should take a public stand, saying we will not accept information gained through torture, but I think they will still need to at least hear the allegations raised by such information if for no other reason to be able to say its BS.

Although, I also want to say, after all that, I am amazed that I am able to convince myself that there are any cases where torture is accepted. A big part of me keeps saying “torture is not okay, no matter what” but then there is this other side that says, if some country says, hey this guy committed a crime in your country but he only told us when we tortured him, this would still require an investigation as torture wont hold up in court, which it shouldn’t but if  you say that they can’t use the info at all, they would have to ignore the accusations of a foreign nation that it has evidence of a crime in Canada. I just can’t imagine a group, tasked with enforcing the rule of law would just ignore allegations just because they came through torture. Its like the idiot in the corner with fingers in his ears going “LA LA Can’t hear you!!” But that being said, if the country is uilty of crimes in Canada as a result of the torture, they should not be immune to indictments just because they gave us the info obtained.

So in the end, here is my stance:

“Torture is NOT okay, and there is never a reasonable justification for such actions. However, allegations from foreign nations, weather gained through torture or not, deserve an investigation to try to determine if we can confirm or deny those allegations. Military action should never be the result of information gained through torture alone, but can be justified by an independent confirmation of the allegations.

Clear as mud?? Thought so.

I would be interested to hear your views? Should we be accepting information gained from torture? is it a slippery slope? or should Canada grow a pair and start these ‘enhanced techniques’ at home?

“seizures, strokes, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, headaches, stomach pains, vomiting, muscle pain and weakness, joint pain, auto-immune problems, chest pains, hair loss, appetite loss, personality changes, insomnia, hand/leg tremors, arm/leg weakness, shortness of breath, heart problems, paralysis, itching, rashes, swelling, aching muscles, pelvic pain, nerve pain, menstrual cycle changes, fainting, swollen lymph nodes, night sweats, nausea, temporary vision/hearing loss just to name some of them!”

http://truthaboutgardasil.org/

There have been over 100 deaths related to Gardisil and over 25,000 serious complications like those listed above. I know I heard one story about a girl who developed severe narcolepsy in the days after her vaccination. She was a straight A student, now she is only awake a little over an hour a day and requires 24 hour care. (http://www.patientsville.com/vaccines/hpv4/narcolepsy-hpv-gardasil-2010.htm)

So as I was doing a bit of research, as I tend to do when I see stories like this and I came across the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Website on Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Prevention and HPV Vaccines: Questions and Answers page and was greeted with information that blows this whole charade out of the water in my opinion. (http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/std-mts/hpv-vph/hpv-vph-vaccine-eng.php#a3)

When I click on the question, “Who should get the vaccine?” after trying to sell me on the same old HPV cervical cancer BS I found this:

“Gardasil® is also recommended in males between 9 and 26 years of age, and in men ? 9 years of age who have sex with men.”

So let me get this straight (pun anyone?), you are trying to sell the story that boys need to be vaccinated against HPV because they might pass it on to girls, as it has allegedly been shown to increase the risk of cervical cancer, but then you say gay males would benefit?? I guess one thing we may need to point out to the drug companies, is that one requires a cervix to get cervical cancer. So unless gay men everywhere have started spontaneously sprouting a cervix (if so lets patent it and get transsexuals in on this). Vaccinating a man who will likely never sleep with a woman seems at best to be a waste of taxpayer money (because Health Canada will offer to pay, for the good of the people I’m sure) and at worst, clarification that the true intent of these vaccines is to pump this shit into anyone stupid enough (or young enough not to have a choice) to sit through the process. What ever happened to the idea of informed consent?? One may wrongly conclude that requires people to be adequately informed.

You will eventually come to the realization that governments are tragically self serving and will combat anything which they see as an obstacle to power, and will, if allowed to grow in size and influence, eventually become parasitic to the very citizens which originally gave the government their mandate. Then governments go through a period in which they attempt to marginalize citizens, starting first with minority groups, through incarceration, those citizens that society will accept as dangerous. The most common today being minor drug crimes with mandatory minimum sentences usually in great excess to crimes such as pedophilia or sexual assault which have terrible effects on the victims. Drug crimes only victims are those who become hopelessly dependent on these illicit substances which the government would prefer to lock up, only because the public has accepted this practice over time. (why else would elements in the government import drugs? see Iran contra, can you say entrapment)

I can only imagine how future generations will look at the punitive damages inflicted on minor drug offenders, as an obvious preference to drug counselling and attempting to deal with the ‘crime’ of substance abuse, which again has no external victims. This, in my opinion, is akin to locking up mentally challenged individuals in an attempt to ‘protect the public’ from what they might be capable of. To me this is a classic case of conflict of interest, where the government creates laws, which do not require a victim for the sole purpose of stripping a section of society of their right to vote through incarceration, and then flood the market to encourage sales, and throw anyone who gets in the way away for life.

There is a very interesting paradigm alive today where society looks to governments to provide them with the rights they are due and to save them from themselves. America’s founding fathers saw it the other way around, that society will demand their rights and government will abide or be replaced. This is the main reason why they didn’t worry about things like same-sex marriage in the constitution, because they couldn’t envision a government so far reaching that citizens will look to government to allow them to exert certain freedoms, like freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. The idea being, as in the case of same-sex marriage, if the government denied you a marriage certificate you would get married anyway and the government would just have to deal with it. Unfortunately, our generation and those after us will grow up learning that governments allow us certain freedoms, as opposed to those freedoms being universal, and inalienable as explicitly stated in the US constitution.

During this crisis, we have seen large releases of radioactive substances such as radioactive strontium, caesium, plutonium, and iodine to name a few of the more common substances.

And now for a quick health lesson. The thyroid gland is sometimes referred to as the pharmacy of the body which is the source of chemicals and enzymes used to regulate the body’s energy and metabolism. One of the key ingredients required to create some of these compounds is Iodine. So if your body finds any iodine in the food you eat it will go straight to the thyroid gland.

The issue here is the unknown ingestion of radioactive Iodine-131 which, since the body still thinks it is benign iodine, it will also begin to concentrate in the thyroid gland. Thyroid cancers increased in the areas surrounding Chernobyl after the incident there due to the releases of Iodine-131. Many survivors of Chernobyl required the removal of their thyroid gland, and of course spent the rest of their lives supplementing the chemicals usually produced in the gland. (the large scar left on an individuals throat after thyroid removal became known as a Chernobyl necklace).

An interesting side fact, plutonium is not found naturally on earth. All of the plutonium that exists is as nuclear waste since the beginning of nuclear experimentation in the 40′s. Plutonium is also considered the most toxic substance to life on earth (levels of 0.1 micrograms or 1×10^-7 grams is enought for an overdose, to put that in perspective a release of just 1 gram of plutonium would be enough to kill 10 million people if widely dispersed)). This is mostly because we have evolved for aeon’s without developing any defences from radioactive substances. The human body is amazing at overcoming issues such as this; although it will take many generations, people would have developed immunity to radioactive substances if they were more common during our early evolution. One could theorize that our future relatives may develop radioactive immunities as exposure to these substances increase.

Of course the article goes on to try and confuse the issue, blaming the increase on better screening techniques, obesity and diet, although radiation exposure is mentioned as well.

The strangest thing to me though is that the treatment for thyroid cancer involves introducing more radioactive iodine. This of course comes from the concept of chemotherapy where radioactive substances are used because they kill cells that divide rapidly. Although cancerous cells fall into this category there are a lot of cells that also apply. Things like skin cells, which leads to the loss of hair, cells in the stomach, which leads to nausea, or cells in bone marrow which I believe plays a role in immune health. So radioactive iodine collects in the thyroid, causing cell mutations, requiring more radioactive iodine, sounds logical to me, right??

I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again, in the future I feel that Chemotherapy will be looked upon as we look at electro shock therapy (EST) today. At the time that shock therapy was big, health practitioners actually felt the procedure had benefits and I’m not sure we can blame them as that it tended to be the only therapy available for some conditions. But you don’t hear of many people getting EST that much anymore, although horror stories still exist as some physicians hold on to the past.

Newer cancer therapies target abnormal proteins in cancer cells called targeted therapy which does not involve the use of radioactive substances.

I read a story yesterday and couldn’t get it out of my head because it seems to me to be a hint at how far our society has come since I was a kid, and not in a good way. I admit, chances are I had a naively romantic view of society but when I was younger it seemed that people in power making decisions tended to ask themselves “Is this the right thing to do?” Some call this morality, and of course Catholics and Christians tend to feel they have dibs on morality. Yet you see people that are devout or in some cases evangelical yet don’t seem to have the values I thought were taught by such religions, such as morality and acceptance. It amazes me when people say, you can’t be a moral person if you aren’t religious, yet you find those that are extremely religious who don’t seem to have a moral bone in their body, but I digress.

The story I am talking about is one of the first instances I have heard of Death panels in the US. According to Wikipedia, this was ‘proven’ a myth after Sarah Palin mentioned it in a 2009 debate referring to her daughter with Downs Syndrome possibly being denied healthcare. However, as little as I like this woman as a world leader, she was right. Especially with the newly passed ObamaCare bill which forces citizens to buy private health insurance, or face consequences. But I guess the one thing they don’t mention is that even if you do buy insurance as your government now requires, you may require medical attention that some panel decides is either too expensive, or wont have an effect on your quality of life so the procedure is denied.

This story is about a 3 year old girl named Amelia. She was denied a kidney transplant (at 3?? It’s not like she has her whole life ahead of her or anything) because she is considered to be “mentally retarded”. Her doctor used the fact that he felt that Amelia wouldn’t have a good enough “quality of life” after surgery to justify the cost of the procedure in order to deny it.

There are so many things wrong with this. First being that a Dr. who is supposed to take an oath to practice medicine ethically feels it best to just let this girl slowly die of renal failure.

The second issue comes from the fact that Medicare is slowly putting American Doctors out of work. What happens is that since most Dr’s do whatever necessary to help patients, but Medicare doesn’t tend to fully cover costs, the doctors are taking losses on treating patients, which is not a good business model. Therefore doctors are forced to choose between Medicare patients, or going out of business. If you think ObamaCare will be different, you haven’t been paying attention, if there is one thing governments know how to do it’s mismanage federal programs until they break the system. (Social security anyone??)

So what may be happening is that the doctor can’t afford to loose money on the kidney transplant so he tried to justify no doing the surgery by calling the girl retarded (sorry) so that he can sleep at night.

There is also rumour I heard from a Neurosurgeon the other day which has not yet been made public that ObamaCare will introduce panels of bureaucrats not doctors, to decide what procedures are justified for patients because a federal system like this can’t provide everything for everyone. Think about that for a moment, you aren’t feeling well, you go to a doctor, he finds out you require an expensive procedure which he has to get approved before he can do it. Now your health is in the hands of bureaucrats who want nothing more than to reduce the costs to healthcare.

Instead of putting a limit on profits from essential medications cutting into the big drug companies profits (which considering how much they spend on lobbying wont happen, maybe if Dr. Paul becomes president but I doubt that will be allowed to happen either) or trying to cut costs in other more innovative ways, it is cheaper (and easier) to just let people die. And they wonder why they have such a bad healthcare system (I just found something where they are 37th worldwide, which for a country like the US is not only unacceptable, its borderline criminal IMO, although Canada is 30th)

What we are seeing here is called Eugenics. It is an old philosophy that advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population. It was started (in California I believe) in the early 1900s by (to name a few) Leonard Darwin (Charles Darwin’s son), Winston Churchill, and Alexander Graham Bell. The problem is that the views of Eugenics seems to have been used to justify atrocities ever since. Hitler and his ideas of the purification of the Arian Race he borrowed directly from eugenics. One of the first challenges to eugenics was a study which found a family of fruit flies, all with red eyes for many generations can still have offspring with white eyes, considered a mild genetic mutation that occurs outside of the inherited traits of the parents. What this showed was that even the most “pure” of parents can still have offspring with traits seen as detrimental, weather something like a predisposition to a heart condition, or even something like reduced mental capacity. Meaning the idea that you can bread the negative traits out of humans is a bit of a fallacy. Especially in an age where Mothers are bombarded with chemicals which studies have found actually concentrates in breast milk.

On an interesting side note, since I am an Albertan I found this interesting. In 1928 Alberta enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act focusing the movement of eugenics on the sterilization of the mentally deficient as determined by the Alberta Eugenics Board. Individuals were assessed using IQ tests which of course caused a big problem for new immigrants arriving in Canada. So many of those sterilized by the government were immigrants unfairly categorized as having impaired intellectual functions. BC apparently enacted its own version of the law in 1933 around the start of the great depression.

I think it is worth mentioning that the great depression played a big role in the acceptance of eugenics in Canada as it was widely seen as a way of relieving society of the financial burdens imposed by defective individuals. These laws were finally repealed in 1972, amazing right. But since some are predicting another depression, the question of weather eugenics will see another upswing in popularity remains to be seen.