[ RadSafe ] " Chernobyl benefit/harm"

[howard long]

In Chernobyl, as in American health care, deregulating would give greater safety and prosperity. 
   
  What would happen if Chernobyl were treated like the Oklahoma land rush? If I were a Russian, I'd get a PalmRad to avoid hot spots and move into that land so inviting to wildlife. The prosperity could give far more benefit than any harm from radiation, just as the increased mobility from Vioxx benefited many patients more than harm from heart attack risk.
   
  The worst of the Chernobyl disaster is imposed by government regulators, as is our greatest drug risk in the USA: deprivation of benefit.
   
  Howard Long
   
  John Jacobus <crispy_bird at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Unless they capture, tag the animal and track them
after the release, I am not sure how useful any of the
studies on mortality are.

--- "Franta, Jaroslav" wrote:

> Chernobyl wildlife baffles biologists; 
> Animals are returning to area near meltdown, but
> scientists are split on
> their long-term fates
> Toronto Star, 8 June 2007
> Douglas Birch, Associated Press
> 
. . .
> But Timothy Mousseau of the University of South
> Carolina, a biologist who
> studies barn swallows at Chernobyl, says a high
> proportion of the birds he
> and his colleagues have examined suffer from
> radiation-induced sickness and
> genetic damage. Survival rates are dramatically
> lower for those living in
> the most contaminated areas. 
> . . .
> In other studies, Mousseau and his colleagues have
> found increased genetic
> damage, reduced reproductive rates and what he calls
> "dramatically" higher
> mortality rates for birds living near Chernobyl. 
> The work suggests, he said, that Chernobyl is a
> "sink" where animals migrate
> but rapidly die off. 
> Mousseau suspects that relatively low-level
> radiation reduces the level of
> antioxidants in the blood, which can lead to cell
> damage.
>