RE: ARTICLE: Fallout likely caused 15,000 deaths

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

Ruth:

 

No one denies that Chernobyl survivors suffered.  There are plenty of statistics to prove that: alcoholism, suicide, etc.  But the question was: is LDR harmful?  The evidence is that it is not.  The people of Chernobyl were injured not by radiation but by horrible (false) stories about what radiation was going to do to them and to their farms.  Those stories, coming from alleged authorities both medical and governmental, were enough to scare anyone into physiological symptoms.

 

To a much lesser degree, we had that at TMI.  Surveyors were going from door to door asking if their children were sick yet, etc.  Cochran had a piece in the NYTimes that read like a Jungian curse: still-births, two-headed sheep, birds and insects disappearing from the fields, etc.  And the statistics showed that there was significantly increased use of alcohol, sleeping pills, hospital admissions, etc.  None of this was caused by radiation.  It was caused by deliberately induced FEAR of radiation.  The distinction is essential, and has no connection with lack of feeling for people's suffering.  Quite the contrary!

 

Ted Rockwell