Antinuclear

More fatalities on the horizon? According to data collected by the Fukushima Prefecture, 2014 saw 1,232 nuclear-related deaths. The two towns with the greatest number of deaths were both near the Fukushima plant: Namie, with 359 dead; and Tomioka, with 291 dead.

The term “nuclear-related” means a death that does not result directly from radiation exposure but is caused by a disease later caused by that exposure. Indeed, it is radiation-related diseases — including cancer, tumors and genetic damage — that often cause the bulk of health problems and fatalities in cases of radiation exposure.

One of the diseases particularly expected to show an uptick after the Fukushima disaster is thyroid cancer, because radioactive iodine from nuclear disasters tends to concentrate in the thyroid gland. An estimated 6,000 children contracted thyroid cancer following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

It typically takes four to five years for most nuclear-related thyroid cancers to manifest, and as that window approaches many Fukushima parents believe that their children are already showing symptoms. Fukushima officials have tested approximately 300,000 children and have turned up 100 cases of the disease, in contrast to the pre-disaster rate of one or two per million children. Continue reading →

Techdirt has been following for a while Canada’s moves to stop scientists from speaking out about areas where the facts of the situation don’t sit well with the Canadian government’s dogma-based policies. Sadly, it looks like the UK is taking the same route. It concerns a new code for the country’s civil servants, which will also apply to thousands of publicly-funded scientists. As the Guardian reports:

Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.

The fear — quite naturally — is that ministers could take days before replying to requests, by which time news outlets will probably have lost interest. As a result of this change, science organizations have sent a letter to the UK government, expressing their “deep concern” about the code. A well-known British neurobiologist, Sir Colin Blakemore, told the Guardian:

“The real losers here are the public and the government. The public lose access to what they consider to be an important source of scientific evidence, and the government loses the trust of the public,” Blakemore said.

Not only that, by following Canada’s example, the British government also makes it more likely that other countries will do the same, which will weaken science’s ability to participate in policy discussions around the world — just when we need to hear its voice most.

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