Thursday, March 17, 2011

Dr. Stranngecoulter or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Radiation

"Good news, reports Ann Coulter, "anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer."

The main stream media is at fault for fueling "hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad." Remember the good old days in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when the media touted the health benefits of radiation. They seem so long ago.

Dr. Ann Coulter reviews stacks of studies such as "one in Canada finding that tuberculosis patients subjected to multiple chest X-rays had much lower rates of breast cancer than the general population."

The source for that study is a 2001 story in the New York Times, which is the Coulter's gold standard in journalism so you can be sure it's a fact. Too bad, as Coulter's readers know, you can't get a chest X-ray in Canada due to their poor national health care system.

Dr. Ann Coulter imagines a rosy future for Japan as a tourist destination for cancer patients and others seeking alternative medical treatments:

"At the Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine in Boulder, people pay $5 to descend 85 feet into an old mining pit to be irradiated with more than 400 times the EPA-recommended level of radon. In the summer, 50 people a day visit the mine hoping for relief from chronic pain and autoimmune disorders."
That's Boulder, Montana not Boulder, Colorado so you needn't worry that this is some new age hippie scam. And not your run-of-the-mill western tourist trap, I might add.

Think of all the money Japan will make from Hollywood coming to Kukushima to film cancer flicks. Julia Roberts, if she still has her blonde Erin Brockovich wig, can play Dr. Ann Coulter in the movie about the brave and beautiful American doctor who against all conventional wisdom comes to Japan to found a free health clinic and spa on the ruins of the ruined Kukushima Dai-Itchi nuclear power plant. Well maybe not free, this is Ann Coulter.

You may ask where Dr. Ann Coulter got her medical license. I can assure you she graduated near the top of her class from the University of Michigan with a Juris Doctor degree. If you don't know, that's the J.D. they give lawyers not medical doctors.

I will grant Ann Coulter this: There have been thousands of deaths in Japan from the tsunami tidal wave and so far no reported deaths from radiation. And those white surgical masks you see tsunami survivors wearing on television are to protect against spreading bird flu. For much of the population right now, the loss of electricity generation capacity from the damaged nuclear power plants may be causing more havoc than radiation.

Still, when Ann Coulter concludes that "the survivors may outlive all of us over here in hermetically sealed, radiation-free America," I do worry that is akin to inviting terrorists with dirty bombs to bring 'em on.

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