EARNING HER continuing status as one of the most awful people in America, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter recently attempted to find a bright spot in Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster.
In a blog post titled "A glowing report on radiation," Coulter claimed that radiation is actually good for you:
With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer.
This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the past 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.
Proving yet again why a little information is a dangerous thing for some people, Coulter twists scientific fact beyond all reason and credibility. As Salon.com noted, "Coulter cites a 10-year-old newspaper article and some studies by fringe scientists as proof to her theory. She goes on to compare radiation--which she says is 'a sort of cancer vaccine'--to 'poisons' like zinc and magnesium found in multi-vitamins."
Of course, Coulter fails to cite any of the hundreds of well-documented studies showing higher incidents of cancers in those exposed to radiation.
In another jaw-dropping moment, Coulter goes on to write:
Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion...
Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor, who were not evacuated, are "thriving," according to scientists quoted in April 28, 2002 Sunday Times.
As the Broward Palm Beach New Time's Brandon K. Thorp noted:
To this, a reasonably informed person can say only: Bullshit!
First off: There weren't "31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion." Nobody died in the first explosion at Chernobyl. The number "31" comes from the number of workers and firefighters who died in the weeks that followed the Chernobyl disaster. What killed them? Radiation poisoning!
The firefighters arrived at the Chernobyl reactor well after the initial explosions, under the command of Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravik. Pravik died on May 11 of acute radiation poisoning. So did his subordinate, Victor Kibenok. Their friend, Vasyli Ignatenko, died two days later. Another fireman, Nikolai Tetanok, died three days after that. Almost all of the men who went near the reactor fire at Chernobyl died within a few months. Of the few who managed to last three or four years, most sloughed off their intestinal lining sometime in May, 1986. In medical circles, pooping out one's own guts is considered a sign of ill health.
Of course, Coulter's correct about the animals around Chernobyl. They are very much "thriving"; they've got the whole place to themselves. Fecund as they are, however, they're also profoundly mutated. They do the best they can in a new-growth forest, which has grown up since the original pine forests of Chernobyl turned red and died in the summer of 1986.
Coulter is correct in saying that Chernobyl has proven less disastrous than originally predicted. Cancer levels among evacuees never reached the levels feared in 1986, the fallout affected a far smaller area than expected, etc. But only someone with a kinky hatred of ambiguity would claim it was anything other than a cataclysm, that radiation is harmless, or that the people of Sendai, Japan, are anything other than very, very unlucky.
Of course, Coulter's profound ignorance of a subject has never stopped her from speaking out on it before. But perhaps she'd like to volunteer for cleanup at Fukushima if she thinks radiation exposure is so beneficial.
