This is the most intelligent talk Ive heard on Fukushima. Prof Timothy Mousseau should be funded. https://youtube/watch?v=8IcTGUMwVtU Its not a razzle-dazzle talk. He’s a serious scientist communicating to the less informed and telling it as it is. Hes an epidemiological geneticist who worked on Chernobyl and is doing sensitivity studies on most affected versus least affected sites in Fukushima. If you are following Fukushima, this is a proper science lesson. How he answered the question of what he thought about the hormesis hypothesis (that a little dose of radiation could be good for you) is a classic and should be remembered: Through billions of years of evolution, we are set up genetically to deal with oxidative stress. Most of our genetic machinery has evolved to respond and repair that stress, and so a tiny change may add to that stress such that our genetic machinery can’t cope with it—so finely tuned are we to the environment. But an appreciably big change is deleterious and just kills us off. So, at the very least radioactive caused change will add to the oxidative stress. And thus, the hormesis hypothesis, which has no proof, is unlikely as a scientific hypothesis. Nice reasoning.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:21:46 +0000