Ann Coulter's March 16 newspaper column, "A Glowing Report On Radiation" says radiation above the government cutoff is good for you.

What she wss talking about was "hormesis", although she didn't use the word in her blog, only in her interview with Bill O'Reilly, and she certainly doesn't understand it.

Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst developed hormesis theory. He's a toxicologist, and believes that small doses of harmful toxins help protect us, much as vaccines protect us. The idea is that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Supposedly, low levels of radiation is a stressor that can stimulate your defenses, much like exercise does.

They've Done Experiments

They've done lab experiments on zebra fish, on mice, and on other humans. The results are intriguing. The theory, however, is hard to study, is often confusing, and is impossible to generalize as a basic biological principle.

Think of solar radiation. If you get a little bit of it, you get a sun tan, which makes you look healthier, and may make you feel better - but it takes little more than that to give you a sunburn. Sunburns are known to cause skin cancer - and they are connected somehow to Lupus. Sunning causes lupus flares, and my late first wife, Em, thought her lupus was related to a really bad sunburn she got at the age of 12. Her body never was the same after that.

Despite my last blog post, The Jack Lemmon Syndrome, I'm not going to recommend getting radiation overdoses, as "good for you." It's pretty obvious that the overdoses aren't. And from the way that the government determined the maximum doses, it seems likely that the maximum recommended doses are indeed the maximum, that the hormesis level has already been surpassed at that level.

Why Did Smoking Ever Become Popular?

I might point out that the reason white men took up smoking, a filthy habit engaged in by a group of primative semi-humans (at least in the opinion of European whites), is that smoking was thought to improve your health. Indeed, in the very low levels involved in "smoking the peace pipe", it may well do exactly that.

In the days prior to prohibition, Carrie Nation supposedly went into a saloon in Kansas and started lecturing the drinkers there on the evils of liquor. She placed several fishworms in a glass, and poured in a shot of whiskey. The worms initially squirmed, but within seconds, they ceased all motion altogether. "What does this show us?" she cried, and from the back of the saloon, some guy yelled, "Drink whiskey and you'll never suffer from worms."

Neither the neo-cons nor the neo-libs approach nuclear energy with a rational thought in their noggins. The neo-cons are reckless proponents, and the neo-libs are scared shitless. It's just a tool, folks. Any implement with the power to do good also has the power to do harm. And you need to make decisions about nuclear energy based on engineering data, not religious conviction.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Ann Coulter - Bill O'Reilly - Edward Calabreese - hormesis - toxicology - University of Massachusetts