Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[12]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[33]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[12]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-18 00:10:23.541
	1	+2016-09-18 00:10:23.0

Caselist.CitesClass[33]

Cites

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	1	+Meltdowns release low levels of radiation, solve disease
	2	+
	3	+Solomon 12 – Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe, “ Lawrence Solomon: Evacuation a worse killer than radiation,” ENERGY PROBE, 9-21-12. http://ep.probeinternational.org/2012/09/24/lawrence-solomon-evacuation-a-worse-killer-than-radiation/.
	4	+
	5	+According to many nuclear experts, most of those 90,000 should never have been evacuated — radiation levels not only didn’t approach what are known as lethal doses, making them immediate threats, the radiation also didn’t approach levels that should ring alarm bells. A calculation by Richard Wilson, professor of physics emeritus at Harvard University, in Evacuation Criteria After A Nuclear Accident: A Personal Perspective, soon to be published by the International Dose-Response Society, finds that releases of Fukushima radioactivity last year that were presented as scary were anything but. Based on actual measurements, a hypothetical resident who received a constant dose of radiation for a full year from the crippled nuclear reactor in one contaminated area — the Ibaraki prefecture — would absorb a dose of 876 mrems. “What does this mean?” Prof. Wilson asks in his study. “Many actions can give anyone a dose of 876 mrems,” he answers, including a CAT scan. An astronaut is allowed to absorb 100 times as much radiation as this hypothetical person would have received. Yet the Japanese authorities decided to evacuate 90,000 people, placing them in harm’s way when they were relatively safe, or entirely safe. The authorities’ behaviour, Prof. Wilson believes, stems from an irrational phobia that the public has of radiation, coupled with politicians’ dread of the wrath of voters. “There is no politician who would not prefer a dead body to a frightened voter,” he writes, quoting a former head of the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive. As a result, a politically correct standard has long been in place worldwide that requires exposure levels to radiation to be kept “as low as reasonably achievable.” This feel-good standard is technical in nature — it asks nuclear operators and government regulators to lower exposure whenever they’re able to, regardless of whether doing so can be demonstrated to save lives. By blind obeisance to this standard, the nuclear industry has set ever-tighter standards for itself that limit to ridiculously small levels the radiation the public can receive. In the case of Fukushima, this standard led to the decision to evacuate an immense number of people instead of the few who might have been in true peril. Prof. Wilson suggests that a truly precautionary approach, one which would save lives, would see the allowable emissions increase by a factor of four in case of emergency. Others, such as Dr. Jerry Cuttler, a Canadian nuclear expert who is also about to release a study on the Fukushima disaster, would like to see it increase by a factor of 50, and to see the standard of “as low as reasonably achievable” replaced with “as high as reasonably safe” in the case of evacuations. These changes would greatly reduce the number of evacuees and thus the complexity of any evacuation that might be needed in future. The American Nuclear Society in its June annual meeting likewise supported a dramatic increase in permitted emissions in light of the perverse effects of today’s standards on public health. This society, and these scientists, are going further, too. They are giving credibility to radiation hormesis, a fast growing body of science supported by an overwhelming number of studies that find low levels of radiation — unlike high levels, which are dangerous — to prolong life and health. Studies show, for example, that nuclear workers, or people who live in naturally radioactive regions of North America, log many fewer cancers and other diseases than those who work and live in low-radiation environments. Prof. Wilson calls such lives saved “negative” deaths.
	6	+
	7	+new infections are uniquely dangerous—improving immune responses are key
	8	+Wayne B. Jonas 5, MD Director, Samueli Institute for Information Biology A Publication of the Northeast Regional Environmental Public Health Center, University of Massachusetts, School of Public Health, Amherst, MA 01003 Vol. 13 No. 2 Part I, September 2005, ISSN 1092-4736 Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures BIOMEDICAL IMPLICATIONS OF HORMESIS – PART 1 http://www.belleonline.com/newsletters/volume13/vol13-2.pdf
	9	+
	10	+Emerging Infections Many infectious viral and bacterial organisms rapidly mutate and evolve into either more virulent or drugresistant forms. With increasingly mobile world populations and wide use of anti-viral and anti-bacterial drugs the stage is set for an accelerated emergence of more virulent viruses that are resistant to treatment. Examples include SARS, Avian flu, influenza, tuberculosis and malaria. The possible emergence of Avian flu in Vietnam further highlights the urgent need for alternative approaches to protection and treatment. For over a hundred years certain physicians have claimed, with no scientific evidence, that low-dose preparations of such agents can protect and mitigate the effects of infectious disease.
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	12	+Disease causes extinction
	13	+Yu 9—Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science (Victoria, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate, 22 May 2009, http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate)
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	15	+A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging — a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIV’s rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the virus’s abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIV’s use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a “global influenza pandemic,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain — which could only infect birds — into a human-viable strain (10).

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-18 00:10:26.69

Judge

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	1	+Demarcus Powell

Opponent

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	1	+Kinkaid JY

ParentRound

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	1	+12

Round

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	1	+4

Team

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	1	+La Canada Zhao Neg

Title

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	1	+SEPOCT - DA - Hormesis

Tournament

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	1	+Greenhill