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Louis wrote " You simply don't understand a thing I wrote. Smoking does damage to your lungs. Asbestos is a carcinogenic just as much as the interiors of chimneys that caused testicular cancer in the boys who swept them in Charles Dickens's day. " "But when it comes to nuclear reactors or the crap that Monsanto sells, there is much more difficulty in establishing an open-and-shut case as there is with tobacco. And even with the case of tobacco, it took decades to finally nail the tobacco companies." Louis, I would was responding to YOUR comments about your claim regarding the difficulties "proving" dangers of carcinogens. I'm saying I believe you are confusing "proof" with "liability" and they are completely different. What is known the the medical community based on evidence, that is, it's "proved" is entirely different when it comes to "nailing tobacco companies", the legal framework for "proof". I'm only and have really only dealt with the medical side. There was NEVER any doubt as to the effects of tobacco. It took 40 years to prove it in court, but that is a different issue. Your false amalgam of nuclear reactors with Monsanto still shows you don't understand either about radiation or "proof". This goes to Jeff's fear of radiation as well: there is no evidence that small dosages of radiation that exist at background levels have a thing to do with cancer. Jeff is wrong when he suggest people might consider moving from areas of high levels of background radiation that occur naturally in many areas. Why? There is simply no evidence whatsoever that people who live in higher area of background radiation are at all at risk for higher rates of cancer. And this is what I'm talking about. Jeff's view, to say nothing of Louis', is like 30 years out of date. So much has been done in terms of the statistical and geographic locations of "high" radiation areas as compared to low areas as to show that cancer rates are hardly impacted by such things as higher than average background radiation levels (for those that are curious...we are *bathed* in radiation very minute of our lives. Oceans in particular have higher than average radiation levels do to the large amounts of uranium dissolved in seawater: 1 ton per km3). Louis...radiation studies...unlike those around Monsanto and other Big Ag polluters and insecticide/herbicide/pesticide producers...are well known and fully vetted. We *know* that nuclear power plants do not cause rates of increased cancer. Certainly not beyond what is occurring already due to capitalist enterprises like coal, gas and industrial production in general. Fully 45% of US residents will contract cancer in their lifetimes. Even if overall mortality goes down from cancer it an alarming number. If you totaled up the number of produced child hood leukemia and breast cancer due to the claims of living near a nuclear power plant, it would amount to about .0001% of all cancer cases. Yet coal kills, very years, 16,000 Americans...minimum...and probably 20x that number who contract respiratory diseases. Yet nuclear is the surest way to get rid of coal plants, just as they replaced oil generation power plants in the 1970s here in the U.S. and in France. the radiation phobia of the left as I noted in my previous message is doing real damage considering what does face us in terms of our tasks in phasing out fossil fuel (especially the greenwashed natural gas industry). It means shuttering the worlds *largest* source of low carbon energy in favor of fossil fuels. And this is why the politics of energy are so important and why the left, at least in developed countries, are ass-backward on their priorities. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
