Were Nuke Pills Floated Just To Scare Us?
The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.
Boy, what a cynical bunch we've become. Readers of this week's Skinny generated reams of comments on Monday's column's news that the government was backing away from its post 9/11 plan to distribute anti-radiation pills to residents near nuclear reactors. Responses ranged from those who saw the original plan as a political ploy meant to pump up fear of imaginary terrorists, to those who think the whole thing is silly because if the apocalypse comes, pills won't help much.
The story came from USA Today's report that the Bush administration may scrap a plan to give anti-radiation pills to millions of people, five years after Congress ordered that the tablets be made available to anyone living within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor. Congress issued the order based on fears that terrorists could attack a nuclear plant. The once-a-day pills protect the thyroid against ingested radioactive iodine by saturating it with harmless potassium iodide, thus guarding against thyroid cancer following radioactive exposure.
Back when the White House was focused on conjuring images of mushroom clouds to sell the Iraq war, it called potassium iodide pills crucial to preventing thyroid cancer. But now that it's looking like we might actually need all those nuclear reactors - plus a whole lot more of them - to power the country, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is arguing against distributing the pills.
Commenter brianbwb thought the original plan to distribute the pills was pure political theater. "The fact is that the dissemination of information about stockpiling the pills was part of Bush''s terror campaign, to make the suckers out there think that fictional "terrorists" out there somewhere in the Middle East were "coming to get you", armed with nuclear waste," he wrote. "Now that the scare has worked and is now counter productive to the interests of the power companies'' wish to go nuclear, they backtrack and say 'Oops, we scared the suckers too much, lets back it off a little.'"
Meanwhile, commenter chfin5 thought the pill distribution program wasn't such a bad idea, if only the government had stuck to it.
"When certain kinds of information comes from the government you just have to learn to 'eat the grass' and 'leave the briers alone,'" chfin5 wrote. "However since some of the government warnings of us being attacked by terrorists with something radioactive say 'when' and not 'if,' I see no reason to doubt them. And for the government to stop making these iodine pills because of some offense to the nuclear power plant plans sure doesn''t make a lot of common sense to me. Go ahead and build your plants! … Anything to get our country self sufficient from the Middle East would be fine and dandy with me."
Commenter ridingwoman put a reality check on the whole debate by pointing out that people near nuclear reactors are pretty much doomed if there's a meltdown, pills or no pills.
"Having worked many years in a nuclear industry, let me explain something," she wrote. "The pills will do NOTHING to prevent radiation exposure. They are only a way of protecting the thyroid, somewhat. A radiation spill or meltdown or catastrophic failure will be another story entirely. We are bombarded with radiation every day from the sun. Imagine a massive sunburn cooking you all the way through your body, slowly over days. Archive photos from the Chernobyl spill in Russia to see what could happen."
Got that, kids? A massive sunburn cooking you all the way through your body, slowly over days. With that image in mind, arguing whether the pill plan was political or not seems a little beside the point. Come to think of it, just about everything seems beside the point.
How The Rich Differ From You And Me: The Wildfire Edition
Hurricane Katrina horrified America by showing what happens to poor people when disaster strikes. The take away message of the California wildfires is still emerging from the smoke, but one theme has already begun to appear. The California wildfires displayed how wildly differently disasters affect - or more accurately, don't affect - the rich.
For the just plain doing-pretty-well, the key to avoiding the incineration of your Southern Californian house seems to be to buy inside one of the new highly planned developments, that include strict firesafe building codes and brush-clearing homeowners associations.
Wednesday's column focused on these developments, and how their residents fared better than their neighbors. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported that at Stevenson Ranch, a 5,000-home planned community in Santa Clarita that has emerged unscathed by fire, a 200-foot greenbelt with fire-resistant planting rings the property. Additional buffers of stone and concrete culverts were constructed behind properties adjacent to canyons and other open land. A homeowners association makes sure the area is clear of brush.
But for the downright wealthy, insurance companies offer private something extra-special.
The Los Angeles Times reports on Firebreak Spray Systems, which partners with the insurance company American International Group Inc. to "protect the mansions of the moneyed."
About 2,000 policy holders, who pay premiums of at least $10,000 a year and own homes with a value of at least $1 million, can call up Firebreak and have them rush to the scene to coat their meticulously clipped hedges and rooftops with foam that stops advancing flames. The company is, in a way, the Blackwater of the firefighting business, private contractors hired by those who can afford it to do the jobs everybody else leaves up to the government.
The services are not available to just anyone willing to shell out. AIG's Wildfire Protection Unit, part of its Private Client Group, is offered only to homeowners in California's most affluent ZIP codes - including Malibu, Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and Menlo Park - and a dozen Colorado resort communities.
Far from being outraged by this trend, some Skinny readers thought it made sense. "Private fire protection is a great idea," wrote random_radar. "If the insurance company is on the hook to pay for your house if it burns down, you can bet they will have the personnel and equipment to save it. If the government is in charge, they just won''t ever quite use your tax money efficiently to save you or your house. People ought to get a clue about the fact that paying their taxes gets them nothing, but private enterprise delivers what you pay for. Did any of the homes insured by AIG burn down? Probably not... "
Actually, AIG did lose a few houses, the Los Angeles Times reported, but not many.
Another Skinny reader just thought the whole business was entirely too typical. "This may be the perfect example of having it both ways. Our taxes go into that pit in Washington and then comes out in AIG''s pockets, who probably belong to Haliburton, who counts Bush and Cheney among their stockholders. Meanwhile, AIG is collecting from their policyholders too. Don''t you love free enterprise?"
We do, but not as much as we love weekends, which is why we wish you a restful one before heading out of here.
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