Fukushima Daichi: How did I miss this?!

I've been following the Japan tragedy closely, and somehow I missed big news on the U.S. impact of the disaster. Did I miss it, or is the news media not reporting it?

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster. [Emphasis mine.]

This disaster is starting to look Biblical in its proportions.

UPDATE 10:42 PM EST: Here is the essay It is merely suggestive, not definitive. No study has been done, merely an overview of infant mortality rates before and after the Fukushima Daichi disaster.

Fat People Actually Live Longer?

That is what a new study appears to be saying. The study followed a group of thin people, fat people, and obese people, and found that the fat group had far fewer deaths than the thin group.

But, contrary to expectations, the obese did not have an increased risk of dying from cancer. They were slightly more likely than people of normal weights to die of a handful of cancers that are thought to be related to excess weight — cancers of the colon, breast, esophagus, uterus, ovary, kidney and pancreas. Yet they had a lower risk of dying from other cancers, including lung cancer. In the end, the increases and decreases in cancer risks balanced out.

As for diabetes, it showed up in the death rates only when the researchers grouped diabetes and kidney disease as one category. Diabetes can cause kidney disease, they note. But, the researchers point out, the number of diabetes deaths may be too low because many people with diabetes die from heart disease, and often the cause of death is listed as a heart attack.

Talk about running contrary to general wisdom. Researchers DID caution people that mortality should not be confused with health, and many of the longer-living fat people had poorer health overall. But this study may well rewrite many of our ideas about how militant to be about weight control and body image.