A couple of weeks ago a CBC reporter contacted me about the Chalk River nuclear reactor closure and the resulting medical isotope shortage. He was looking for the perspective of a current cancer patient.
I decided not to get involved. First of all, any delays I was experiencing were not due to isotope shortages. And secondly, as a general rule I try to avoid public speaking.
Since then, I’ve been giving it more thought. What’s the shelf life of medical isotopes? How will the shortage affect me? If it’s not affecting me, who is it affecting? How? How soon?
From what I can gather, the implications of an isotope shortage are profound and immediate. For some people it will mean, quite literally, the difference between life and death. Early detection and treatment is paramount to surviving cancer.
The whole process from detection to diagnosis to treatment already takes too long. I say this as someone whose breast lump was discovered 78 days ago. It took 44 days to find out it was cancer. My surgery was just booked this morning for June 24th – 93 days after the lump was discovered. Then treatment will begin. I hope to be finished early in 2010.
I attribute the delays I’ve experienced to doctor shortages and machine shortages. Once you add isotope shortages to the equation, the situation gets even worse. Not only will patients have to endure longer periods of extreme stress while waiting, but in some cases, their cancers won’t be caught and treated in time.
What I’m saying here is the isotope crisis is a big deal to those of us who have suddenly found ourselves immersed in the big scary cancer machine, and who are already living with the profound fear that only the unknown can conjure up. We’re terrified of what we have to go through, and the only thing scarier is the consequences of NOT going through it. It’s a horror movie.
So imagine how it feels today for us to hear that Conservative Cabinet Minister Lisa Raitt thinks the isotope crisis is a ‘sexy’ political issue with positive implications for her political career?
Where do the Tories find these people? Why do they keep them? Jesus.
In lavora-tories?
Thoughtfully spoken, ma’am.
There are a few other neutron-sized dots that I’ve been furrowing my brow over, that nobody I’ve seen so far seems to have drawn a very stright line between:
1) That a bunch of exceedingly intellectual Conservative politicians in November, 2007 declared themselves in Parliament to be untrained, ad-hoc experts in nuclear engineering;
2) That they then fired the head of the regulatory agency charged by statute with overseeing safety at Chalk River. You know, the one who had ordered that self-same reactor shut down because it was, ummm, kinda leaky, unsafe and unreliable;
3) That they then fired up that self-same reactor, to, ummm, help cancer patients around the world. Oh. And look like heroes in the name of short-term political gain;
4) May, 2009: That self-same reactor springs a heavy-water leak. Oops!!!! Who the hell saw that one comin’…?
I’m still way back at a TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD
(let’s finish that thought)… a 26-year-old as Minister of anything. How the hell does that happen anyway?
I think the 26 year old was her aide … but still …
I was getting almost angry enough to call in to the CBC programme discussing this today. It seemed to me that a great many Conservative women called in to complain about the invasion of the Minister’s privacy.
Then a cancer patient called and said what I intended to say. Cancer is a frightening disease; the isotope situation makes it even scarier; it is not something for a politician to play with for her own self aggrandizement.
XUP, I’d love to say it’s by having an ambitious, opportunistic, cut-throat attitude towards everything, including cancer, but I can’t. She’s not 26. She’s 41. I think the assistant she was talking to on the tape (and who is now unemployed) is 26.
Coyote – I know, eh? These guys seem to think that they’re experts on friggin’ everything by virtue of the fact they’re Conservative politicians. They refuse to defer to people who merely went to school and studied and got specialized degrees in highly specialized fields like nuclear physics.
Touché, Zoom! “Sexy”…I’m mind-boggled at this. Where the HELL do these people come from????
They find them in the same place they found little stevie.
The place where they believe they know more than anyone, and they are more important than anyone, and they have contempt for everyone, even their own fellow ministers.
A pox on all their houses.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s (AECL) incompetence on the matter of isotopes certainly makes me more doubtful that they should be the ones to build new nuclear reactors for Ontario. After all, their performance in the last few years has been far from impressive.
What bothered me was the Conservatives position that the horrid, horrid “sexy” comment was just something she said because she didn’t think anyone was listening and that “We’ve all said things in private that we wouldn’t want others to hear.”
As Anna Maria Tremonte pointed out, we are not all ministers of the crown. And for heaven’s sake, saying, behind closed doors that you don’t like your Great Aunt Agnes’s taste in hats (or something) is hardly comparable to getting excited about playing politics with an issue that puts citizens lives and health at stake.
And if that’s what she’s saying privately, it means she’s got a terrible attitude towards public service. Whether she thought anyone would hear her or not!
Arrrrgh! It’s so frustrating! I was thinking of you, Zoom, when I was yelling at the radio in my car this morning.
Excellent post.
I must tell you, when I heard that “sexy” comment from Raitt, you and my friend Penny (leukemia patient) came to mind and it enraged me. I understand she is ambitious and is concerned about her career, but the comment was in bad taste even if she said it “privately”. I really don’t like the woman. I’m sure she’s getting more heat because she’s a woman, but I’d be just as mad at a man who has been as sloppy and inconsiderate as she has. I’m getting so sick of Harper’s people.
This is scary, and how these “isotopes” are created and collected should have been better organized. But I reported on radioactive leaks, shutdowns and subsequent coverups at Chalk River back in 1997/98. None of this is new, Chalk River is based on technology that is fifty-years old and the Canadian Government (Liberal and PC/Conservative) has known the reactors have needed to be permanently shut down for decades — the inside of the facility literally resembles the set for Dr. No.
The only issue here that is “Conservative” specific is the tape, and that’s a brutal and crude insight into politics at the ‘higher’ levels. She happened to get busted for saying a potential tragedy could be good for her career, but I don’t think it’s terribly cynical to believe that’s how these people work at that level.
This makes me think of the time I was waiting for a flight at YOW, and overheard Bev Oda talking on her cellphone about ‘f***ing politicians’ (used as an adjective, not a verb) while her assistant held a mini recorder close to the phone to catch every golden word. If only I’d thought to capture a video on my camera…