The following is from Masayuki Takayama's latest book, "Henkenjizai: Who Buried Shinzo Abe?
This book is the latest in a series of bound editions of his famous columns in weekly Shincho, but the original text has been polished to make it even easier to read.
He deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature for this one book alone.
It is a must-read not only for the Japanese people but for people worldwide.
Good Radiation
Herman Muller's interest in heredity led him to the laboratory of Professor Thomas Morgan at Columbia University in the United States.
Here, he found deformities in the scarlet fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and studied their inheritance.
In his research, Professor Morgan discovered that "genes are on chromosomes," for which he received a Nobel Prize.
Muller, too, dreamed of such a finding, worked hard on his research, and came up with the idea of irradiating the scarlet fly.
All the children then developed deformities due to mutations passed on to the next generation.
Under certain conditions, the next generation would be entirely female.
Without only females, the species would become extinct.
Muller's study was published just before the Great Depression and made a huge impact.
Would humans also mutate and perish due to Radiation?
Researchers competed with each other to verify Muller's research.
However, even when the silver fly, slightly larger than the scarlet fly, was exposed to Radiation, no deformities were produced.
No abnormalities were found in frogs, mice, or guinea pigs.
Is Radiation really that dangerous?
When life was born, there was a lot of uranium-235 before its decay, and the ground was full of Radiation.
If it were dangerous, even once-born life would have died out.
To sum up, the cells of humans and other living creatures become healthy when exposed to high doses of Radiation.
On the other hand, genetic cells may be damaged.
However, the damaged cells take their own life in many living things.
If it survives, it will give birth to deformity.
That is why they choose death.
It is somewhat reminiscent of the Japanese spirit.
It is called apoptosis, and cells in the human body often commit suicide.
The scarlet fly, however, does not undergo apoptosis, and instead of committing suicide, the damaged cells survive and give birth to deformities.
It was a rare exception.
We only knew a little then, but Muller's research was never verified and eventually forgotten.
Ten years later.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. was motivated to build an atomic bomb.
Concerned about the effects of Radiation on the human body, the U.S. government sought out Muller and had him resume his research.
However, his research stopped at a scarlet fly.
By the time the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Muller had been fired.
At that time, only the United States had atomic bombs.
The power of the bomb was proven in Hiroshima.
The problem was the Radiation it scattered.
If Radiation had the aftereffects of causing mutations and ruining a nation, as Muller said, who would stand against the U.S.?
So, the U.S. got Sweden to give the Nobel Prize to the sacked Muller, and the U.S. then said, "Radiation causes deformities.
And so the legend of "radiation causes deformities" was born.
The world was made to believe that if they defied the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people would be killed, deformed children would be born due to Radiation, and their race would be destroyed.
On the other hand, greenery was sprouting in the A-bombed cities where it was said that not even grass or trees would grow anymore, and people who had been exposed to the atomic bombing were now becoming second and third-generation citizens and living long lives far exceeding the average life expectancy.
The U.S., seeing the public's puzzlement, came up with the Muller data, a plausible allowable level of 1 millisievert per year, based on the weight of the scarlet fly.
It was endorsed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in the U.K.
According to the book "DNA Loves Radiation" (Sadao Hattori), when humans are exposed to 500 times the amount of Radiation, their cells are activated, and "both diabetes and amyotrophy are improved," according to a report by Professor Seinori Yamaoka of Okayama University.
C.T. scans expose humans to 10 millisieverts, the standard 10-year dose, at a time, but human cells remain normal, and apoptosis was also confirmed to function.
Naoto Kan used such a moldy US-made bogus figure as the standard for eviction during the TEPCO Fukushima accident.
In addition, he needlessly inflamed fears of Radiation and evicted many people for no good reason.
TEPCO still paid 100,000 yen per month to all those evicted, and taxpayers nationwide paid a 2.1 percent reconstruction tax for those called Fukushima victims.
However, the citizens of the prefecture wanted more.
In addition to the one millisievert fraud, the government was held responsible for natural disasters, but the Supreme Court rejected the claim.
How does the world look at the people of Fukushima Prefecture?
I want you to know.
(July 7, 2022 issue)
2024/1/14 in Kyoto
