**THIS STORY APPEARED IN DR KARL'S 3RD BOOK, 'SCIENCE BIZARRE'**

 

Anti-Nuclear Pill - Yipee-Ki-Yi

At last they have invented a pill that will protect you from radioactive fall-out.
There have been reports about this drug in prestigious journals like Science and the New England Journal of Medicine. The drug is very simple-potassium iodide, KI. The iodide is the important part. The potassium is only a carrier.

There are many radioactive products which are released into the air after a nuclear bomb explosion, or after a nuclear power plant accident.
The most dangerous fall-out product to human life is radioactive iodine. It is really dangerous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is a lot of iodine in the fall-out. Secondly, the iodine is pretty light, and so it can travel huge distances carried by the wind. Thirdly, and worst of all, the human body absorbs iodine very well.

Iodine is needed in the body by the thyroid gland which is the gland in your neck. The thyroid gland makes thyroid hormones which adjust your metabolic rate. They heat you up and speed up your heart.

Normally, the thyroid gland gets its iodine from food. It takes up as much iodine as it wants and throws the excess iodine out of your body into the sewerage system. If there is radioactive iodine around it will be eaten and absorbed. It will be taken up by the thyroid gland and used to make the thyroid hormones which go everywhere in your body. Wherever these thyroid hormones go they will cause radiation damage because they contain radioactive iodine.

So what do you do if there is lots of radioactive fall-out hanging around the place?
The cure-if you can call it that-is to saturate your thyroid gland with huge amounts of non-radioactive potassium iodide. And you know it is non-radioactive because you got it out of a bottle which was sitting on your shelf. You bought the bottle before the nuclear explosion or melt-down happened. So now your thyroid gland doesn't absorb any radioactive iodine because the thyroid gland is fully saturated. Any radioactive iodine goes straight through your body and out into the sewerage system. The scientists reckon that, if there's radioactive fall-out around, potassium iodide could reduce the number of victims of thyroid cancer from fifty per cent to five per cent.

Already, the Swedish government, which runs many nuclear power plants, gives out free potassium iodide to anyone who wants it. The State of Tennessee does the same thing for citizens who are living near the big Sequoyah nuclear power plant. You need to take only one pill a day for two weeks to give you four weeks of protection.
It was very naughty of the Soviets not to warn the rest of Europe as soon as the first clouds of radioactive debris escaped from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Potassium iodide tablets and solutions were distributed widely as soon as the news leaked out. Those extra few days could mean thousands of cases of thyroid cancer in the years to come.

So all we really need now is another pill to stop the nuclear weapons from exploding and we'll all be perfectly safe.

References

Technology Illustrated, Oct 1983, p 78
Omni, August 1985, p 20

(Illustration by David 'Art' Wales)