Downwinder, Not

I was thinking about cancer the other day and was suddenly reminded of the Downwinders. This is a government-defined class of people who lived downwind of the primary nuclear weapon test sites in Nevada in the late 1950s and early 1960s. If you come down with cancer, you are entitled to compensation because fallout from aboveground nuclear tests definitely increases the statistical likelihood of certain cancers. Though it is impossible to say that any given cancer was caused by any given exposure to radioactive materials, you still have to admit that pumping fairly large amounts of radioactive cesium and whatnot into the atmosphere was a Seriously Bad Idea and the people unwittingly exposed deserve compensation.

My dad qualified, not that it did him any good personally, as did my grandmother. My uncle and I, however, are not so fortunate. Though we lived in the downwind area (Coconino County, Arizona, in our cases) our cancers are not covered. Nobody really knows what causes my form of cancer, Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Thus far nobody has been able to pin it to exposure to any particular toxin or radioactive material. Indeed, the only thing that seems to have any correlation with Hodgkin's is infection with the Epstein-Barr Virus, which causes mononucleosis and (allegedly, anyway) Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But even then, the correlation is only about 50%, meaning that only about half of the people with Hodgkin's test positive for Epstein-Barr.

But on the basis of that 50% correlation is my participation in the Downwinder program nixed.

Pfui!