Mint candies, radiation, and illness: countries around the world are looking to use small amounts of radiation to prevent disease. The book Underexposed: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You? explains why.(Book review)

Underexposed: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You?, by Ed Hiserodt, Little Rock, Arkansas: Laissez Faire Books, 2005, 247 pages, paperback, $13.95. (To order through AOBS, use the order form or contact information in the ad on page 39.)

Let's suppose that the federal government analyzed a substance (in this case, mint candies) and issued safety guidelines about those candies. The guidelines emphatically state that any eating of mint candies increases the risk of premature death; therefore, all mint candies should be avoided--except when given to you by a medical professional. No problem, we'll just skip eating mints.

But let's say that you learn from reading studies done on thousands of people that each year 10,000 cases of breast cancer could be prevented with over 99 percent certainty out of a population of one million women--without harmful side effects--simply by having the women eat one small piece of candy every two to three months. Would you buy mint candies for the women you love?

Suppose, also, that you learn that the federal government based its recommendation on the fact that morbidly obese people are statistically far more apt to die in any given year than fit people. (Essentially, the government recommendation assumed that the risk of eating candy was the same for fit people and obese people no matter how much they eat.) Now, would you give your loved ones occasional pieces of mint candy?

In a nutshell, that is what the book Underexposed: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You ? asks you to consider--only the substance that protects women's health is radiation, not mint candies.

Change of Perspective

I have to admit that before I read this book, I had what I considered to be a good healthy fear of radiation--whether it came in large or small amounts. I was uncomfortable getting my teeth X-rayed at the dentist and was largely a believer that radiation causes awful physical mutations like those that create villains and heroes alike in comic books. I still have a good healthy fear of large doses of radiation, but now I wish that my house had been found to have "dangerous levels" of Radon gas (which the government says is bad for you because it is radioactive). Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But to put my new viewpoint into perspective, think back a few years; you will remember a similar situation in which everyone "knew" something was true that wasn't really true.