DEATH BY NEUTRINO

Victor Bloom MD

I hate to break your complacency, dear Reader, but I have an addiction to Truth, and I must share with you my epiphany. Having read about the alleged neutrino, and now learning it is very tiny and neutral, but has mass, I realize why and how we all eventually get old, sick and die.

Wait a minute! You don't want to hear about it! Nobody wants to know they will eventually die, like all living creatures. Supernatural God, of course, is exempt from these merely mortal considerations.

We think of our sun as the source of warmth and energy, which it truly is. The sun is good, we even travel far and wide to keep up with it. More and more snowbirds are moving to the Sun Belt. The world famous resorts have lots of sun. We get sunburned and peel. That's from a combination of infra-red (heat) and ultraviolet radiation. Various sun blocks block UV radiation because that is what is blamed for excess tanning and skin cancer.

More and more you see people using sun block, wearing sun hats, covering their faces, necks and arms as much as possible. The sun causes three kinds of skin cancer, one very slow growing, another much faster, and the other, the malignant melanoma, spreads like lightning throughout the entire body by means of the bloodstream. We try to catch it before it spreads.

Infra-red and ultra-violet are radiations we know about. Almost a century ago we learned about x-rays, they go right through the body. And if you put a photographic plate behind a body part, it will show up as an "x-ray" or radiogram, those black, white and gray transparent sheets your doctor puts up on the light box. They help the doctor see through the body surface into the interior. The pictures help surgeons locate where to cut and what to remove or replace and tell the orthopods where the bone is broken, if it is broken at all.

So far the rays that penetrate us are both good and bad. Now we come to cosmic radiation, which includes the neutrino. Believe it or not, the neutrino, tiny as it is, comes in three 'flavors' (the nuclear physicists have a sense of humor, believe it or not; the three 'forms' of neutrinos are called 'flavors'). Perhaps they are trying to put a gastronomic face on neutrinos, with associated good feelings, to duck the realization that we are gradually killed by them and other cosmic rays.

We already know that too much radiation is not good for us. Back in the old days, Madame Curie did not know that the radium she extracted from tons of pitchblend would do damage penetrating her skin. She handled the fluorescent and radioactive substance with her bare hands. Tragically and ironically, she died of it, of radium poisoning, as did the many workers who painstakingly over years painted the radium dials onto the hands and faces of wristwatches.

When the physicists further developed the use of radioactivity, making isotopes in the laboratory, they were able to develop the atomic bomb, which won the war for us. At the same time, isotopes were developed for medical use. These were examples of more or less controlled radioactivity. Cobalt irradiation was used to cure cancers, along with beams of x-rays. Radioactive iodine was used to treat thyroid cancer. But on the other end of the spectrum of radioactive iodine, too much exposure causes thyroid cancer, which is what was released at Chernobyl. And yes, more and more of the Russians exposed are coming down with leukemia and thyroid cancer.

The evidence is increasing that we are at the mercy of radiation. We are now learning more and more about cosmic radiation, emanating from the sun. We are learning that there are great solar flares and magnetic storms, sending out zillions of particles that pass right through us, as if we were invisible and full of space. I am beginning to believe, from the accumulation of evidence, that we are all eventually going to die of radiation poisoning, sooner or later.

The young body is relatively immune to cancer. The immune system gets stronger through life, accumulating antibodies to infections. Our killer cells also serve to catch mutant cancer cells throughout our lives. But since our immune system is constantly bombarded with cosmic radiation, the longer we live, the more prone we are to cancer.

When the body is working right, metabolism takes care of excess cholesterol. What if a neutrino, raining down invisibly from the sun, knocks askew a tiny portion of our genetic code, incorporated in our unique DNA molecule? And what if that unbroken code is what keeps our metabolisms and immune systems in working order?

I learn that the process of aging also includes a loosening of the connective tissue. And so we get folds and lines we never had before. Parts of us hang and sag. Our joint capsules loosen and cartilage disappears and we suffer the aches and pains of arthritis. It must be those darn neutrinos! Staying in the shade or using sunblock is no protection.

I worry most about our susceptible immune systems. When the genetic code maintaining an effective immune system is damaged by radiation, we can get anything from childhood leukemia to pneumococcal pneumonia, formerly considered the dying person's 'friend'. What with bacteria and viruses mutating ever more hardy and virulent forms, along with our deteriorating immune systems, we are goners. The obituary page is never blank.

Which is where religion comes in. Religion teaches us that we are more than our bodies, that God is good and He won't let us die. Our bodies can be irradiated and deteriorated, but these processes have nothing to do with our spirit. We hope our souls will survive and we pray for it.