NHK: Thyroid cancer found in 18 Fukushima children

[Yo_Mama]

9. Well, no, it's not obvious

I think we can assume that there is a higher risk of thyroid cancer in these kids.

But proving it is another matter and will require years more, because if you grabbed any population of kids and screened them all with high-resolution ultrasounds, you would come up with a much higher incidence of cancers than is normal. And that would be true anywhere for any population.

It's only if you track incidence over years that you can statistically prove the relationship. When you do testing like this, you concentrate diagnoses which would have occurred over a period of years in a very short time span, and you detect abnormalities that would never be picked up at all in some people. Further, most of these cancers are slow-growing. So if you find a large growth in a Fukushima child at this point, the chances are high that the growth began before 3-11.
http://rt.com/news/fukushima-children-thyroid-cancer-783/

Now if you still doubt this, please read this article:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/06/05/national/fukushima-survey-lists-12-confirmed-15-suspected-thyroid-cancer-cases/#.UhZ1Bj9Lils

Note that the first round of testing occurred in 2011. The disaster occurred then too. Seven out of 40,000 kids were found with cancer in that round, but it is just about inconceivable that the cancers could have occurred from the disaster exposure. These seven kids must already have had it before the disaster. It takes time for nodules to form and grow enough to warrant any biopsy or testing. Thyroid nodules are actually very common, but most of them are small and non-cancerous.

Only a rising tide of detections can statistically prove a relationship, which will require years of monitoring. If you multiply 7 times 9 (360,000/40,000) you get 63 cases, so they have not even reached the baseline from the original study. That would be the expected "normal" incidence in this population for this type of screening.