Fukushima's Children are Dying

[FBaggins]

15. Nobody can say for certain...

... because nobody does this level of thyroid testing. It's normally just palpation by your doctor (which wouldn't have picked up any of these cases). Previous studies imply that it's likely to be the norm, but it's also possible that there are genetic differences in different populations. All this study shows is that the rate for Japanese children unexposed to radioiodine from Fukushima is consistent with that found in the baseline studies of exposed children.

Is there some prior issue that has been tied to such high rates of thyroid cysts and nodes in Japanese?

The point here is that there isn't any evidence that it's "high" at all.

Well before Fukushima, there were medical groups that questioned whether we were dealing with thyroid issues correctly, because most people with thyroid cancer never know that they have it or develop any symptoms. They were worried that they were treating people (and scaring them) unnecessarily. In a couple studies, autopsies of people who did not die of cancer showed as many as half of the subjects had thyroid cancer and never knew it.

On edit - Here's a good example (pre-Fukushima) - http://medicalconsumers.org/2010/06/11/thyroid-cancer-overtreatment/