Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Canada plans to leave the production of medical isotopes to other countries — despite the fact that for a time last year, this country was producing nearly all such isotopes in the world.
“Eventually, we anticipate Canada will be out of the business,” Harper said Wednesday.Harper’s announcement came shortly after Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt delivered a tearful apology to cancer patients “she may have offended” when she told an aide in January that the cancer and the isotope shortage was a “sexy issue” that could boost her political career.
Raitt has been under fire since May 14 when the 52-year-old Chalk River reactor, known as the NRU was shut down after it began leaking radioactive water.Harper’s comments followed Raitt’s redress for describing cancer and a medical isotope shortage as “sexy” issues that could help her political career.
Raitt made the comments to her aide in January, in a conversation that was apparently recorded accidentally.
On the recording, which eventually was obtained by a journalist, the minister said she was ready to “roll the dice” on the “easy” problem of finding more medical isotopes.
She then said: “It’s sexy. Radioactive leaks. Cancer.
And then
Canadian researchers find substitute for scarce medical isotope
Researchers in Alberta and Ontario have created a new radioactive drug that will immediately help diagnose bone cancer and fractures while taking pressure off the troubled Chalk River nuclear facility.I think this is a success story. More importantly, it's an Alberta success story," said Dr. Sandy McEwan, chair of oncology at the University of Alberta.
So yesterday the tearful apology, today the solution that Lisa will be quick to take credit for.
It was easy, just roll the dice. How could we have ever doubted her?
And some wanted the Prime Minister to roll a head or two.
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