Which Patient is a Pet? Which is a Human?
One group receiving treatment for a thyroid disorder is given a radioactive drug that makes the patients a potential hazard to children or pregnant women for several days. Still, doctors usually send them home immediately after treatment.
Yet another group of thyroid patients given the same drug in much smaller doses must be quarantined for two to five days under government rules, until the radiation the patients emit is sharply reduced.
Answer below the fold.
The rules are much stricter for house pets, even though they usually get radiation doses 90 percent to 98 percent smaller than the ones given to humans… “The public is more protected from a radioactive Fluffy than from a radioactive father who receives the very same treatment and is then just sent home,” said Mr. Markey, who is the chairman of a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the nuclear commission.
Full article on how radiation rules differ for humans and pets.
I wonder if this has to do with the fact that humans (in general…) can be told to follow directions and do so.
The government is too worried about obesity these days to give much thought to radioactive humans.
If the human thyroid patient tries to buy a cheeseburger, then the FDA may form a committee to examine whether thyroid patients should be required to read calorie charts before eating.
A human get a dose of radiation 10 times greater than a pet, but the pet is quarantined? This doesn’t make sense to require pet owners to board fluffy or spot several days when a human can go home immediately.
Note that instead of changing the regulations so that the pet can go home (just be careful cleaning out the litter box), they want to quarantine people: the regulations should be “at least as protective as those that govern the release of cats and dogs….”
When my cat underwent thyroid therapy a few years ago, the $200 cost of treatment (about the same as for humans) became $800 because the cat had to be boarded at the oncology center. What would it cost to board people? $1,000 a day? $10,000 a day?
Health care. You just can’t make this stuff up!
I say quarantine the patients and free the pets.