Posted on 07/27/2009 12:36:20 AM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON — A global shortage of a radioactive drug crucial to tests for cardiac disease, cancer and kidney function in children is emerging because two aging nuclear reactors that provide most of the world’s supply are shut for repairs.
The 51-year-old reactor in Ontario, Canada, that produces most of this drug, a radioisotope, has been shut since May 14 because of safety problems, and it will stay shut through the end of the year, at least.
Some experts fear it will never reopen. The isotope, technetium-99m, is used in more than 40,000 medical procedures a day in the United States.
Loss of the Ontario reactor created a shortage over the last few weeks. But last Saturday a Dutch reactor that is the other major supplier also closed for a month.
The last of the material it produced is now reaching hospitals and doctors’ offices. The Dutch reactor, at Petten, is 47 years old, and even if it reopens on schedule, it will have to be shut for several months in 2010 for repairs, its operators say.
“This is a huge hit,” said Dr. Michael M. Graham, president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and a professor of radiology at the University of Iowa.
There are substitute techniques and materials for some procedures that use the isotope, Dr. Graham and others said, but they are generally less effective, more dangerous or more expensive. With the loss of diagnostic capability, “some people will be operated on that don’t need to be, and vice versa,” he said.
Dr. Andrew J. Einstein, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the...
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On Tuesday, Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is one of the House’s fiercest critics of the nuclear industry, declared that the United States was facing “a crisis in nuclear medicine.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
As a former Nuclear Medicine Technologist, I can say the industry has seen this coming for years, but have been impotent and unable to bring it to the attention of anyone and get it addressed.
No amount of yelling, foot-stamping or screaming has been effective. The train continued to hurdle towards the station.
These tests are valuable, life-saving tests that often have no cost-effective analog that is as useful. Things like THIS outline why bureaucratic big government is going to be the downfall of us all.
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