In Japan, rumors are spreading that in regions prone to radioactive releases from the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, hospitals do not have time to operate on newborns born with polydactyly - with extra fingers
According to a Facebook post of Fukushima-based Kanako Nishikata, "There are already more than a hundred people in the prefecture's main hospital on the waiting list for surgery to treat polydactyly." According to the girl, the parents are told that their children will be able to undergo surgery to remove extra fingers and toes, which appeared, presumably as a result of mutations caused by radiation emissions from Fukushima-1, but for this they will have to wait 1-2 years …
As Nishikata stated in her entry, she does not vouch for the reliability of this information and claims that she heard it from a friend who himself learned about her from a colleague, who in turn received the news from his friend. Nevertheless, the Japanese woman notes that her father, two years after the catastrophic earthquake, had an enlarged thyroid gland, and although he is a roofer by profession and is very pleased with the large number of orders from those who restore the damaged houses, his health condition raises concerns.
Despite the fact that Nishikata's information about the birth of children with extra fingers did not have reliable sources, they were quickly replicated in Japanese social networks and the media.
According to official figures released in late August by the Fukushima Health Department, births in the prefecture between January 2012 and March 2012 showed a slight increase in the number of children with polydactyly - 0.26%. For those born after this date, the indicator dropped to 0.22%. At the same time, the normal rate of this defect for the Japanese is about 0.1-0.3%.
As noted by the Japanese The Huffington Post, most likely, information about the huge number of births with extra fingers in the prefecture is unreliable, although it is possible that since 2011 more than a hundred babies with extra fingers and toes have been born in the prefecture.
A malformation such as polydactyly is often associated with radiation injury suffered by parents. According to the Research Institute of Hereditary and Congenital Diseases of Belarus, after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the frequency of newborns with such defects increased 1.3-2.7 times in unaffected regions and 10-14 times in areas with a pollution level of 15 Ci / km2 … However, the frequency of births of children with polydactyly strongly depends on the gene pool of the general population. So, Europeans with a similar defect have only one child out of more than 1300, while in blacks, every 143rd baby may have extra fingers.
As a rule, in most newborns with polydactyly, extra fingers are successfully removed by surgery before the age of 15 months, and these operations do not leave behind scars or any other marks. However, this syndrome can be accompanied by other, more dangerous diseases.
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