* It could, of course, cause cancer, but since nearly half of all Japanese die from cancer anyway, the radiation will be a mere suspect, not a definite culprit. If, say, iodine-131 contamination precedes a significant increase in the number of childhood thyroid cancers, radiation may be plausibly blamed—but the cause of any one thyroid cancer, however likely, is not certain; whereas the symptoms of radiation sickness do afford casual certainty, for all the good that does the patient.