A state of denial

Your typical dude avoids doctors and their probes because they would just find something wrong with him. Who needs that? Been there myself, for sure.

Sometimes you’re forced to go and a blood test reveals you probably should have come in sooner.

That’s sort of what is going on with Iowa.

We would prefer not to know what is wrong when our state leads the nation in cancer. When the data suggests you are polluting the river with nitrate, which causes cancer, the legislature cuts off the funds for monitoring rivers. No data, no problem.

Down deep we know. Always have. This stuff is going to kill you.

Just last week parents were in begging the legislature to fund children’s cancer research. We wave at them from Kinnick Stadium but devote way more in funding to the quarterbacks and coaches than we do cancer research.

Gov. Reynolds directed $1 million to study why Iowa has such a problem. The early results are in: We still don’t know.

We’ve been avoiding the answers for years because it is about the way we make a living.

You wouldn’t want to find out that the stench signals a rot. Or that the armada of anhydrous tanks are delivering us to our demise. If Roundup doesn’t kill you the radon might.

"Well, we all are going to die," Sen. Ernst said. "For heaven's sakes, folks."

No reason to get out of sorts that Northwest Iowa has among the highest cancer rates. We are not immortal, after all. What do you expect? Comprehensive care in a place like Storm Lake? Here’s a pair of gloves, now get back to work.

Chemical conglomerates might not be able to skirt liability if we do all the science.

Iowa prefers to look askance. You can’t blame the swirl of manure in the breeze. You can’t just blame the grain processing plume. You cannot tell me not to fertilize in the fall. There is no problem and this is my land. God told Moses that Iowa agriculture shall not be regulated, and what is written is written, and we are doing the Lord’s work in the vineyard here growing No. 2 yellow corn til who laid the rail.

You hate to hear about Minnesota. They are high-tax socialists. The legislature on a bipartisan basis devoted $25 million for research into Parkinson’s Disease. It’s good for business at the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic. In Iowa, legislators hassle the universities and starve out health systems through poor Medicaid reimbursements.

Do you ever wonder why young Iowans move to the Twin Cities? It may be cold up there, but the ag supply chain doesn’t own the politics like it does down here. And the pay is better.

We old folks are left behind still trying to reconcile if we have a problem. The Harkin Institute and the Iowa Environmental Council came out with yet another report linking pesticides and radon to cancer. The Iowa Cancer Registry will make more reports to the legislature for the million-dollar study. That should be the end of it. If Roundup doesn’t work anymore try dicamba. If you don’t like it, buy a reverse osmosis water filtration system or move to snowflake-land.

We’re killing ourselves for the corporation but would like to think we are doing it because we are independent and free.

It’s easier for now to think that we can live forever doing it this way.

What’s your million dollars buy you? Some more anxiety. If we threw some real money at it we might find that what you don’t know might kill you. If you catch things in time you can do something about it. We’re just starting to look, and not that hard.

Somebody could really make a run with this issue if they had the courage to face the facts. What if we spent $25 million on research into cancer in Iowa? Or $50 million? Chump change to the chemical complex. They got Iowa in such a place that all we can afford is just enough to scratch the surface. 

They would prefer us to think it was the beer. Or the French fries. That’s it. Must have been the extra order of fries. They like us stupid like that, but we might not be as ignorant as they suppose. Eventually the politics will catch up to the people. The question is whether anyone will be left here by the time they figure it out.