Congress Fail: Shortage Looms as No Facilities In US to Produce Tech-99m

For several years Canada has been the primary souce of production of technetium-99m, an isotope that according to the New York Times is used in more than 40,000 medical procedures a day in the United States. The procedures are important and critical to good medical care. The procedures include tests for cardiac disease, bone cancer, metastatic bone cancer (from cancers such as breast cancer and prostate cancer) and kidney function in children. I often order this test for suspected stress fractures. Bone scans are much less expensive than MRIs and at times will show subtle bone activity missed by the MRI. (Of course the MRI sometimes detects bone stress injuries that the bone scan does not, and MRIs include a different kind of detail and information on cartilage, ligaments and tendons.)

Ontario, Canada was the home to the 51 year old reactor primarily used in production. It has been shut down until at least the end of the year  for safety reasons. The next most frequently used production facility, a 47 year old reactor in Holland, is scheduled to be shut down for maintenance shortly.

A few years ago congress had to pass legislation to allow the export of Uranium 235 to Canada to manufacture the Technetium-99m. At that time they were well aware that there were no U.S. facilities available to manufacturer this critically needed medical compound. Plans were bandied about at that time to start construction of new facilities that would take about 5 years to build. Apparently nothing was passed, since new legislation is being discussed at this time. It is time to get cracking on this and not to pat yourselves on the back for the fine job being done. Scanning for simple tests will soon not be as inexpensive, uncomplicated, and simple as it is today. More expensive and in some cases more complicated procedures will need to be performed.

In view of the tainted Heparin, for which no clear answer was ever offered, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at the slow response.

This is another failure to maintain domestic manufacturing capacity for needed materials and products. Apparently in the nuclear plant production area there is a tremendous lack of interest, knowledge, and desire about the production of new plants. When 10,000 scientist members of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) were recently polled,  the scientists were found to favor the new production of nuclear plants by 70%, while the public favored this by only 51%. There were a number of other interesting items in the survey, including political affiliations, evolution, and global warming. The suvey may be viewed online at the Pew Research Center.

Perhaps the take away lesson is that when you know there is impending disaster in the near future, you need to carefully consider what actions are needed. But you must act. You can’t table resolutions  and delay action while taking money from special interests and missing the big picture.

Pew Research Survey On Science