Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of May 26, 2020

Article Excerpt

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” —Friedrich Nietzsche I first came across the concept of hormesis in Hiroshima, John Hersey’s book set in the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bomb blast on the Japanese city of that name. Flowers bloomed around the ruined city much sooner than expected. The author explained that the roots of the flowers were buried underground, and this protected them from the deadly nuclear radiation. It turns out that the concept goes deeper, and applies much more widely. The first time I came across the term “hormesis” was in connection with a study of 180 apartment buildings with a total of 1,700 units, built in Taiwan in 1983. The girders that held these buildings together were made of recycled steel that was contaminated with discarded cobalt-60, a radioactive nuclear power by-product. Ten thousand people lived in the apartments, for periods of nine to 22 years. The U.S. NIH (National Institutes of Health) reported on a 1990s study of the…