Doctors: Canada abdicating isotope role

OTTAWA, July 10 (UPI) -- Senior nuclear medicine doctors in Canada say the federal government is dropping the ball as a major global supplier of radioactive medical isotopes.

Prior to the idling of an isotope-producing facility in Chalk River, Ontario, in May because of a radioactive water leak, Canada was producing as much as 40 percent of the global supply of isotopes used in cancer and cardiac medicine.

This week, Atomic Energy of Canada announced the 52-year-old facility would be shut down until at least the autumn. The news came after Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his Conservative government wasn't going to pour funds into the isotope system and that Canada was getting out of the business.

Dr. Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine, told the Globe and Mail the political handling of the situation was a national embarrassment.

"There's probably no better way to shoot yourself in the foot than to act as the Canadian government has been acting over the past 18 months," Urbain said.

Christopher O'Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine, agreed.

"Canada on the international stage has always been a force for the peaceful use of nuclear energy," he said. "What is more peaceful than saving people's lives with nuclear energy?"