Doctors at a hospital in Kiev, Ukraine, operate on a patient with thyroid cancer. Normally a very rare disease, thyroid cancer rates have reached epidemic proportions in areas contaminated by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The thyroid is the gland that concentrates iodine in the body. It is therefore particularly vulnerable to developing tumors when exposed to nuclear radiation that contains high levels of radioactive iodine.

Fortunately thyroid cancer is fairly easily treated, and success rates have been high.

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