answers (was Re: [ RadSafe ] James Salsman, DU, and peer-reviewed literature)

[James Salsman]

Thanks to Steven Dapra for his excellent questions:

 > How many of the quotes you offered did you read from the primary
 > source material?

Those that include URLs to full text I have read in full; of the
others, I have read the abstract of Kang, et al. (2000) and McDiarmid,
et al. (2006).  As far as I can remember, these sources were all
suggested either by MEDLINE, the Science Citation Index searches, emails
from people, emails from stored searches, or references in other
articles.  Citations to papers by Schott, Durakovic, and McDiarmid all
appear in some of the anti-DU literature I have seen, but the 2006
article I haven't seen cited anywhere but MEDLINE yet.  Thank you for
your excellent summary.  I wonder where the congenital malformations are
coming from if the chromosome abberations are as low as are suggested.

 > How do any of these papers show criminal negligence?

I am not an attorney.  The legal questions of gross negligence include:

Should those who approved pyrophoric DU munitions have known, or should
they reasonably have been expected to know, that uranium is teratogenic,
at the time they approved of the munitions?

What regulations then governed the use of poisons?

Would a reasonable person have been expected to approve a weapon which
poisons civilians off of the battlefield, after the battle is over?

How many members of the civilian families of U.S. troops have been
injured by the teratogenicity of uranium combustion products?

 > Can it be shown that enlistment rates have fallen as a result of
 > DU exposure?

It is my opinion that, yes, this is easy to show.  A poll of college
students from military families could be used to answer this question,
but I know of no such poll in existing literature.  I note the rise
of such groups as "Leave My Child Alone," which did not exist during
the time of the first Gulf War, as far as I know.

Sincerely,
James Salsman