[ RadSafe ] Old Anti-Depleted Uranium Video

[Roger Helbig]

I have been commanded by a blogger to refute this film or he will remove my
extensive comments on his blog - have any of you seen this film -- it must
have a lot of false information in it.  I see where it is where Axel Gerdes
and Asaf Durakovic first tried to make a name for themselves.  It also has
some UK soldiers who claim that they have deformed children.  Here is the
blogger John Romano's demand - he got even snootier with a reply to my
initial reply.  Do feel free to write directly to him at
jkromano at bellsouth.net

Please go to http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=40206&s2=18 and view the
documentary on DU. You may need a broadband connection.

 Please refute in your own words this documentary about DU or your post will
be deleted (within one week) on www.democraticcapitalism.com

 Sincerely,

 Blog moderator at www.democraticcapitalism.com
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*"The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children"* is a
documentary film by Freider Wagner and Valentin Thurn. This new, video just
released by Ochoa-Wagner Produktion in 2004 in Germany, documents uranium
contamination in Iraq following aerial bombardment and armored tank assaults
by U.S. and allied forces. The story is told by citizens of many nations and
opens with comments by two British vets, Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore,
describing their exposure to radioactive, so-called 'depleted' uranium (DU),
weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children.

Dr. Siegwart-Horst Günther, a former colleague of Albert Schweitzer, and
Tedd Weyman of the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC) traveled to Iraq,
from Germany and Canada respectively, to assess uranium contamination in
Iraq. As an M.D., Dr. Günther is especially interested in the health effects
that can be caused by such contamination. Dr. Jenan Hassan brought Dr.
Günther and the film-makers through the Mother and Children's Hospital in
Basra. Over 300 tons of uranium weapons were used by coalition forces in
1991 during Gulf War I, and some of the heaviest use was in Basra, in
southern Iraq. There we glimpse an on-going health catastrophe--a ten-fold
increase in cancers and a twenty-fold increase in congenital deformities.
Iraqi doctors who appear in the film give greater detail on cancer
statistics on-line at http://www.traprockpeace.org or
http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de The grisly realities of the cancer
ward are vivid and provide an appropriate alarm that could help to stop the
use of these weapons unless it is shown they will not harm civilians for
generations to come.

Throughout his travels, the film shows Tedd Weyman regularly noting
Geiger-counter readings and taking soil and water samples for laboratory
analysis. Weyman visited a bombed television station, areas where tanks
shelled buildings and vehicles, city streets and scrap yards where children
played on the remains of destroyed vehicles, often forgoing the use of
protective gear in order to gather samples without being stopped by
authorities.

"The Doctor ..." introduces us to Dr. Axel Gerdes a geologist at the
Mineralogical Institute at Goethe University at Frankfurt-am-Mien. Gerdes
used mass spectrometry on behalf of UMRC to precisely analyze soil samples
collected near a refreshment stand in Baghdad. He reports the concentrations
of uranium dust found there to be as high as 50-60%. Such concentrations
pose a tremendous hazard for inhalation of this radioactive and toxic heavy
metal. U236 (a highly radioactive man-made isotope of uranium) was also
detected by mass spectrometry, and was probably used in coalition weapons.
The US has acknowledged that traces of U236, plutonium and other
transuranics (waste products from nuclear reactors and nuclear reprocessing
facilities) have contaminated American DU munitions. Analysis of urine
samples collected from Iraqis showed uranium levels as high as 400 times
normal. Dr. Asaf Duracovic, founder of the Uranium Medical Research Center,
and formerly a Colonel in the U.S. Army, says that in years past the
Canadian government wasted a million dollars on tests provided to Canadian
veterans, using faulty methodology that looked for uranium in the hair,
where uranium will not accumulate.

This video offers a brief chronology of Dr. Günther's life, from his early
involvement in East Germany with Hitler's Youth Brigades and his
participation in the resistance toward the end of WWII, to his many awards
for humanitarian service. Günther speculated that German industrial research
from 1973-1996 by MBB, a corporation in Bavaria, on the development of
uranium weapons may be one reason that his findings are not always
well-received in Germany. Günther was the victim of a hit and run accident
while walking on a country road. German authorities fined him 3,000 DM for
carrying a uranium bullet fragment from Iraq into Germany, even though the
German government later claimed that use of these weapons in the Balkans
posed no health threat to residents living in contaminated areas. Of 3500
resettled from a contaminated area there, 1112 have developed cancer.
-- A Review by Sunny Miller, Traprock Peace Center, Deerfield, MA 01342 -
August 10, 2004