[ RadSafe ] children of Gulf War vets (was Re: RadSafe Digest, Vol 769, Issue 1)

[James Salsman]

Mike Brennan wrote:

>... If you are going to claim that Gulf War vets father children
> with a significant increase in congenital anomalies, that's one
> thing.  It can be shown with statistics....

For mothers, as well, as the Department of Veterans Affairs has
repeatedly shown:

"Dr. Kang found that male Gulf War veterans reported having infants
with likely birth defects at twice the rate of non-veterans.
Furthermore, female Gulf War veterans were almost three times more
likely to report children with birth defects than their non-Gulf
counterparts... with medical records verification... birth defects in
children of deployed male veterans was about 2.2 times that of
non-deployed veterans." -- Department of Veterans Affairs (2003). "Q's
& A's – New Information Regarding Birth Defects" Gulf War Review 12(1)
p. 10: http://web.archive.org/web/20060929095251/http://www1.va.gov/gulfwar/docs/GulfWarNov03.pdf

> On the other hand, if you say...uranium is the cause, then you
> need to show that you have excluded all other possibilities

Really?  How about showing that uranium is a teratogen as Maynard
first showed in 1949 and confirmed in 1950-1? It's been repeatedly
confirmed in the literature since, but never in health professionals'
testimony before Congress or anyone else on depleted uranium weaponry,
as far as I can tell. I would love to be proven wrong. The VA has
never proposed any alternative teratogens to explain the increase in
deployed soldiers' cancers and kids' birth defects.

Science and policy are often at odds, which is too bad. Policy should
be based on science.

Sincerely,
James Salsman