NEWS ITEM: French atomic lawsuit

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

Notified through another list server, The Scientist

http://www.the-scientist.com/

----------------------

http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20041203/02



French atomic lawsuit



Landmark suit by nuclear test veterans hinges on

scientific evidence of cancer link



By Clare Kittredge



A landmark lawsuit by French atomic bomb test

veterans, pitting scientific questions about

radiation's dangers against an ever-mounting roster of

morbidity and mortality, has come into sharper public

focus this week.



The lawsuit alleges "collective negligence,"

involuntary homicide, and more on behalf of the

veterans of 210 French atomic tests in the Sahara and

French Polynesia between 1960 and 1996. The legal and

scientific arguments got a highly visible public

airing on Thursday night (December 2) when French

national television broadcast an interview in which a

key official in charge of the atomic tests of the

sixties acknowledged government "imprudence."



A lawyer for the plaintiffs told The Scientist he was

on the set of the television program when former

Minister of Defense Pierre Messmer said the government

committed such "imprudences" that he urged then

president Charles de Gaulle to abolish the French

Atomic Energy Commission.



"The French government's position has always been that

the tests were clean and that there was neither

contamination nor irradiation except for a few

isolated individual cases," lawyer Jean-Paul

Teissonniere, told The Scientist. "And here we have

the minister from that era saying imprudences were

committed. It's the first time."



That disclosure is the latest development in the suit

by veterans who claim radiation exposure caused excess

cancers and other health woes. The French government

has pledged full cooperation with the case, but has

until now denied responsibility for the veterans'

health problems. 



The case occurs amid persistent difficulty

establishing scientific proof that radiation exposure

caused a particular cancer to surface years later.

"The big scientific question is do we have enough

elements to establish the link between disease and

exposure?" said Teissonniere. 



The plaintiffs plan to bolster their case with

testimony from scientific experts such as Michel

Fernex from the Medical Faculty of Basel. The judges

will also have access to secret government archives to

resolve scientific questions about what was known

about the role of low-dose radiation and its effect on

DNA and the cardiovascular system, according to

Barillot.



Richard Clapp, an environmental epidemiologist at

Boston University, was part of a team of scientists

who reviewed studies of US atomic testing veterans in

the late seventies. 



Clapp told The Scientist there is a long history of

research showing that people who survived the atomic

bombs in Japan and US atomic testing veterans suffered

a number of diseases including thyroid disease,

thyroid cancer, and leukemia.



"The effects of environmental exposure to radiation

from bombs were well known by the sixties," said

Clapp. 



The French lawsuit was filed November 2003. No court

hearings have yet been scheduled—a sign, say

plaintiffs, of the government's embarrassment about

the case.



Teissonniere acknowledges that "absolute" scientific

proof of a link between radiation exposure and cancer

years later is impossible. But he promises to show

enough of a link in these cases to satisfy French law

requiring him to show elements that are "serious,

precise, and concordant." 



"It's always possible to contest a scientific link.

But if we can show that the elements are 'serious,

precise, and concordant,' the judge can say there is a

link, and we feel the case we have put together allows

a judge to see a link," Teissonniere said. 







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"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."

Thomas Jefferson



-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com



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