[ RadSafe ] Fwd: [abolition-caucus] Horror of DU not limited to Iraq

[Norm Cohen]

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Subject: [abolition-caucus] Horror of DU not limited to Iraq
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:32:15 +0100 (BST)


Horror Of Depleted Uranium Not Limited To Iraq
By James Denver

http://www.coastalpost.com/05/04/09.htm

     "I'm horrified. The people out there - the Iraqis, the media and the  
troops - risk the most appalling ill health. And the radiation from  
depleted uranium can travel literally anywhere. It's going to destroy the  
lives of thousands of children, all over the world. We all know how far  
radiation can travel. Radiation from Chernobyl reached Wales and in  
Britain you sometimes get red dust from the Sahara on your car."
     The speaker is not some alarmist doom-sayer. He is Dr. Chris Busby,  
the British radiation expert, Fellow of the University of Liverpool in the  
Faculty of Medicine and UK representative on the European Committee on  
Radiation Risk, talking about the best-kept secret of this war: the fact  
that, by illegally using hundreds of tons of depleted uranium (DU) against  
Iraq, Britain and America have gravely endangered not only the Iraqis but  
the whole world. For these weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and  
mutagenic, radioactive particles in such abundance that-whipped up by  
sandstorms and carried on trade winds - there is no corner of the globe  
they cannot penetrate-including Britain. For the wind has no boundaries  
and time is on their side: the radioactivity persists for over  
4,500,000,000 years and can cause cancer, leukemia, brain damage, kidney  
failure, and extreme birth defects - killing millions of every age for  
centuries to come. A crime against humanity which may, in the
  eyes of historians, rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
    These weapons have released deadly, carcinogenic and mutagenic,  
radioactive particles in such abundance that there is no corner of the  
globe they cannot penetrate - including Britain.
    Yet, officially, no crime has been committed. For this story is a dirty  
story in which the facts have been concealed from those who needed them  
most. It is also a story we need to know if the people of Iraq are to get  
the medical care they desperately need, and if our troops, returning from  
Iraq, are not to suffer as terribly as the veterans of other conflicts in  
which depleted uranium was used.

A Dirty Tyson
    'Depleted' uranium is in many ways a misnomer. For 'depleted' sounds  
weak. The only weak thing about depleted uranium is its price. It is dirt  
cheap, toxic, waste from nuclear power plants and bomb production.  
However, uranium is one of earth's heaviest elements and DU packs a  
Tyson's punch, smashing through tanks, buildings and bunkers with equal  
ease, spontaneously catching fire as it does so, and burning people alive.  
'Crispy critters' is what US servicemen call those unfortunate enough to  
be close. And, when John Pilger encountered children killed at a greater  
distance he wrote: "The children's skin had folded back, like parchment,  
revealing veins and burnt flesh that seeped blood, while the eyes, intact,  
stared straight ahead. I vomited." (Daily Mirror)
    The millions of radioactive uranium oxide particles released when it  
burns can kill just as surely, but far more terribly. They can even be so  
tiny they pass through a gas mask, making protection against them  
impossible. Yet, small is not beautiful. For these invisible killers  
indiscriminately attack men, women, children and even babies in the  
womb-and do the gravest harm of all to children and unborn babies.

A Terrible Legacy
    Doctors in Iraq have estimated that birth defects have increased by 2-6  
times, and 3-12 times as many children have developed cancer and leukaemia  
since 1991. Moreover, a report published in The Lancet in 1998 said that  
as many as 500 children a day are dying from these sequels to war and  
sanctions and that the death rate for Iraqi children under 5 years of age  
increased from 23 per 1000 in 1989 to 166 per thousand in 1993. Overall,  
cases of lymphoblastic leukemia more than quadrupled with other cancers  
also increasing 'at an alarming rate'. In men, lung, bladder, bronchus,  
skin, and stomach cancers showed the highest increase. In women, the  
highest increases were in breast and bladder cancer, and non-Hodgkin  
lymphoma.1
    On hearing that DU had been used in the Gulf in 1991, the UK Atomic  
Energy Authority sent the Ministry of Defense a special report on the  
potential damage to health and the environment. It said that it could  
cause half a million additional cancer deaths in Iraq over 10 years. In  
that war the authorities only admitted to using 320 tons of DU-although  
the Dutch charity LAKA estimates the true figure is closer to 800 tons.  
Many times that may have been spread across Iraq by this year's war. The  
devastating damage all this DU will do to the health and fertility of the  
people of Iraq now, and for generations to come, is beyond imagining.
    The radioactivity persists for over 4,500,000,000 years killing  
millions of every age for centuries to come. This is a crime against  
humanity which may rank with the worst atrocities of all time.
    We must also count the numberless thousands of miscarried babies.  
Nobody knows how many Iraqis have died in the womb since DU contaminated  
their world. But it is suggested that troops who were only exposed to DU  
for the brief period of the war were still excreting uranium in their  
semen 8 years later and some had 100 times the so-called 'safe limit' of  
uranium in their urine. The lack of government interest in the plight of  
veterans of the 1991 war is reflected in a lack of academic research on  
the impact of DU but informal research has found a high incidence of birth  
defects in their children and that the wives of men who served in Iraq  
have three times more miscarriages than the wives of servicemen who did  
not go there.
    Since DU darkened the land Iraq has seen birth defects which would  
break a heart of stone: babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with  
their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where  
their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes,  
or without limbs, and even without heads. Significantly, some of the  
defects are almost unknown outside textbooks showing the babies born near  
A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.
    Doctors report that many women no longer say 'Is it a girl or a boy?'  
but simply, 'Is it normal, doctor?' Moreover this terrible legacy will not  
end. The genes of their parents may have been damaged for ever, and the  
damaging DU dust is ever-present.

Blue on Blue
    What the governments of America and Britain have done to the people of  
Iraq they have also done to their own soldiers, in both wars. And they  
have done it knowingly. For the battlefields have been thick with DU and  
soldiers have had to enter areas heavily contaminated by bombing.  
Moreover, their bodies have not only been assaulted by DU but also by a  
vaccination regime which violated normal protocols, experimental vaccines,  
nerve agent pills, and organophosphate pesticides in their tents. Yet,  
though the hazards of DU were known, British and American troops were not  
warned of its dangers. Nor were they given thorough medical checks on  
their return-even though identifying it quickly might have made it  
possible to remove some of it from their body. Then, when a growing number  
became seriously ill, and should have been sent to top experts in  
radiation damage and neurotoxins, many were sent to a psychiatrist.
    Over 200,000 US troops who returned from the 1991 war are now invalided  
out with ailments officially attributed to service in Iraq-that's 1 in 3.  
In contrast, the British government's failure to fully assess the health  
of returning troops, or to monitor their health, means no one even knows  
how many have died or become gravely ill since their return. However, Gulf  
veterans' associations say that, of 40,000 or so fighting fit men and  
women who saw active service, at least 572 have died prematurely since  
coming home and 5000 may be ill. An alarming number are thought to have  
taken their own lives, unable to bear the torment of the innumerable  
ailments which have combined to take away their career, their sexuality,  
their ability to have normal children, and even their ability to breathe  
or walk normally. As one veteran puts it, they are 'on DU death row,  
waiting to die'.
    Whatever other factors there may be, some of their illnesses are  
strikingly similar to those of Iraqis exposed to DU dust. For example,  
soldiers have also fathered children without eyes. And, in a group of  
eight servicemen whose babies lack eyes seven are known to have been  
directly exposed to DU dust.
    They too have fathered children with stunted arms, and rare  
abnormalities classically associated with radiation damage. They too seem  
prone to cancer and leukemia. Tellingly, so are EU soldiers who served as  
peacekeepers in the Balkans, where DU was also used. Indeed their leukemia  
rate has been so high that several EU governments have protested at the  
use of DU.

The Vital Evidence
    Despite all that evidence of the harm done by DU, governments on both  
sides of the Atlantic have repeatedly claimed that as it emits only 'low  
level' radiation DU is harmless. Award-winning scientist, Dr. Rosalie  
Bertell who has led UN medical commissions, has studied 'low-level'  
radiation for 30 years. 2  She has found that uranium oxide particles have  
more than enough power to harm cells, and describes their pulses of  
radiation as hitting surrounding cells 'like flashes of lightning' again  
and again in a single second.2 Like many scientists worldwide who have  
studied this type of radiation, she has found that such 'lightning  
strikes' can damage DNA and cause cell mutations which lead to cancer.
    Moreover, these particles can be taken up by body fluids and travel  
through the body, damaging more than one organ. To compound all that, Dr.  
Bertell has found that this particular type of radiation can cause the  
body's communication systems to break down, leading to malfunctions in  
many vital organs of the body and to many medical problems. A striking  
fact, since many veterans of the first Gulf war suffer from innumerable,  
seemingly unrelated, ailments.
    In addition, recent research by Eric Wright, Professor of Experimental  
Haematology at Dundee University, and others, have shown two ways in which  
such radiation can do far more damage than has been thought. The first is  
that a cell which seems unharmed by radiation can produce cells with  
diverse mutations several cell generations later. (And mutations are at  
the root of cancer and birth defects.) This 'radiation-induced genomic  
instability' is compounded by 'the bystander effect' by which cells mutate  
in unison with others which have been damaged by radiation-rather as birds  
swoop and turn in unison. Put together, these two mechanisms can greatly  
increase the damage done by a single source of radiation, such as a DU  
particle. Moreover, it is now clear that there are marked genetic  
differences in the way individuals respond to radiation-with some being  
far more likely to develop cancer than others. So the fact that some  
veterans of the first Gulf war seem relatively unharmed by
  their exposure to DU in no way proves that DU did not damage others.

The Price of Truth
    That the evidence from Iraq and from our troops, and the research  
findings of such experts, have been ignored may be no accident. A US  
report, leaked in late 1995, allegedly says, 'The potential for health  
effects from DU exposure is real; however it must be viewed in  
perspective... the financial implications of long-term disability payments  
and healthcare costs would be excessive.'3
    Clearly, with hundreds of thousands gravely ill in Iraq and at least a  
quarter of a million UK and US troops seriously ill, huge disability  
claims might be made not only against the governments of Britain and  
America if the harm done by DU were acknowledged. There might also be huge  
claims against companies making DU weapons and some of their directors are  
said to be extremely close to the White House. How close they are to  
Downing Street is a matter for speculation, but arms sales makes a  
considerable contribution to British trade. So the massive whitewashing of  
DU over the past 12 years, and the way that governments have failed to  
test returning troops, seemed to disbelieve them, and washed their hands  
of them, may be purely to save money.
    The possibility that financial considerations have led the governments  
of Britain and America to cynically avoid taking responsibility for the  
harm they have done not only to the people of Iraq but to their own troops  
may seem outlandish. Yet DU weapons weren't used by the other side and no  
other explanation fits the evidence. For, in the days before Britain and  
America first used DU in war its hazards were no secret.4 One American  
study in 1990 said DU was 'linked to cancer when exposures are internal,  
[and to] chemical toxicity-causing kidney damage'. While another openly  
warned that exposure to these particles under battlefield conditions could  
lead to cancers of the lung and bone, kidney damage, non-malignant lung  
disease, neuro-cognitive disorders, chromosomal damage and birth defects.5

A Culture of Denial
    In 1996 and 1997 UN Human Rights Tribunals condemned DU weapons for  
illegally breaking the Geneva Convention and classed them as 'weapons of  
mass destruction' 'incompatible with international humanitarian and human  
rights law'. Since then, following leukemia in European peacekeeping  
troops in the Balkans and Afghanistan (where DU was also used), the EU has  
twice called for DU weapons to be banned.
    Yet, far from banning DU, America and Britain stepped up their denials  
of the harm from this radioactive dust as more and more troops from the  
first Gulf war and from action and peacekeeping in the Balkans and  
Afghanistan have become seriously ill. This is no coincidence. In 1997,  
while citing experiments, by others, in which 84 percent of dogs exposed  
to inhaled uranium died of cancer of the lungs, Dr. Asaf Durakovic, then  
Professor of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Georgetown University in  
Washington was quoted as saying, 'The [US government's] Veterans  
Administration asked me to lie about the risks of incorporating depleted  
uranium in the human body.' He concluded, 'uranium does cause cancer,  
uranium does cause mutation, and uranium does kill. If we continue with  
the irresponsible contamination of the biosphere, and denial of the fact  
that human life is endangered by the deadly isotope uranium, then we are  
doing disservice to ourselves, disservice to the truth, disservice to
  God and to all generations who follow.' Not what the authorities wanted  
to hear and his research was suddenly blocked.
    During 12 years of ever-growing British whitewash the authorities have  
abolished military hospitals, where there could have been specialized  
research on the effects of DU and where expertise in treating DU victims  
could have built up. And, not content with the insult of suggesting the  
gravely disabling symptoms of Gulf veterans are imaginary they have  
refused full pensions to many. For, despite all the evidence to the  
contrary, the current House of Commons briefing paper on DU hazards says  
'it is judged that any radiation effects from possible exposures are  
extremely unlikely to be a contributory factor to the illnesses currently  
being experienced by some Gulf war veterans.' Note how over a quarter of a  
million sick and dying US and UK vets are called 'some'.

The Way Ahead
    Britain and America not only used DU in this year's Iraq war, they  
dramatically increased its use-from a minimum of 320 tons in the previous  
war to at minimum of 1500 tons in this one. And this time the use of DU  
wasn't limited to anti-tank weapons-as it had largely been in the previous  
Gulf war-but was extended to the guided missiles, large bunker busters and  
big 2000-pound bombs used in Iraq's cities. This means that Iraq's cities  
have been blanketed in lethal particles-any one of which can cause cancer  
or deform a child. In addition, the use of DU in huge bombs which throw  
the deadly particles higher and wider in huge plumes of smoke means that  
billions of deadly particles have been carried high into the air-again and  
again and again as the bombs rained down-ready to be swept worldwide by  
the winds.
    The Royal Society has suggested the solution is massive decontamination  
in Iraq. That could only scratch the surface. For decontamination is  
hugely expensive and, though it may reduce the risks in some of the worst  
areas, it cannot fully remove them. For DU is too widespread on land and  
water. How do you clean up every nook and cranny of a city the size of  
Baghdad? How can they decontaminate a whole country in which microscopic  
particles, which cannot be detected with a normal geiger counter, are  
spread from border to border? And how can they clean up all the countries  
downwind of Iraq-and, indeed, the world?
    So there are only two things we can do to mitigate this crime against  
humanity. The first is to provide the best possible medical care for the  
people of Iraq, for our returning troops and for those who served in the  
last Gulf war and, through that, minimize their suffering. The second is  
to relegate war, and the production and sale of weapons, to the scrap heap  
of history-along with slavery and genocide. Then, and only then, will this  
crime against humanity be expunged, and the tragic deaths from this war  
truly bring freedom to the people of Iraq, and of the world.
References
  1. The Lancet volume 351, issue 9103, 28 February 1998.
  2. Rosalie Bertell's book Planet Earth the Latest Weapon of War was  
reviewed in Caduceus issue 51, page 28.
  3. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabl1. htm#TAB L_Research Report  
Summaries
  4. www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.01/020117moret.htm The secret official  
memorandum to Brigadier General L.R.Groves from Drs Conant, Compton and  
Urey of War Department Manhattan district dated October 1943 is available  
at the website  
www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-Gen-Groves21feb03.htm
  5. www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_iitab11.htm#tab L_research report summaries
..........................................................................................
  Further information

  The Low Level Radiation Campaign hopes to be able to arrange a limited  
number of private urine tests for those returning from the latest Gulf  
war. It can be contacted at: The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod  
Wells, LD1 5LW. 01597 824771. Web: www.llrc.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  James Denver writes and broadcasts internationally on science and  
technology.
=================================================


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"A time comes when silence is betrayal.
Even when pressed by the demands of
inner truth, men do not easily assume
the task of opposing their government's
policy, especially in time of war.
Nor does the human spirit move without
  great difficulty against all the apathy
of conformist thought, within one's own
bosom and in the surrounding world."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

 
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