My DNA is precious to me! (comments by Russell Hoffman) -- January 29th, 2001

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: They say the mechanism of radiation damage is still poorly understood and the debate about what might be a harmful dose is still open. END OF CLIP

(Full NYT article appears below.)

As eminent physician and radiation expert Dr. John W. Gofman put it, "any dose is an overdose". From a public policy perspective if one is to obey the principals of being the least bit careful with other people's lives, there really isn't any real debate left about that issue. If some day they can actually prove there is a dose level which is beneficial, wow, great, fine, but there's ample evidence pointing away from that conclusion -- that much is obvious to everyone except perhaps a few New York Times reporters, and CNN reporters, and most Republicans, and maybe a few other stalwarts of the old school.

Sure, there are details of the mechanism by which the damage is done, which are not fully understood. We don't even really know what causes the common cold yet, do we? But the measurable effects of radiation damage fits some pretty straight-forward scientific models pretty well.

Basically (and I'm no learned scientist, of course, but this is how I understand it) a radioactive decay particle damages a DNA sequence, either directly or more likely, indirectly by creating "free radicals" within the body of the cell, which actually do the damage to the DNA. This new, faulty DNA strand is unlike all the others in the body, which are all the same, excluding any others previously damaged by radiation or some other mechanism (viruses, for instance, might be able to, and smoking too and many other things). A malignant sequence occurs when the DNA area(s) that control cell division rate has been disturbed and become overly reproductive and/or long-lived. If the cancerous cells break off from the original source, they spread and grow all over the place within the body, in other words the cancer has metastasized, which is pretty much 100% fatal and relatively quickly. If on the other hand the cancer is all in one lump they might be able to go in and cut it out. Leukemia, being a disease of the blood and bone marrow where the blood is produced, is generally treated with (what else?) radiation -- kill everything and start over (with a teaspoon of bone marrow from a close family member or other closely matching DNA, if it can be found). Ghastly stuff. My younger brother Daniel says it's a big, painful needle to get the stuff. Not something people volunteer to get matched up for. (I'm in the database and might be asked at any time to make a donation, but for Randy, Daniel was a far closer match.)

This is all stuff a child can understand. But a child shouldn't have to, though many have little choice, because one effect of radioactive pollution is childhood leukemia, and scores of other childhood cancers. Children are about 10 times more susceptible to radiation's effects that adults, for reasons which might seem obvious to anyone but a New York Times reporter -- namely, they are growing, so their cell reproduction rates are much higher than adult rates, which generally just replace cells that die in a fairly steady rate, or even (as in the case of the brain) don't reproduce at all. And maybe the reason children are more susceptible IS complex and unknown, but the fact of the matter is they are vastly more susceptible, and it's well-known, and hardly ever mentioned, especially by a New York Times reporter talking about D.U. and it's effects on Allied soldiers!

Maybe 99.999999% of the time that a DNA strand is broken or a cell is damaged by radiation, the cell just dies and there's no problem. It's that other .000001% that I'm worried about, what with trillions and trillions of cells in my body and probably billions or pieces of uranium, plutonium, and other radioactive particles in there as well, all smashing apart a piece of DNA now and then.

My DNA is precious to me and I don't think the government has a right to destroy it! Isn't that in the Constitution somewhere? It should be!

Why must a New York Times reporter write how this is not understood, not proven, being debated, etc. etc. etc.? After all, even evolutionary evidence is actually pretty scarce if you want to get technical. Estimates are that less than one in a hundred million living animals becomes fossilized for later discovery at all, for example. But the theory of evolution doesn't get the challenges these reporters and the nuclear industry throw at the nuclear debate. Only religious extremists debate evolution, and only the Nuclear Mafia debates the dangers of the Demon Hot Atom!

But it's an abomination against the theory of evolution to want to damage people's DNA. It took us about 3 billion years to develop these lovely 10-billion molecule (or thereabouts) DNA sequences that make us what we are, and random change of the individual cells in a living body is definitely NOT GOOD!

And to top it all off, the level of secrecy, and the official state lies maintained by the government in order to kill us this way (by spreading nuclear waste into the environment in 1000 different ways) is proof enough that something horrible is happening to society because of this stuff -- or else, why the enormous cover-up? Why destroy democracy except for something really, really important, like so you can go on making billions and billions of dollars using nuclear materials! In other words, doing something you have do in keep secret because if the public understood what you are doing, they'd stop you.

So if they don't kill us directly with plutonium, uranium, etc., spread into the environment, well, the death of democracy which the use of those substances has entailed probably dooms us all anyway.

Not to be too gloomy or anything, but truly, we are dealing with a world gone mad, and which will leave a lasting legacy from its madness.

It is truly a hellish situation, since you can't scour the seas, or filter all the water the food you eat absorbs (or for carnivores, drinks) in its lifetime. You just can't protect yourself. Maybe some day all expensive good food will be grown from filtered water, but that will be a pretty sad day for the rest of humanity.

Bottled water really isn't a viable solution for the 6,000,000,000. Maybe for a few hundred million of us, sure, but not for all of us.

It's very interesting that the D.U. they are using for weaponry apparently isn't even "natural", but rather is mixed with radioactive industrial waste, with its accompanying contaminants like plutonium and Uranium-236. I agree it's worse, and what's really amazing is the audacity of anyone to want to use such a vile weapon at all. Our country, I once thought, wanted to lead the way in humane warfare, treatment of prisoners, human rights, etc. etc. But not the Nuclear Mafia. They just want to destroy. I suspect they are the ones who, as kids, would wipe the chess pieces off the board whenever they started to lose.

They are sore losers. Owning nuclear waste means you failed -- you own something no one wants. He who dies with the most nuclear waste is an utter fool. So what do you do? You put it in your military shells and bullets and so forth, and shoot it at your enemy! And with even more audacity, you "protect" your own soldiers by building their tanks out of the same stuff! I bet the D.U. in the armor of the tanks and so forth, and in the tails and control surfaces of 747s and other aircraft, and in the rotors of helicopters, will be found to contain industrial radioactive waste as well, if they ever get around to testing it.

That's all just sick, sick, sick, but that's apparently what's happening.

Russell Hoffman
California, USA
January 29th, 2001

FULL EMAIL THE ABOVE NYT QUOTE IS IMBEDDED IN:

Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 11:54:56 +0900
To: "Russell D. Hoffman" From: Richard Wilcox Subject: DU and other news

Published on Monday, January 29, 2001 in the New York Times
Gulf War Studies Link Cancer to Depleted Uranium
by Marlise Simons

PARIS - The cancer deaths of 24 European soldiers who served as
peacekeepers in the Balkans and the illnesses reported by many
others have stirred alarm in Europe about the use of depleted
uranium in munitions fired from American warplanes during the
conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.

No one has provably linked the use of depleted uranium to the
deaths or illnesses of Balkan veterans, and many scientists
consider such a link impossible. Nor is it clear that cancers are
occurring at a higher rate among former peacekeepers than in the
population at large.

But the fears often stirred by
mention of radiation have sent
doctors, military experts and
politicians scurrying for
explanations. Among the research
they are re-examining is the work
of a retired United States Army
colonel who has insisted that
some of the illnesses he has
observed in Persian Gulf war
veterans may be linked to the
depleted uranium and uranium 236
isotope he says he found in their
bodies.

Asaf Durakovic began examining
gulf war veterans when he worked
as chief of nuclear medicine at
the Veterans Administration
Hospital in Wilmington, Del., in
the 1990's. Since that post was
abolished in 1997, he has
continued with his privately
funded research in Toronto.

In a recent interview, he said
his analysis over the last three
years of body fluids of more than
40 American, British and Canadian
gulf war veterans who have turned
to him keeps turning up evidence
of depleted uranium and uranium
236, a more radioactive uranium
isotope.

Dr. Durakovic said that, unlike
many other institutions involved
in testing for uranium, he uses
mass spectometry tests that
measure the relative abundance of
each isotope in the body.

He said he found depleted
uranium, including uranium 236,
in 62 percent of the sick gulf
war veterans he examined. He
believes that particles lodged in
their bodies and may be a cause
of their illnesses.

Background
on Depleted
Uranium
Ammunition
For much
more check
out:
Discounted
Casualties
- The Human
Cost of
Depleted
Uranium
provided by
the
Hiroshima,
Japan
newspaper -
The Chugoku
Shimbun.

Also the
Federation
of American
[Kosovo Barracks] Scientists
has a
Depleted
Uranium
Ammunition
page. And
the
Military
Toxics
Project has
a campaign
against
depleted
uranium
weapons.

(left) US
Armor
Piercing
Incendiary
[Depleted
Uranium]
30mm
Ammunition

Radiation experts in France and Britain say they are now rereading his work because he was the first to report that he found uranium 236 in the urine as well as in the bone tissue of gulf war veterans. They suspect that its presence indicates that other contaminants may be present.

"This cannot be conventional depleted uranium," said Monique Sené, a physicist who is prominent in France's large atomic research establishment, when asked about Dr. Durakovic's findings. "The ratios he found do not exist in nature. This contains nuclear waste."

Dr. Durakovic's work has been circulating among NATO medical staff members. Several universities have asked him to collaborate, and he has been invited to brief the government in Italy, which raised the alarm about sick peacekeepers and where 10 soldiers have recently died.

Dr. Durakovic, 60, has worked in radiation biology for over 30 years in Britain, Canada and the United States. His work won plaudits from the Defense Nuclear Agency, the United States Army research center. Last year, he presented his studies at the conference of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine in Paris. His work is now also described in a newly published book, "Depleted Uranium, Invisible War," which has received broad news media attention in France.

Dr. Durakovic said that when he started tests on 24 American gulf war veterans he was asked to examine in 1991 by a colleague at a New Jersey hospital, urine samples were lost and his efforts to get more precise tests were discouraged. Eventually, he said, he was dismissed.

At the veterans hospital in Wilmington, a spokeswoman, Barbara Howell, said Dr. Durakovic's employment ended because "we did not need a full-time nuclear medicine physician." She said that no samples had been lost, and that in all samples tested the levels of uranium "were within normal limits." Dr. Durakovic said he never got test reports. NATO officials fear that the concern in Europe could lead eventually to a ban on munitions containing depleted uranium, which is an exceptionally hard metal and therefore suited for penetrating tanks.

Both NATO and the Pentagon have brought forward scientists and military experts with evidence that the munitions' low-level radiation is not harmful and that natural uranium is always present in the environment and in the body.

But European anxiety rose again this month when laboratories in Switzerland and Finland announced that they had found small amounts of uranium 236 in shrapnel from American weapons found in Kosovo.

Pierre Roussel, a physicist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, noted that the ratio of uranium 236 found so far was tiny, but added, "The problem is that this isotope can only be produced in a reactor, where it is accompanied by far more radioactive elements."

A Pentagon spokesman who left office with the Clinton administration said on Jan. 18 that it was known that because of possible production flaws, some American depleted uranium contained traces of plutonium, neptunium and americium. He suggested, however, that the amounts were so minute that they posed no danger.

Experts in nuclear medicine in Britain, France and the United States said in interviews that they questioned the idea that there was no danger because experiments on animals had shown that uranium particles could get into the bloodstream, organs and bone, where they could deliver low-level radiation. They say the mechanism of radiation damage is still poorly understood and the debate about what might be a harmful dose is still open.

"Depleted uranium, mostly U238, has been found stored in bone, and if it gets into bone, it can reach the bone marrow," said Jean-François Lacronique, the director of the National Radiation Protection Agency in France, which oversees safety for workers in France's nuclear power plants. "Depending on the dose and the length of exposure, any kind of radiation can cause leukemia."

Dr. Durakovic said he believed that there was a fundamental difference between the effects of depleted uranium outside and inside the body.

Outside, he said, it does no harm. But when depleted uranium is blown up it burns at high temperatures, he said, and "it changes into uranium oxides - tiny, hard particles that are microns in size."

"They can stay airborne as aerosols, be blown around by the wind and fall down as dust. Because they are the size of microns, people can inhale them."

Once inhaled, Dr. Durakovic added, uranium can get into the bloodstream, be carried to bone, lymph nodes, lungs or kidneys, lodge there, and cause damage when it emits low- level radiation over a long period. Critics of Dr. Durakovic's work said his findings were inconclusive and did not provide a definitive link between uranium and the illnesses of veterans, but Dr. Durakovic says he does not make that claim but instead that his tests reveal the "distinct" presence of radioactive uranium particles in his patients.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

###

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Published on Monday, January 29, 2001 in the Independent / UK Pentagon 'Knew Nato Shells Contained Dangerous Nuclear Waste' by John Lichfield

Some shells fired in the Gulf and Balkan wars contained a type of recycled nuclear waste that is much more hazardous than depleted uranium, according to a book to be published in France next week.

The book, Depleted Uranium: The Invisible War, could change the debate on whether weapons used by the United States and Nato caused widespread sickness among war veterans and civilians.

The authors, a Frenchman, a Belgian and an American, produce evidence that the US government knew six years ago that its stocks of "safe" depleted uranium had been contaminated by spent nuclear fuels. Whether this recycled material was mixed up with the "classic" depleted uranium (DU) accidentally or deliberately remains unclear.

The book uncovers evidence that
the Pentagon knew in 1995 that
its armour-piercing shells and
bombs contained substances more
environmentally menacing than the
"natural" depleted uranium that
Washington, London and Nato
headquarters have repeatedly
defended. In other words, the
entire DU debate has been based
on false premises.

The findings of Martin
Meissonnier, Frederic Loore and
Roger Trilling have been
independently confirmed in the
past few days by researchers at a
Swiss government laboratory,
which analysed spent US munitions
from Kosovo. The lab found that
the shells contained traces of an
isotope of uranium - uranium 236
- which occurs only in nuclear
waste.

The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth
Bacon, admitted last week - in
reply to a question from one of
the authors of the book - that
depleted uranium intended for
armour-piercing weapons had been
contaminated by small amounts of
plutonium at the defence
department nuclear plant at
Paducah in Kentucky.

The vigorous defence of DU
weapons by the US and other Nato
governments has been based on the
argument that DU is a "natural"
material of relatively low
radioactivity. DU, in its classic
form, is the heavy metal left
behind - mostly uranium 238 -
when the most fissile part of raw
uranium, mined from the earth, is
removed for use as a nuclear
fuel, so classic DU is obtained
before the nuclear reaction
process.

Background
on Depleted
Uranium
Ammunition
For much
more check
out:
Discounted
Casualties
- The Human
Cost of
Depleted
Uranium
provided by
the
Hiroshima,
Japan
newspaper -
The Chugoku
Shimbun.

Also the
Federation
of American
[Kosovo Barracks] Scientists
has a
Depleted
Uranium
Ammunition
page. And
the
Military
Toxics
Project has
a campaign
against
depleted
uranium
weapons.

(left) US
Armor
Piercing
Incendiary
[Depleted
Uranium]
30mm
Ammunition

The book produces evidence that at least some of the weapons used in the Gulf and Balkans contained another kind of uranium, obtained by recycling spent nuclear fuels after the reaction process. The danger is that this form of uranium - sometimes called "dirty depleted uranium" - can contain traces of highly radioactive materials, such as plutonium.

Mr Trilling said yesterday: "The whole debate should go back to square one. We are not saying that we know for sure that DU caused Gulf syndrome sicknesses, or the similar illnesses reported in the Balkans. Personally, I doubt that depleted uranium weapons are the cause, or sole cause, of the Gulf or Balkan syndromes, whatever these weapons may have actually contained.

"What we are saying is that the US government's defence of depleted uranium has been, to be charitable, extremely misleading. The book is a plea for more research - not research on abstract theories about classic depleted uranium, but on the actual contents of US and Nato weapons. Until then, everyone on all sides of the argument is talking in the dark and should shut the hell up."

The book is based on two years of interviews and investigations originally done for a French television documentary, which was shown last year. Extra material has been discovered in the past few months. The writers allow both sides of the argument about classic DU to make their cases in great detail. But there are three important new pieces of information:

* Independent research by Dr Asaf Durakovic, an American of Croatian origin, has found traces of uranium 236 in the urine or bodies of 42 American Gulf veterans. Uranium 236 is not present in the natural world and should not be present in "clean" depleted uranium.

* An official report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute in 1995 acknowledged the possibility that "depleted uranium used by the Department of Defense contains traces of uranium 236". This implies that some of the DU used in US weapons was created from spent nuclear fuel, not from raw, mined uranium.

* The nuclear plant at Paducah in Kentucky was accused of "waste, fraud, abuse and bad management" by the General Accounting Office, the official US government watchdog, in 1992. The accounting office report protested that the plant was recycling uranium from nuclear waste, without proper safeguards, endangering its own workers. Paducah is one of the three sites in America that produce the DU used by US and Nato weapons. It was the site named by the Pentagon spokesman last week as a source of contamination of some DU weapons with plutonium.

Mr Trilling said yesterday that the "charitable" interpretation of the evidence was that clean and "dirty" forms of DU had been mixed up at Paducah, or in US Department of Defense stocks, some time in the 1980s. A decision had been taken to use up the stocks in the belief, or hope, that only small quantities of highly radioactive material were involved.

© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

###

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Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
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Published on Monday, January 29, 2001 in the Guardian of London Global Warming Dangers 'Buried' in New Rankings by Peter Capella in Davos

An attempt by the World Economic Forum to rank countries on an environmental scorecard was dismissed as "global misleadership" by a London-based think tank because the index claims that some of the world's most polluting economies are the most environmentally sustainable.

The forum's first full "environmental sustainability index", published over the weekend, is one of the first to classify 122 countries according to their ability to protect the environment while promoting economic growth. With the exception of Belgium, all the industrialised countries are in the top half of the rankings, with the United States in tenth place and Britain sixteenth.

The New Economics Foundation pointed out that they were in the bottom half of a list of 134 countries ranked according to their carbon dioxide emissions, a key component of global warming.

"The US consumes so many finite natural resources that you could fit the whole of China, India, the Russian Federation and Brazil into its ecological footprint and still have room to spare", the foundation added.

Its deputy director, Alex MacGillivray, said: "I've worked on plenty of indexes in my time, but I've never come across such a blatant effort to bury the most important parameter - global warming - in a morass of irrelevant noise. "The forum's index is being presented as a rigorous tool for policymakers."

One of the report's authors, Daniel Esty, who is the director of Yale University's Centre for Environmental Law and Policy, said: "The index represents a first step toward a new approach to pollution control and natural resource management, with the emphasis on data, facts and analytic rigour rather than emotion and rhetoric." However, the forum's study admits that data is scarce, including "shockingly poor country coverage" of environmental indicators, while economic indicators are more readily available at international level.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

###

Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service
providing breaking news and views for the Progressive Community.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use
of which has not always been specifically authorized by the
copyright owner. We are making such material available in our
efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice
issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such
copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US
Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the
material on this site is distributed without profit to those who
have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more
information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for
purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain
permission from the copyright owner.

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