 A new U.S.-Vietnamese humanitarian effort is being |
 Vietnam says as many as 3 million citizens have suffered The U.S. says more research is needed to prove the link between the herbicide and health. |
 The US-Vietnamese group will try to build a bipartisan, |
 Dioxin, the highly toxic chemical in Agent Orange, still contaminates
the soil in various places where U.S. troops There are still many people in Vietnam who suffer from the poison ... here are some of them. |
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Vietnam vet fights slow painful death
John 'Doc' Mountain fought in the Vietnam War and made it home in one piece.
But now at 60 he is fighting the biggest battle of his life.
Mr Mountain has terminal bone cancer and doctors say he has three years to live.
It's a fate he has learned to deal with.
He is thankful for surviving his tour of duty in Vietnam, but says the 'lethal, lasting side effect' of the war - chemical poisoning - has consigned him to a slow, painful death.
Mr Mountain and dozens of other Vietnam veterans say they have
traced the cause of their terminal illnesses to Agent
Orange, a defoliant used by the United States military to flush
out the North Vietnamese Army and insurgents dug deep in the jungle.
It was used from 1961 to 1971.
Today Mr Mountain and 50 other Vietnam veterans will gather
at Parliament in Wellington and deliver a letter of protest to
the Crown covering issues including the non-payment of pensions
and other benefits they say are due to them.
Mr Mountain says Agent Orange and other chemicals used during
the war contained dioxin, which is highly toxic to the
humans.
Mr Mountain, who gave 23 years of his life to the New Zealand Army, served as a rifle company medic from 1970 to 1971.
"I was in a forward-fire support base in Nui Dat, Phuoc Toi province in South Vietnam," he says.
"Our mission was to patrol the province up to the north-east of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.
"We walked on the fringes of areas that were sprayed and denuded by Agent Orange.
"We patrolled around these areas where we got exposed
to these harmful chemicals. We dug holes in it, ate there, and
breathed contaminated dust."
Mr Mountain says it has been conclusively found that dioxin
wreaks havoc on the genetic system, thus making its long-term
effects 'generational'.
"Dioxin causes genetic damage that makes you and your children vulnerable to cancer and other life-threatening diseases," he says.
Despite his condition, Mr Mountain devotes his time and energy
to advocating for relief and recognition for fellow veterans
who he says are being neglected by the government.
A Massey University study released in July last year found 24 Vietnam veterans had damage to their DNA from exposure to Agent Orange.
The study said the result warranted a larger investigation of veterans and their children.
Mr Mountain estimates 500 fellow veterans have died from diseases,
mostly cancer, since exposure to dioxin during the
Vietnam War.
Some of them had children born with deformities as a result, he says.
"They have come and gone without recompense, without recognition, and that happens when you have a government that fails to accept it's now admitted liability," he says.
He says although he receives a war pension, which he relies
on for his medication, many of his colleagues are not
compensated by the government.
Donovan Ryan, press secretary for Veterans Affairs Minister
Rick Barker, says the government has been attending to the
needs of Vietnam War veterans.
"The government has set up a $7 million trust fund for
our Vietnam veterans and that is in keeping with the agreement
the
government and the veterans signed last year," he says.
"We have listened to the veterans and it's an ongoing process. We're working with them so the healing can begin."
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What is DU? Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the enriching process that creates fuel for nuclear reactors, and it is used because it is able to penetrate armor. According to the World Health Organization, depleted uranium emits about 60 percent of the radiation as natural uranium. In its natural state it is not especially dangerous; it is described as weakly radioactive, comparable to some naturally occurring materials. However, DU burns when heated to 170 degrees Celsius and aerosolizes, forming microscopic particles that are easily dispersed by the wind. When inhaled these particles make their way into the blood stream and cause health problems. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that elevated doses of DU can lead to cancer and that aerosolized DU from training ranges can make its way into the food chain. |
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Iraqis blame U.S. depleted uranium for surge in cancer
23/ 07/ 2007
CAIRO, July 23 (RIA Novosti) - Iraq's environment minister blamed Monday the use of depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces during the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe for the current surge in cancer cases across the country.
As a result of "at least 350 sites in Iraq being contaminated during bombing" with depleted uranium (DU) weapons, Nermin Othman said, the nation is facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7,000 to 8,000 new ones registered each year.
Speaking at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, she also complained that many chemical plants and oil facilities had been destroyed during the two military campaigns since the 1990s, but the ecological consequences remain unclear.
"Our ministry is fledgling, and we need international support; notably, we need laboratories to better monitor air and water contamination," she said.
The first major UN research on the consequences of the use of DU on the battlefield was conducted in 2003 in the wake of NATO operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro. The UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in its report after the research that DU poses little threat if spent munitions are cleared from the ground.
"Health risks primarily depend on the awareness of people coming into contact with DU," UNEP writes in its 2004 brochure "Depleted Uranium Awareness."
No major clean-up or public awareness campaigns have been reported in Iraq.
ht tp://en.rian.ru/world/20070723/69509899.html
Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of toxic exposure
After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving
the Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back
to active duty in Iraq.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen
months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a
bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried
to treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing
ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their
families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone
are behind their illnesses — mostly cancers, striking the
young, taking them down with alarming speed.
The number of these cancers remains undisclosed, with military
officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack of
evidence the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone.
"He got so sick, so fast"
Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit was deployed
to the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport
arriving soldiers and Marines into combat areas.
He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't remember him ever
missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a
cancer of the mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers
and tobacco chewers. He was none of those.
"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this kind of
cancer — they had no answers for us," said his wife,
Dixie.
"He got so sick, so fast.
We really think it had to be something he was exposed to over
there. So many of the soldiers we met with cancer at Walter
Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about the polluted air they
lived in, the brown water they had to use, the dust they
breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."
As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what it meant
when he saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the smokestacks
that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was stationed for
three months in 2005.
"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about their
stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said.
"For
Jim to say something like that, to complain, was very unusual.
"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures of her
son bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died
of kidney
cancer."
Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale, yet another
soldier — now fighting terminal colon cancer ... he developed
intense rectal pain, which doctors told him for months was hemorrhoids.
Finally diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer — requiring
extensive surgery, resulting in a colostomy bag — he was
given fewer than two years to live by his Walter Reed physicians.
He is now a couple of months past that death sentence, but his
chemo drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is eating into
his liver and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and three
children at their Florida home.
"I don't know how much time I have," he said.
Suspect: depleted uranium
None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing them. But
they suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures.
These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds of cancers. The
Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them."
The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims —
and some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium
— the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its
ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode,
the
substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.
Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of
the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe"
campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country.
However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny
this, citing four studies, including one by the World Health
Organization, that found levels in war zones not harmful to civilians
or soldiers. A U.N. Environmental Program study
concurs, but only if spent munitions are cleared away.
Returning solders have said that isn't happening.
"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks, and there
was DU everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."
The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for miles, said
Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to at least
some depleted uranium.
Congress orders study
As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a comprehensive
independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted
uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU
bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed
to it be identified and tested — is working its way through
Congress.
"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go
through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent
Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl
Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.
"We want an independent agency to do independent testing
of our soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These
incidents of cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about
back in our districts are not just anecdotal — there is a
pattern
here. And yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."
What's happening today — growing numbers of sickened soldiers who say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from military brass — almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.
Doctors flabbergasted
Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job
of it.
Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent
his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his
tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery
followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.
Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then
came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.
Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another
surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the
cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery
in January 2006.
By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and
doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his
wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his
stomach.
Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck —
"literally overnight," his wife said.
Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale
endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night
bleeding profusely through his burned skin. The day after his
radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the
radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.
"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation,
it was determined at this point there was no chance for cure,"
his
oncologist wrote then.
By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and, most
frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors
were
erupting all over his upper body, his wife said.
"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it —
that this happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said.
Efforts to contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful,
but a leading head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer
Center reviewed the course of Lauderdale's disease.
Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006.
DU Shells Used by U.S. Worse Than Nuclear Weapons
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
NaturalNews | The use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by
the U.S. military may lead to a death toll far higher than that
from the nuclear bombs dropped at the end of World War II. DU
is a waste product of uranium enrichment, containing
approximately one-third the radioactive isotopes of naturally
occurring uranium. Because of its high density, it is used in
armor- or tank-piercing ammunition. It has been fired by the U.S.
and British militaries in the two Iraq wars and in
Afghanistan, as well as by NATO forces in Kosovo and the Israeli
military in Lebanon and Palestine.
Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has estimated that
50 tons of DU dust from the first Gulf War could lead to
500,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000. To date, a total of 2,000
tons have been generated in the Middle East.
In contrast, approximately 250,000 lives were claimed by the
explosions and radiation released by the nuclear weapons
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“More than ten times the amount of radiation released
during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released
from
DU weaponry since 1991,” said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear
scientist. “The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the
most
part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive.”
Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.
The two U.S. wars in Iraq “have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity,” said anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott.
Since the first Gulf War, the rate of birth defects and childhood
cancer in Iraq has increased by seven times. More than 35
percent (251,000) of U.S. Gulf War veterans are dead or on permanent
medical disability, compared with only 400 who
were killed during the conflict.
http://www.naturalnews.com/
Cancer - The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
January 08, 2010 "New America Media" -- Forget about
oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for
Iraqis these days is cancer.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad
has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009
according to Al Jazeera English.
In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005.
According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology
Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007.
Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500
patients visit the Oncology Center every month now.
Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between
allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has
been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors
and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of
depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp
increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.
Dr. Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser
to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the
Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence
linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told
Al
Jazeera English, "Children with congenital anomalies are
subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete
genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical
histories are taken too. These international studies
have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has
disastrous consequences."
Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion.
Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of "Uranium in Iraq" told Al Jazeera English that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.
There are also similar patterns of birth defects among Iraqi
and Afghan infants who were also born in areas that were
subjected to depleted uranium bombardment.
Dr. Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, told Al Jazeera English he found evidence of the effect of depleted uranium in infants in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan. "Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes," said Dr. Miraki.
It's not just Iraqis and Afghans. Babies born to American soldiers
deployed in Iraq during the 1991 war are also showing
similar defects. In 2000, Iraqi biologist Huda saleh Mahadi pointed
out that the hands of deformed American infants were
directly linked to their shoulders, a deformity seen in Iraqi
infants.
Many U.S. soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2
and alleging they have developed cancer because of
exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.
But soldiers can end their exposure to depleted uranium when
their service in Iraq ends. Iraqi civilians have nowhere else
to
go. The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including
Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a
radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army's Depleted
Uranium Project during the first Gulf War, was in charge of a
project of decontaminating American tanks. He told Al Jazeera
English that "it took the U.S. Department of Defense in a
multi-million dollar facility with trained physicists and engineers,
three years to decontaminate the 24 tanks that I sent back to
the U.S."
And he added, "What can the average Iraqi do with thousands
and thousands of trash and destroyed vehicles spread across
the desert and other areas?"
According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons
of depleted uranium in 1991. In 2003, the United States
used more than 1,000 tons.
See: http://www.iron-clay.com/mystery-babylon.html
