DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care
Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets
By Christopher Bollyn
Far from the radioactive battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another war
is being waged. This war, over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons,
is being fought between the military top brass and the men who understand
the dangers of DU: former military doctors and nuclear scientists.
This war is for the truth about uranium weapons, and the consequences of
their use, and has been waged for more than 13 yearssince the U.S.
government first used DU weapons against Iraq. Most Americans, however,
are unaware of this historic struggle, because the Pentagon has used its
power to prevent information about DU from reaching the public.
John Hanchette, editor of USA Today from 1991 to 2001, in a recent
interview with anti-DU activist Leuren Moret, said he had written several
news stories about the effects of DU on gulf wars veterans. Every time he
was ready to publish a story about the devastating illnesses afflicting
soldiers, however, the Pentagon called USA Today and pressured him not to
publish the story. Hanchette was eventually replaced as editor and now
teaches journalism to college students.
Dr. Doug Rokke, 37-year Army veteran and former director of the Army’s
Depleted Uranium Project, has become an outspoken “warrior for peace” in
the war against DU weapons.
(snip)
“Anyone who demands medical care and environmental remediation faces
ongoing and blatant retaliation,” Rokke told AFP. “Anybody who speaks up,
their career ends.”
(snip)
The military records of one of Rokke’s comrades, who suffers from the
effects of DU exposure, have been completely “gutted” from Army archives,
Rokke told AFP.
“They [defense officials] willfully ignore existing Department of Defense
directives that require prompt and effective medical care be provided to
‘all’ exposed individuals,” Rokke says.
(snip)
“Today,” Rokke writes, “although medical problems continue to develop,
medical care is denied or delayed for all uranium-exposed casualties while
Defense Department and British Ministry of Defense officials continue to
deny any correlation between uranium exposure and adverse health and
environmental effects.”
Rokke said the individuals at the Department of Defense are engaged in a
“criminal” conspiracy to deny the toxicity of DU weapons. “The lies by
senior Defense Department officials are designed to sustain use of uranium
munitions and avoid liability for adverse health and environmental
effects,” he said. According to Rokke, a recent Gulf War Review reported
that only 262 vets had been treated for DU poisoning through September
2003. (snip)
“The CDC is going to do a whitewash on DU,” Marion Fulk, a former nuclear
chemical physicist at Lawrence Livermore Lab, said. Fulk told AFP he had
received this information directly from CDC officials. (snip)
The ATSDR fact sheet: “The radiation damage from exposure to high levels
of natural or depleted uranium are [sic] not known to cause cancer.”
“No apparent public health hazard,” the CDC assessment of Livermore lab,
published June 29, said about local exposure levels to tritium, a
radioactive isotope of hydrogen, Fulk said. (snip)
DU is very radioactive, however. While one gram of U-235 emits 81,000
alpha particles per second, U-238 emits 12,000 per second. These
high-energy particles coming from DU particles lodged in the body cause
the most damage, according to Fulk and others.
“Depleted uranium dust that is inhaled gets transferred from the lungs to
the regional lymph nodes, where they can bombard a small number of cells
in their immediate vicinity with intense alpha radiation,” said Dr. Asaf
Durakovic, former Pentagon expert on DU. (snip)
“Under combat conditions, the most exposed individuals are probably the
ground troops [who] re-enter a battlefield following the exchange of
armor-piercing (DU) munitions,” SAIC published in its July 1990 magazine.
“Short-term effects of high doses can result in death, while long-term
effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer,” SAIC wrote. (snip)
Painful breathing and respiratory problems are the first and most common
symptoms of DU inhalation, Rokke said. Dr. Janette Sherman told AFP she
met a 31-year-old female former soldier at a Maryland veteran’s hospital
who had recently served in Kuwait. Sherman, a toxicologist, was shocked
when the young woman told her that she required a lung transplant.
FULL STORY AT - WWW.AMERICAN FREE PRESS.
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