Iraqi Cancers
Ken MacLeod’s blog had this link to an older article from Iraq about the effects of earlier radiological warfare and sanctions against that country.
“Before the Gulf War, we had only three or four deaths in a month from cancer,” he said. “Now it’s 30 to 35 patients dying every month, and that’s just in my department. That is a 12-fold increase in cancer mortality. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years’ time to begin with, then long afterwards. That’s almost half the population.
“Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. We don’t know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed to get the equipment to conduct a proper survey, or even test the excess level of radiation in our bodies. We strongly suspect depleted uranium, which was used by the Americans and British in the Gulf War right across the southern battlefields. Whatever the cause, it is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us. “The mushrooms grow huge, and the fish in what was once a beautiful river are inedible. Even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can’t be eaten.”
Professor Doug Rokke, the US Army physicist responsible for cleaning up Kuwait, told me: “I am like many people in southern Iraq. I have 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. Most of my team are now dead.
“We face an issue to be confronted by people in the West, those with a sense of right and wrong: first, the decision by the US and Britain to use a weapon of mass destruction: depeleted uranium. When a tank fired its shells, each round carried over 4,500g of solid uranium. What happened in the Gulf was a form of nuclear warfare.”