Burning Military

[Pink Daddy]

For all of you Tribe.net users...

After talking with a good friend at FDLM and a random idea being thrown out there, I finally jumped on it. I've created 'Burning Military', a tribe for current and prior military members.

http://tribes.tribe.net/burningmilitary

This is open for all branches of the military, active and reserve, current/former/retired, National Guard, Coast Guard, and people who support the Armed Services as well...

[Apollonaris Zeus]

How many military friends did you know that have died from exposure to Depleted Uranium?

Sounds like the numbers will reach 20% of Gulf War Vets in a few years!

I would advise would be soldiers to boycott signing up until our armed forces and the Geneva Convention should ban use of all depleted weapons for they are weapons of mass destruction and we use them!!!!!

Our government especially our armed forces have over the years used our soldiers test dummies for a number of biological and toxic weapons: thousands have died and many not for a number of years after serving.

I would like to hear from vets that have or possible been exposed to some of these weapons.

How are you feeling?

AIIZ

PS- someday I'll tell you about a dream I had that had soldiers that have died not in a war, but just what I am saying about above. It was so real I remember every part of that dream. Even the part, when I asked one of them, "Did you die in a War?" and he said, "No, I did not!". There was hundreds of these soldiers in that dream!

[MikeVDS]

Sounds like the numbers will reach 20% of Gulf War Vets in a few years!

Where is this from? Do you have a source?

[Isotopia]

Where is this from? Do you have a source?

No he does not.

Certainly not any valid sources/citations that have passed rigorous scientific scrutiny.

Twenty percent is a number pulled deep from someone's imaginative ass.

[AntiM]

I collect vaseline glass. It is full of depleted uranium and I feel fine. So far.

[Mozy bonz]

Mozy gets out his Chemcraft set out...aside from the uranium ore and the radium, this set is pretty tame. It even proudly claims to contain "no dangerous or explosive chemicals". I mean really, where's the fun in that?

[Toolmaker]

Most of what I have read concerning the use of depleted uranium rounds in Iraq reference Iraqi citizens and Desert Storm. Most was from the Red Cross/Red Crescent people. Alot of folks that were salvaging scrap metal from the tanks got sick. And areas with heavy concentrations had an increase in birth defects, higher infant mortality rates etc. I don't think I ever read anything about dangers of short term exposure to the DU rounds.

What makes me sick is the number of civilian casualties our past few wars have caused. What happened to the good ol days where we put someone like the Sha, Saddam, or Osama in power to do our bidding? Oh yeah, that didn't work too well.. they tend to change thier mind after a few years.

Just because I hate war doesn't mean I can't stand behind the troops. It's not their fault that those in charge are misguided. Good luck with the tribe.

[pinemom]

Mozy gets out his Chemcraft set out...aside from the uranium ore and the radium, this set is pretty tame. It even proudly claims to contain "no dangerous or explosive chemicals". I mean really, where's the fun in that?

Ok I wonder how many of our parents played with this set or sets like it? hmmmmm! wonder if they know how many of us have that shit floating through our blood veins for our offspring?

[Isotopia]

What makes me sick is the number of civilian casualties our past few wars have caused.

Believe me, with the way things are currently going in Iraq DU as an issue should take the same level of precedence as dogs shitting on Saddam's old palace grounds.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

Where is this from? Do you have a source?

No he does not.

Certainly not any valid sources/citations that have passed rigorous scientific scrutiny.

Twenty percent is a number pulled deep from someone's imaginative ass.

you look it up: Lukemia, gulf war veterans!

97% of babies born to gulf war vets have lukemia!

Serve in this army and you will die from our own weapons even if you surive the war.

OUr government will fund studies to lie!


Isotopia- you don't even know who you are!

AIIZ

ps- maye I should tell you about the dream because the dead don't tell lies!

[MikeVDS]

OK I looked things up and saw nothing to the extent that you're suggesting. Mind posting a source for your data?

[joel the ornery]

OK I looked things up and saw nothing to the extent that you're suggesting. Mind posting a source for your data?

um.... does the phrase "when hell freezes over" come to mind, 'cause that is about the time AIIZ will come up with a valid cite for his assertions.

Where is this from? Do you have a source?

No he does not.

Certainly not any valid sources/citations that have passed rigorous scientific scrutiny.

Twenty percent is a number pulled deep from someone's imaginative ass.

i think Isotopia has a pretty clear understanding of where the assertions came from.

[Isotopia]

you look it up: Lukemia, gulf war veterans!

97% of babies born to gulf war vets have lukemia!

Serve in this army and you will die from our own weapons even if you surive the war.

OUr government will fund studies to lie!


Isotopia- you don't even know who you are!

And I guess being gainfully employed with the Radiation Protection Group at the largest linear accelerator facility on the planet discounts any observation I might have regarding your verifiably bogus claims?

Mea culpa you braying slobberdonkey.

Now get back on your meds.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

You people aren't trying hard enough!


The Veterans administration has now recognized lukemia is at a very rate for all Gulf war vets. 10% of those exposed to DU have develope it and "I" expect that to hit 20%!

67% of children born to Miss. Gulf War Vets have Lukemia!

Iraqis are now dying just moving into these areas.

DU is the problem.

What a snort of dirty bomb dust someone?

AIIZ

[theCryptofishist]

I think that a 67% rate of childhood luekemia in children of Gulf War Vets would be impossible to cover up. I think a 1% same would be pretty damn difficult.

[MikeVDS]

97% of babies born to gulf war vets have lukemia!

67% of children born to Miss. Gulf War Vets have Lukemia!

Which one? And exclamation points don't make it any more true or false. Sources and studies that can be verified do.

You people aren't trying hard enough!

You're making claims that you cannot or refuse to back up.

I have a magical pet purple unicorn. Don't believe me? You're just not looking hard enough.

Get my drift? You make a claim, you need to back it up. You could look your whole life for evidence of my unicorn, just because I say you're not looking hard enough doesn't mean I really have one.

[burnerboy33]

I am a gulf war vet and have a perfectly healthy 6 year old. None of the other gulf war vets I know have kids with and kind of cancer or birth defects. Infact the only kid I know of who did have lukemia the perants where not in the millitary.

AIIZ, I don't know where you get your facts but they seem to be a bit off. This thread started of as a vet wanting to get a grioup of people together who have something in commen, haveing served in the millitary. All you want to do iis go off on a rant about DU rounds and spout off made up facts.

I ask you this, When was the last time you told a vet, "Thank you for the freedom I have today"

[EspressoDude]

One thing it does effect is the ability to spell.

A veteran of a previous "war"

DU does not work against jungle foliage, but agent orange does.

[burnerboy33]

sorry, spelling is not one of my strong points. That is why I don't post very often.

[EspressoDude]

keep posting, don't let that slow you down.
Sometimes when these rants get going, it's hard to keep the Navy from lobbing in a 16" shell that is totally off the wall.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

I am a gulf war vet and have a perfectly healthy 6 year old. None of the other gulf war vets I know have kids with and kind of cancer or birth defects. Infact the only kid I know of who did have lukemia the perants where not in the millitary.

I ask you this, When was the last time you told a vet, "Thank you for the freedom I have today"

I am glad that your child and you are healthy. I got involved because I do appreciate what vets have done, though I don't appreciate our government using our vets as experimental animals just to win a war and wait for the outcome of health problems later. You served and did what you believe you had too and you shouldn't be paying a price for that later.

I have entered this discussion on the behave of hundreds of dead soldiers that came to me that have been used by our government for research. I am asking if that are any BM vets that have problems. Expresso Dude knows what it is like to have friends die or be sick from exposure to war materials in the vietnem war. Gulf War Vets that have become sick have had a hard time just getting the vet admin to recognize their illnesses. I'm bring this out so you and other vets can do something about out military keeping our soldiers in the dark and improperly not protecting them! The brits have recognized the DU problem: for instance, a group of brits were going to camp in a bombed out building where a group of Yanks camped in earlier, but first they did a radiation test and found levels too high to camp there: a standard procedure in the brit army now: not so in the american army! Why?



Here is a report from a professional in the field: Something Iso should be posting.


Gulf War Syndrome, Depleted Uranium
and the Dangers of Low-Level Radiation

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Desert Storm veterans along with the people of Iraq and Kuwait were
victims of one of the latest military experiments on human beings.
I believe that the ignorance was culpable and criminal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Dr. Rosalie Bertell
[ Biographical Notes ]



Introduction:
I first heard about the military using depleted uranium for bullets from the Native Americans for a Clean Environment (NACE) in Gore, Oklahoma. Kerr Magee was operating a factory there, and in a liquid waste spill a young man, about twenty-one years old, was sprayed with the mixture and died. Many members of the public were also exposed, and were taken to the University in Oklahoma City for medical examination and feces analysis. It seems that the liquid waste contained primarily uranium and other heavy metals.

Local people had found this factory to be very polluting. When I visited the town to see what was happening and to decide whether or not I could help, they showed me rust marks scattered over the surface of their automobiles where the toxic corrosive spray released from the factory routinely had impacted on the paint. People complained of burning throats and eyes, some with even more serious complaints, but little systematic information which would show that the factory was the source of their problem.

I met a young boy who showed me a frog he had caught--the frog had nine legs. It was in a bottle of formaldehyde. I wanted to take it for some tissue and bone analysis but it was his prize possession and he would not part with it.

I learned that the Kerr Magee plant had been disposing of its waste by deep-well injection in this rural, primarily farming area. The people, becoming alarmed at this practice which threatened the water table, got a court injunction to stop it. In an action, which seemed to the local farmers to be a retaliation, Kerr Magee had applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to call their waste an "experimental fertilizer" and just spread it over the top of the land. The stories were quite strong evidence that this so-called fertilizer was sometimes just released into the local river, or released in one place on the factory property, with no pretense even to spread it.

The young boy had found his nine-legged frog on the hill which served as the "experimental plot." Hunters had found a rabbit with two hearts, and the local taxidermist told me that he had tried to mount two deer heads and the fur came off in his hands in clumps. He had never seen anything like it in his whole career.

As local people became sick and started to complain, Kerr Magee bought them out, and took over their land. The Native people, who were determined to preserve their land, formed a Coalition of White and Natives Concerned, and began the long legal fight with the company. They learned about environmental assessment hearings, licensing hearings, etc. and began to seriously participate. They also undertook a human health survey of all families -- there were about four hundred of them -- living within four miles of the factory. Every family was included in the survey, which was very comprehensive and carefully administered.

The International Institute of Concern for Public Health agreed to analyze this data for the citizens. The outstanding illnesses in the area were respiratory and kidney problems. There were significantly more persons with respiratory illnesses down wind of the plant, and significantly more with kidney problems down stream of the plant.

We intended to do a clinical follow-up of this survey, and designed the study with the cooperation of the Occupational Health and Respiratory Units at the University Medical School of New Jersey. We were not able to obtain funding for this study. Nevertheless, with the health survey and a great deal of local perseverance, Kerr Magee moved out. A second multinational tried to take over the factory--I think it was General Dynamics--but it failed.

I learned many things about the uranium bullets in the process of this research:


They are incendiary, that is after piercing the object they can burst into flame.

They are fragmentary, they disintigrate into small fragments inside the body, and cannot be removed.

They are more dense than lead, and can pierce a bullet- proof vest, or a light armored car or tank.

Because the "enemy" might also use them, the military made uranium armor as a protection.

They were cheap, because the depleted uranium was a waste product of the nuclear-bomb program.

They were radioactive, which meant that even handling them was risky, but no one seemed to be worrying about this!



Research into Gulf War Syndrome
Six years after the Gulf War there is still deep controversy over the causes of the severe health problems observed in the veterans. Reluctantly, the U.S. government has been slowly releasing data on possible Iraqi chemical exposures of the veterans, but many physicians, some of whom have reported that their jobs are being threatened, have said that this information does not explain the variety of symptoms observed.

Shortly after the Gulf War, at the request of Staff Sargeant Carol Picou, San Antonio, Texas, who was herself a victim, Patricia Axelrod undertook research into the possible causes of this illness.

The research was jointly sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Office of Women's Health. It was submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services on May 10, 1993, and was labeled: for internal distribution only. The research was intended to be a guide to further research into the problem, so its limitation to internal distribution did not make sense.

Our journal, International Perspectives in Public Health, published the document in full in 1994.

At the time, the U.S. Department of Defence was treating this illness as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and advising military doctors to treat it with muscle relaxants and sleeping pills, while ordering a mental illness assessment. Most of the information in Ms. Axelrod's Guide to Gulf War Sickness comes from interviews with Dr. Thomas Callender, a toxicologist; Dr. Barry Wilson, of Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories; and Commissioner Rudy Arredondo, Maryland's Commission on Black and Minority Health. Ms. Axelrod also interviewed many veterans and reviewed the journal articles and reports available in the public press. Information on leishmaniases was provided by the World Health Organization.




Potential Causes of Gulf War Syndrome
In this complex situation, any or all of the following factors may have interacted to bring about specific symptoms in veterans. Obviously, the combinations of factors differ with individuals, hence it is likely that there is not one single explanation of the whole spectrum of symptoms. However, the following main categories are candidates for causal relationships with illnesses reported by veterans:


Administration of three vaccines intended as protection against nerve and biological warfare agents. These were:

Pyridostigmine, normally prescribed for myasthenia gravis and known to have serious side effects, especially when the person taking it is exposed to heat. It is also known that exposure to pesticides and insecticides (Baygon, Diazinon and Sevin) should be avoided when taking pyridostigmine because they can accentuate its toxicity. Some women who took this drug during pregnancy and have breast-fed infants have seen side effects in their child.

Botulinum Pentavalent, an unproven vaccine intended to counteract botulism. It is unlicensed in the United States.

Anthrax, to protect against the disease anthrax. This was apparently selectively administered to troops during the war, and women receiving it were warned not to have children for three or four years.

Depleted uranium was used for the first time in this war. It was incorporated into tank armor, missile and aircraft counterweights and navigational devices, and in tank, anti-aircraft and anti-personnel artillery. The scientific information on this deadly chemical has been reported in "Radium Osteitis With Osteogenic Sarcoma: The Chronology and Natural History of Fatal Cases" by Dr. William D. Sharpe, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 47, No. 9 (September 1971). There was no excuse for this human experimentation because the effects of this exposure were known.

Smoke and chemical pollutants released by the continuous oil- well fires. Levels of soot, carbon monoxide and ozone have been studied by an Environmental Protection Agency Task Force. The National Toxics Campaign, Boston, Massachusetts, found five different toxic hydrocarbon products in the smoke (1,4-dichlorobenzine, 1,2-dichlorobenzene, diethyl phthalate, dimethyl phthalate and naphthalene), any one of which could induce serious health effects.

Old World leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of many species of sand fly indigenous to the region. Non-indigenous people who enter an infected area are known to be more seriously affected by this parasite than the inhabitants. If left undiagnosed, and therefore untreated, it can be fatal. Diagnosis requires bone and spleen biopsy, and the disease can have a three-year incubation period without causing symptoms. It can be transmitted by blood transfusion, and transmitted by a woman to her unborn child. Leishmaniasis was reported as widespread in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. This disease is thought to be responsible for the Pentagon ban, November 1991, against blood donations from Gulf War veterans. This ban was lifted, for unknown reasons, on January 11, 1993.

Pesticides and insecticides were used extensively throughout the war to protect against pestilence. It is known that large quantities of DDT, malathion, fenitrorthion, propuxur, deltamethrin and permethrin were used. They are all toxic nerve agents, and many are suspected carcinogens and mutagens.

Destruction by allies of Iraqi chemical, nerve and biological warfare weapons resulting in widespread distribution of these toxins in the environment. This problem has now been, at least in part, documented by the U.S. Department of Defense. They are focusing on this potential cause as if it were the only candidate cause.

The electromagnetic environment which permeated the battlefield during the war. Veterans were exposed to a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation created by electricity generated to support the high-tech instruments, thousands of radios and radar devices in use. This intense electromagnetic field causes both thermal and non-thermal effects, and potentially interacts with the other hazardous exposures and stresses of the battlefield. Electromagnetic radiation can alter the production of hormones (neurotransmitters), interact with cell membranes, increase calcium ion flow, stimulate protein kinase in lymphocytes, suppress the immune system, affect melatonin production required to control the "body clock," and cause changes in the blood-brain barrier.



The Hazards of Low Level Radiation
In the past few years the information available on the health effects of exposure to low levels of radiation has increased. We are no longer dependent on the commercial or military nuclear researchers who since 1950 have claimed that studies of the effects of low-level radiation are impossible to undertake. The new information is unsettling because it proves the critics of the industry to have been correct as to its serious potential to damage living tissue.

There have also been significant new releases of findings from the atomic bomb research in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the self-acclaimed "classical research" of radiation health effects. I will list these findings toward the end of this article, along with studies from the nuclear industry.

In reviewing these research papers one is struck by the high-dose response when the radiation is delivered slowly, with low total dose. The conventional wisdom has claimed that at low dose/slow-dose rate the body is well able to repair most of the harm caused by the radiation. Some nuclear apologists go so far as to claim such exposures are "beneficial."

Because the nuclear industry has always maintained that the effects of low-dose radiation exposure are so small that it is impossible to study them, they proposed extrapolating the effects from those observed at high dose, using a straight line to zero (zero dose, zero effect), together with "correction factors" for low dose/slow-dose rate.

The effect of this "correction" is to reduce the fatal cancer estimates calculated by D.L. Preston, then Director of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation at Hiroshima, using the new dosimetry, from seventeen fatalities per million people per rad exposure, to five fatalities per million people per rad exposure. The corresponding estimates based on actually observed rates for nuclear workers is between ten and thirty fatalities per million per rad. Obviously, for the adult healthy male, the dose-response estimate should be about twenty for fatal cancers per million per rad.

However, although we can make a strong case for increasing the "official" estimates of harm by a factor of four, this fails to deal with non-fatal cancers, depressed immune systems, localized tissue damage (especially the respiratory, digestive and urinary tracts), damage to skin, and reproductive problems. Radiation can cause brain lesions, damage to the stem cells which produce the blood and, when the radiactive material is carried in a heavy metal (uranium) it can be stored in bone, irradiating body organs and nerves within its radius.




A Book by Dr. E.B. Burlakova
Detailed studies of dose-response at the low dose/slow-dose rate level:

Dr. E. B. Burlakova has provided me with a copy of the book, of which she is editor: Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Human Health. In one Chapter of this book, Dr. Burlakova and fourteen other scientists publish their findings on animal and human studies of the health effects of low dose/slow- dose rate, exposure to ionizing radiation. They examined carefully the following biological phenomena under ionizing radiation exposure situations:


alkaline elution of DNA of lymphocytes and liver

neutral elution and adsorption of spleen DNA on nitrocellulose filters

restriction of spleen DNA by EcoRI endonuclease

structural characteristics (using the ESR spin probe technique) of nuclear, mitochondrial, synaptical, erythrocyte and leukocyte membranes

activity and isoforms of aldolase and lactate hydrogenase enzymes

activity of acetycholine esterase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase

the rate of formation of superoxide anion radicals

the composition and antioxidizing activity of lipids of the above mentioned membranes

the sensitivity of cells, membranes, DNA, and organisms to the action of additional damaging factors.
"For all of the parameters a bimodal dose-effect dependence was discovered, i.e. the effect increased at low doses, reached its [low-dose] maximum, and then decreased (in some cases, the sign of the effect changed to the opposite, or "benefit" effect) and increased again as the dose was increased" (Burlakova, page 118). Dr. Burlakova has speculated that at the lowest experimental doses used in this research, the repair mechanism of the cells was not triggered. It became activated at the point of the low- dose maximum, providing a "benefit" until it was overwhelmed and the damage began again to increase with dose. This may well be the case.

However, the unexpected effects of low dose/slow-dose rate exposure to ionizing radiation can also be attributed to biological mechanisms, other than the direct DNA damage hypothesis usually used by radiation physicists. These secondary mechanisms are specific to the low-/slow-dose conditions. Three such secondary mechanism have been observed by scientists: the Petkau effect, monocyte depletion, and deformed red blood cells.


The Petkau effect: discovered by Abram Petkau at the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, Manitoba, Canada in 1972 (Ref.1). Dr. Petkau discovered that at 26 rads per minute (fast-dose rate) it required a total dose of 3,500 rads to destroy a cell membrane. However, at 0.001 rad per minute (slow dose rate), it required only 0.7 rad to destroy the cell membrane. The mechanism at the slow-dose rate is the production of free radicals of oxygen (O2 with a negative electrical charge) by the ionizing effect of the radiation.
The sparsely distributed free radicals generated at the slow-dose rate have a better probability of reaching and reacting with the cell wall than do the densely crowded free radicals produced by fast-dose rates. These latter recombine quickly. Moreover, the slight electrical charge of the cell membrane attracts the free radicals in the early stages of the reaction (low total dose). Computer calculations have shown that the attraction weakens with greater concentrations of free radicals. The traditional radiation biologist has tested only high-dose reactions, and looked for direct damage to the membrane by the radiation.


Monocyte depletion: Nuclear fission produces radionuclides which tend to be stored by humans and animals in the bone tissue. In particular, strontium-90, plutonium and the transuranics have this property. Stored in bone, near the stem cells which produce the white blood cells, these radionuclides deliver a chronic low/slow dose of radiation which can interfere with normal blood- cell production. A few less neutrophils or lymphocytes (the white blood cells which are most numerous, and are usually "counted" by the radiophysicist) are not noticeable. In the normal adult, there are about 7,780 white cells per microlitre of blood. Of these, about 4,300 are neutrophils and 2,710 are lymphocytes. Only 500 are monocytes.
If, for example, stem cells in the bone marrow are destroyed so as to reduce total white blood count by 400 cells per microlitre due to the slow irradiation by radionuclides stored in the bone, this would represent a depletion of only five percent in total white cells, an insignificant amount. If all of the depletion was of neutrophils, this would mean a reduction of only 9.3 percent, still leaving the blood count well in the normal range. The lymphocytes would also be still in the normal range, even though they were depleted by 400 cells per microlitre, or 14.8 percent. However, there would be a dramatic depletion of the monocytes by 80 percent. Therefore, at low doses of radiation, it is more important to observe the monocytes, than to wait for an effect on the lymphocytes or neutrophils (as is now usually done). The effects of serious reduction in monocytes are:


Iron deficient anemia, since it is the monocytes which recycle about 37-40 percent of the iron in the red blood cells when they die;

Depressed cellular immune system, since the monocyte secretes the substance which activates the lymphocyte immune system. [2]

Deformed red-blood cells: Dr. Les Simpson, of New Zealand, has identified deformed red-blood cells, as observed under an electron microscope, as causing symptoms ranging from severe fatigue to brain dysfunction leading to short-term memory loss. He has identified such cells in elevated number in chronic fatigue patients, and speculated that because of their bloated or swollen shape, they are obstructed from easily passing into the tiny capillaries, thus depriving muscles and the brain of adequate oxygen and nutrients. The chronic fatigue syndrome has been observed both at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, called bura bura disease, and at Chernobyl. [3]
In the official approach to radiobiology, only direct damage to DNA has been recognized as "of concern," and only high dose/fast-dose rate experiments or observations have been accepted for use in estimating the dose-response rate. As was noted, it is the "common wisdom" that effects of low doses/slow- dose rates cannot be studied, but must be extrapolated from the officially accepted high dose/fast-dose rate studies. This approach is rejected by the work of Dr. Burlakova, and the other research noted below.

Basing one's theory on claims that is impossible to study the phenomenon is certainly a peculiar way to do science! This myth has now been clearly shown to have been rash and criminally negligent.

Unfortunately, the Desert Storm veterans were victims of one of the latest military experiments on human beings. The people of Iraq and Kuwait were also the victims of this misguided experiment. I believe that the ignorance was culpable and criminal.




Recent Reports on Low-Level Radiation
I would like to bring your attention to the following significant new reports on the effects of low-level radiation:


Health Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident, Results of the IPHECA Pilot Projects and Related National Programs, Scientific Report, World Health Organization, Geneva 1996.

Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe: Human Health, E.B. Burlakova, ed. Co-published by the Center for Russian Environmental Policy and the Scientific Council on Radiobiology Russian Academy of Science, ISBN 5-88587-019-5, Moscow 1996.

Volume 137, Supplement, Radiation Research 1994, which published for the first time the dose-response data on cancer incidence rate observed in the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Prior to this publication, only cancer death data was reported.

Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation V (BEIR V), U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Washington 1990. This provides new radiation risk estimates based on the newly assigned doses of radiation in this atomic bomb survivor study.
Also available now are the long term follow-up of workers in the nuclear industry. This industry has now been operating more than fifty years in the United States and about fifty years in the United Kingdom. These include:


"Inconsistencies and Open Questions Regarding Low-Dose Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation", by R. Nussbaum and W. Kohnlein. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 102, No. 8, August 1994.

RERF Technical Report TR9-87, by D.L. Preston and D.A. Pierce, Hiroshima 1987.

"The Effects of Changes in Dosimetry on Cancer Mortality Risk Estimates in Atomic Bomb Survivors" Radiation Research, Vol. 114, 1988.

"Mortality and Occupational Exposure to Irradiation: First Analysis of the National Registry for Radiation Workers" by G.M. Kendall. British Medical Journal, Vol. 304, 1992.

"Mortality Among Workers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory" by S. Wing. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 265, 1991.

"Reanalysis of the Hanford Data, 1944-1986 Deaths" by G.W. Kneale and A. Stewart. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, Volume 23, 1993.



References:

The Petkau Effect, Revised Edition, 1990, by Ralph Graeub, Translated from German by Phil Hill, and Published by Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1994. ISBN: 1-56858-019-3.

Bertell, R. "Internal Bone Seeking Radionuclides and Monocyte Counts", International Perspectives in Public Health, Vol. 9, pp 21-26, 1993

Les Simpson has published several papers in the New Zealand Medical Journal, and wrote a Chapter in the Medical Textbook on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (MI), edited by Dr. Byron Hyde.

[email protected]

End of Article

In my dream a young woman in her twenties appeared. She said she was a vet and that she lived with her child, a roomate that was an architect and above here apartment was a person they called the colonel. When I went to visit her. Her child is deformed. I walk into another room and all of a sudden there are several more people. they are moving towards me and I become frightened so I go though a doorway into what I thought was hallway but it was a staircase going downward. so I head down and it becomes a dreay smelling place. I look further down the stairwell and its wet, stinks and I hear screams. Only one place to go, I enter a floor, open the door. I see this guy covered with bugs crawing over him, but their not like bugs, they start to crawl over me. I realize they germs and brush them off me. I head back up the stairs back into the room where the others were moving to me. This is a bad place. I change into Zeus and form a cloudhead above the building. Bolts of lightnings strike the building tearing off the upper floors. I become Herakles and grab on of the pylons off the foundation, but the building still stands. Then I find myself in a room of surgical instruments with another soldier coming at me, so I grab what appears to be a hacket and throw it at the soldier. It should have cut him into two pieces with him falling to the ground dead.

Then I realized that if I couldn't kill him and the others or destroyed the building as Zeus or Herakles, then only one other possiblility remained.

So I asked the soldier, "You're dead!"

He said, "Yes, we are all dead."

Then I asked, "did you die in a war?"

He said, "NO!"

They died as experiments performed on soldiers by our government.
They came to me in my dream so I can tell you what is going on to our troops and that this must be told.

That is why I have entered this thread because the dead have asked me so you and others can fight a new war. We can't use new weapons and wait to see the consiquences later in our vets.

There maybe an answar: if a soldier knew of the effects of what our goverment uses as weapons and what exposure could do, then who would what to join the military: would you work in a factory knowing that what they produce could kill you and they didn't tell you or gave you the proper protection equipment. Would Iso walk into a room where radiation was above safe levels?

If this conversation makes you feel unpleasant, then stop patting yourself on the back and get to the front lines on protecting the soldiers fighting today! Write your congresman. Another war has begun with DU problems occuring right now.

If you are healthy than that may be because you weren't in a hot spot, others have. But symptoms may not show up for many, many years!

I will post other articles later.

AIIZ

[MikeVDS]

Are you avoiding my question with a novel? Is there a point you're trying to make?

[AntiM]

Whoa, dead vets in a dream? I'm sorry, but I personally never take advice from the folks in my dreams, they're not reliable as a rule. That's not humor btw, that's a personal opinion and life rule of mine.

[Badger]

Borrowing from AntiM:

A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction

Just as a few flakes with no concept of scientific scrutiny can unleash a torrent of lies and half-truths couched under a cloak of truth. There's nothing harmless about such rantings because - as always - truth becomes the casualty at the expense of agenda.

A II Z what's it like being a bleating, blathering lamb. Unable, unwilling or incapable of thinking for yourself and culling the half-baked musings of people who's theories which have been either discounted outright or aren't germane to you original statement you made a few posts back.

I seriously hope your elementary cut-and-paste efforts aren't an attempt at building credibility. If so, this reader believes you've failed miserably.

Sad boy.

[Apollonaris Zeus]

Whoa, dead vets in a dream? I'm sorry, but I personally never take advice from the folks in my dreams, they're not reliable as a rule.

dreams are a way of connecting to the spiritual world. Consciencious can block the access which is why many Oracles used a mind altering drug. And yes many dreams are just that dreams, but this one was so vivid and I remember everything about it. it was different and that is why I decided to post here on a subject has not been given the news worthyness that it deserves.

And badger I was only kidding about you being Ferret Boy- it was a joke get over it and post something revalent in these threads.

Don't believe me, so believe a soldier:

Depleted uranium: war hazard?



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRAVIS DUNN

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BALTIMORE (December 28, 2002) —
Dr. Doug Rokke has a disturbing habit of laughing when he should probably be crying.

He laughs when he talks about battlefields contaminated with radioactive waste. He can't stop laughing when he talks about what he claims is a massive government cover-up. And he keeps laughing when he talks about his health problems, which he attributes to deliberate Army negligence, and which will likely kill him.


Talking to Rokke on the telephone is disturbing enough without him laughing about such horrors. A strange echo accompanies every utterance. When this bizarre sound is pointed out to him, Rokke says he isn't surprised: he claims his phone has been tapped for years.


It may be tempting to dismiss Rokke as a crank or a conspiracy theorist, but Rokke is 35-year-veteran of the U.S. Army, and he isn't just a disgruntled grunt. Rokke ran the U.S. Army's depleted uranium project in the mid-90s, and he was in charge of the Army's effort to clean up depleted uranium after the Persian Gulf War. And he directed the Edwin R. Bradley Radiological Laboratories at Fort McClellan, Ala.


Yet if you type Rokke's name into a search engine on any military website, you will draw a blank, as if he doesn't exist.


If you read through hundreds of pages of government documents and transcriptions of countless government hearings regarding the military use of depleted uranium, not once will you come across his name.


That is more than a little unusual, since Rokke and his team were at the forefront of trying to understand the potential health and environmental hazards posed by the use of depleted uranium, or DU, on the battlefield.


"We were the best they ever had," Rokke claims. He's not bragging. He's laughing again.


The use of DU in combat is a fairly new innovation. It was used for the first time in the Persian Gulf War as the crucial component of armor-piercing, tank-busting munitions.


These munitions are tipped with DU darts that ignite after being fired. The shells are so heavy and hot that they easily rip through steel.


"It's like taking a pencil and pushing it through paper," Rokke said.


This uranium "pencil" then explodes inside its target, creating a deadly "firestorm."


As an anti-tank weapon, "these things are great," Rokke said. They enable U.S. troops to quickly take out enemy tanks at long-range.


According to the Web site of the Deployment Health Support Directorate, DU is "a by-product of the process by which uranium is enriched to produce reactor fuel and nuclear weapons components."


In other words, DU is low-level nuclear waste. According to the same Web site, DU can also contain trace amounts of "neptunium, plutonium, americium, technitium-99 and uranium-236."


A total of 320 tons of DU munitions were fired during the Gulf War. Rokke's job was to figure out how to clean up U.S. tanks, the unfortunate victims of "friendly fire," which had been blown apart by DU rounds.


After years of this kind of this work—in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and on practice ranges in the U.S.—Rokke reached a conclusion in 1996.


He told the Army brass that DU was so dangerous that it had to be banned from combat immediately.


That conclusion, Rokke said, cost him his career.


'Contamination was all over'


Burning tanks, burning oil fields, charred bodies.


This was Kuwait after the Gulf War. Rokke had a mission—clean up U.S. tanks contaminated with DU.


What Rokke found terrified him.


"Oh my God is the only way to describe it," Rokke said. "Contamination was all over."


Rokke and his crew were measuring significant levels of radiation up to 50 meters away from affected tanks: up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation, and alpha radiation from the thousands to the millions in counts per minute (CPM) on a Geiger counter.


"That whole area is still trashed," he said. "It's hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."


His team took three months to clean up 24 tanks for transport back to the U.S.


The Army, Rokke said, took another three years to fully decontaminate the same 24 tanks.


But the contaminated tanks weren't the only problem.


Within 72 hours of their inspections, Rokke and his crew started getting sick.


But they continued with their work. They went back to the U.S. to perform tests on Army bases. They deliberately blew up tanks with DU rounds, then ran over and jumped on the tanks while they were still burning. They videotaped the uranium-oxide clouds pouring out, and they measured the radiation being thrown off.


In the past decade, Rokke said 30 men out of 100 who were closely involved in these operations dropped dead.


Rokke's lungs and kidneys are damaged. He believes that uranium oxide dust is permanently trapped inside his lungs. He has lesions on his brain, pustules on his skin. He suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome. He has reactive airway disease, which means he can't stop wheezing and coughing, and experiences a loss of breath when he exercises. He also has fibromyalgia, a condition that causes chronic pain in his muscles, ligaments and tendons.


The VA tested Rokke for uranium levels in his body in 1994. He got the results back two and a half years later. His urine had 5000 times the amount of permissible uranium.


After years of fighting with the VA, Rokke said he managed to get a 40 percent disability, but there is no official acknowledgement that his illnesses were caused by his work with DU.


The Army and the Pentagon continue to insist that DU is safe. Rokke says they know better, because he gave them the proof. He said they can't find evidence of DU's dangers because "they're looking for the wrong stuff, and they're using the wrong procedures."


The problem with DU, he said, is the stuff that's given off when a round is fired. The projectile begins burning immediately, and up to 70 percent of it oxidizes. This aerosolized power—uranium oxide—is the really dangerous stuff, Rokke said, particularly when it is inhaled.


Rokke insists that he and his men were wearing protective equipment—or equipment they thought would protect them. But their face masks were capable of straining out particles of 10 microns or larger. That's as big as the DU particles get, according to the Army and the Pentagon.


Rokke, however, insists that he has measured particles as small as .3 microns, and that scientists at the Livermore laboratories have measured them as small as .1 micron.


Thus these safety precautions, which are still in place now, are utterly useless, he said.


'I'm a warrior and a patriot'


About one quarter of the 700,000 troops sent to the Persian Gulf War have reported some sort of Gulf War-related illness, and Rokke is convinced that DU has something to do with it, along with the host of other chemicals to which troops were exposed, including low levels of sarin gas, smoke from oil fires, countless pesticides as well as anti-nerve gas tablets which troops were required to ingest.


If Rokke is right about the dangers of DU, why does the Department of Defense continue to use it and insist that it is safe?


"When you go to war, your purpose is to kill," Rokke said, "and DU is the best killing thing we got."


Rokke believes that the U.S. military is putting more emphasis on firepower than on the health and safety of its own troops.


He received a memo in the early 90s he says proves his theory.


Dated March 1, 1991, the memo was written by Lt. Col. M.V. Ziehmn at the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico.


"There has been and continues to be a concern regarding the impact of dU [sic] on the environment. Therefore, if no one makes a case for the effectiveness of dU on the battlefield, dU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus, be deleted from the arsenal," the memo reads. "If dU penetrators proved their worth during our recent combat activities, then we should assure their future existence (until something better is developed) through Service/DoD proponency. If proponency is not garnered, it is possible that we stand to lose a valuable combat capability. I believe we should keep this sensitive issue at mind when after action reports [sic] are written."


The meaning of this memo is quite clear, Rokke said. Since DU munitions are so effective, they must continue to be used in combat, regardless of the environmental or health consequences.


The other issue is financial, he said. If the true effects of DU were known, cleanup costs would be absolutely staggering.


DU contaminated areas extend much farther than the Persian Gulf battlefields. Rokke said DU is regularly used in practice maneuvers in the U.S., namely in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. Then there's Kosovo, where DU rounds were used to take out Serbian tanks.


As the U.S. stands on the brink of another war with Iraq, Rokke said he wants to make sure the American public fully understands that this war will be far worse that the last one, and that numbers of troops sickened by DU is likely to be much higher.


Rokke insists he is no pacifist.


"I'm a warrior and a patriot," he said. Given a verifiable threat against the U.S., “I would go to war in a heartbeat."


But he said that he is speaking out for the good of American troops, and for anyone, including Iraqi troops and civilians, who could be exposed to DU.


"Am I pushing for peace today? Yes, I am," he said.


Before a war with Iraq can even be contemplated, Rokke said, DU has to be removed from every arsenal in the world.


In order for that to happen, however, the Pentagon would have to admit that Doug Rokke is right, and that would come at a price that no one has even imagined. But money can’t restore the lives of those that Rokke says have died from DU, and money isn’t going to get the uranium oxide out of his lungs. There are people at the Pentagon who understand all this, Rokke claims, and that he deems unconscionable.


"I hope God slam-dunks their butts, because this is absolutely criminal," he said.




Posted December 30, 2002


end of article

just before Rumsfeld's resignation the body count was under 50,000 as soon as he was gone the next day the iraqis release a body of 150,000. It will go as high as 600,000 after Bush is gone.

And you believe in everything our government says. if you say, Yes then you probably believe that Jesus was born on Christmas Day too.

This weapon must be banned!

AIIZ

[MikeVDS]

Well lots of things about the article. First off it lies:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Dr ... gle+Search


Next, it's all opinion. One guys opinion who claims he was something that no one else will testify to? He says a lot of opinions but back it up with no facts or how to "properly" study the effects.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you have not shown any evidence. No studies that are peer reviewed and/or verifiable. It's pretty much impossible to prove that something is completely safe, so until there are documented, scientifically done studies, saying ones opinion doesn't mean much.

[ZaphodBurner]

Ok I wonder how many of our parents played with this set or sets like it? hmmmmm! wonder if they know how many of us have that shit floating through our blood veins for our offspring?

That's a good question. When I was eleven y.o my uncle and I were landscaping at my grandparent's house and found a little '50s-era bottle of mercury.

They told me it was toxic and not to ingest any of it, but I have no idea how many hours I spent rolling it around in my palm, on the kitchen counter or my desk at school.

-c

[ZaphodBurner]

[

you look it up: Lukemia, gulf war veterans!

97% of babies born to gulf war vets have lukemia!

Horsepucky, man. I know GW combat vets who were in the middle of all of it and have one, two or three kids each, and none of them have been diagnosed with leukemia.

By the way, if you look up "Lukemia, gulf war veterans" in Google it returns
"Did you mean: leukemia, gulf war veterans" a reference to the eplaya, some politically-motivated sites and Radio Islam. I've not found sources that support your claim, so maybe you could do us a favor and provide a source yourself?

-c

[ZaphodBurner]

And I guess being gainfully employed with the Radiation Protection Group at the largest linear accelerator facility on the planet discounts any observation I might have regarding your verifiably bogus claims?

So THAT'S why you're blue!

-zb

[Badger]

I've not found sources that support your claim, so maybe you could do us a favor and provide a source yourself?

That's NOT gonna happen.

1) They don't exist

2) He's incapable of anything other than hyperbole

ZB, if you're srious about cites you might want to check this site:

PM me and I'll send you the linking URL.

Archived discussions from a discussion list that is 90% professional health physicists and field professions working in the area of Health Physics. There are a few crackpots who're subscribe to the list but you find that most all threads started by them are shredded using facts, science and a pit of documentation related to damn near anything nuclear - including the DU issue.