After the War Comes Cancer

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Sat, 2 Jul 2005 10:24:06 -0700 (PDT)

After the War Comes Cancer

 

 

 

After the War Comes Cancer [ Post 293747853 ]

 

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat= & Board=iraq_war & Number=293747853#Po\

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Category: News & Opinion (Specific) Topic: Warfare and Conflict: Iraq

Synopsis: After the War Comes Cancer

Source: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1510710,00.html

Published: July 1, 2005 Author: Jürgen Hanefeld

For Education and Discussion Only. Not for Commercial Use.

 

 

 

Iraqi women fear for their children's future

 

Information collected for a German project investigating the use of

uranium-charged ammunition in Iraq shows that when Iraqi women fear

for their children's health, it is with good reason.

 

 

 

After two wars where oil wells were torched, chemical factories bombed

and radioactive ammunition fired, the first thing Iraqi women ask when

giving birth is not if it is a boy or a girl, but if it is normal or

deformed. The number of cancer cases and children born with

deformities has skyrocketed after the two Gulf Wars.

 

" Since 1991 the number of children born with birth deformities has

quadrupled, " said Dr. Janan Hassan, who runs a children's clinic at a

hospital in Basra in southern Iraq. " The same is the case for the

number of children under 15 who are diagnosed with cancer. Mostly, it

is leukemia. Almost 80 percent of the children die because we neither

have medicine nor the possibility to give them chemotherapy. "

 

 

 

Doctors have also recorded an extreme rise in cancer cases among

adults. " In 2004 we diagnosed 25 percent more cancer cases than the

year before and the mortality rate increased eight-fold between 1988

and 1991, " said Dr. Jawad al-Ali of the Sadr Hospital in Basra.

 

 

 

Doctors against nuclear war

 

Hassan and al-Ali are two of 15 Iraqi specialists who have joined

forces with German scientists in a project to research diseases

provoked by acts of war, financed by the German Academic Exchange Service.

 

 

 

In Iraq, burning oil wells, bombed chemical factories, demolished

production sites for chemical weapons and even the use of radioactive

ammunition are just a few of the things which may have triggered

diseases there.

 

 

 

" As epidemiologists, we are quite sure that other diseases than cancer

and birth deformities also have to be considered, " said project leader

Wolfgang Hoffmann from the University of Greifswald.

 

 

 

The scientists involved in the project met through the International

Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). All have a

special interest in the consequences of using depleted-uranium (DU)

ammunition, the German project's main focus.

 

 

 

British and American uranium bombs

 

 

 

In the two US-led wars on Iraq, missile warheads containing the

depleted uranium-238 were used. While it is only lightly radioactive,

it is an extremely tough waste-product to contain because the uranium

pulverizes and contaminates the whole surrounding area with

radioactivity at the moment of the explosion.

 

 

" Naturally, the nations leading the war refuse to acknowldege that

this type of uranium can be harmful. But as an epidemiologist, I have

to say that every bit of radiation can give rise to cancer. It's just

a question if what was fired in this case led to an increase in the

number of cancer cases, " said Professor Eberhard Greiser from the

University of Bremen.

 

 

 

As with many of the questions arising from the project so far, there

is no definite answer. But al-Ali tried to give a partial answer.

 

" In Basra in 1991, the Americans and the British dropped at least 300

tons of this kind of ammunition in one battle. That was the battle

where they destroyed all the tanks of the then Republican Army. After

the war, the population was urged to gather all weapons and sell them

to the government. Also if people had guns or bazookas or whatever

they found in the desert, they were told to bring it with them, " he said.

 

 

 

According to al-Ali's calculations, approximately 750,000 people in

Basra and the surrounding areas were exposed to radiation as a result.

 

 

 

Finding the evidence

 

The doctors say the connection between the contamination of hundred of

thousands of people on one side and the rising number of cancer cases

on the other is beyond doubt, but proving it is not easy.

 

 

 

" To prove it, we would have to demonstrate that there was uranium 238

on the patients' clothes or in their body fluid. And besides, cancer

is a multi-causal disease. How would we be able to give 100 percent

proof? " al-Ali asked.

 

 

 

Despite the resigned attitudes among many of her colleagues, Hassan

firmly believes that the radioactive missiles used by the Americans

and the British are responsible for the increased incidence of cancer

in Iraq since the early 1990s. She hopes a future independent Iraqi

government will seek compensation from Washington and London. " We have

to demand it. That is the price of the war, " she said.

 

Jürgen Hanefeld (nk)