Health risks of radiation - IAEA prevents WHO from telling the truth

[Guest guest]

There are several urls throughout this article - go the url/website to

investigate them. Shan

 

The Guardian (London) May 28, 2009

 

Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has

effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks

of radiation

By Oliver Tickell

_http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chern

obyl_

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl\

)

 

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation*s assembly

voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International

Atomic Energy Agency - the United Nations **Atoms for Peace** organisation,

founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has

been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate

in any way to nuclear power - and so prevent the WHO from playing its

proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on

human health.

 

The WHO*s objective is to promote **the attainment by all peoples of the

highest possible level of health**, while the IAEA*s mission is to

**accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and

prosperity throughout the world**.

Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the

IAEA*s main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power

industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body

of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

 

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in

which the other may have an interest, it **shall consult the other with a

view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement**. The two agencies must

**keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all

programs of work which may be of interest to both parties**. And in the

realm of statistics - a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk - the two

undertake **to consult with each other on the most efficient use of

information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and

in

regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common

interest**.

 

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided.

For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl

nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by

IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of

the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995,

and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain

unpublished - despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman

reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

 

Meanwhile, the 2005 report of the IAEA-dominated Chernobyl Forum, which

estimates a total death toll from the accident of only several thousand, is

widely regarded as a whitewash as it ignores a host of peer-reviewed

epidemiological studies indicating far higher mortality and widespread genomic

damage. Many of these studies were presented at the Geneva and Kiev

conferences but they, and the ensuing learned discussions, have yet to see the

light

of day thanks to the non-publication of the proceedings.

 

The British radiation biologist Keith Baverstock is another casualty of

the agreement, and of the mindset it has created in the WHO. He served as a

radiation scientist and regional adviser at the WHO*s European Office from

1991 to 2003, when he was sacked after expressing concern to his senior

managers that new epidemiological evidence from nuclear test veterans and from

soldiers exposed to depleted uranium indicated that current risk models for

nuclear radiation were understating the real hazards.

 

Now a professor at the University of Kuopio, Finland, Baverstock finally

published his paper in the peer-reviewed journal Medicine, Conflict and

Survival in April 2005. He concluded by calling for **reform from within the

profession** and stressing **the political imperative for freely independent

scientific institutions** - a clear reference to the non-independence of

his former employer, the WHO, which had so long ignored his concerns.

 

Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a

daily **Hippocratic vigil** has taken place at the WHO*s offices in Geneva,

organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA

Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO's 62nd World Health

Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board

meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO*s

member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building

up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called

for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos,

Greece.

 

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a

million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result

of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others

exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR

in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident.

Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by

the

International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by

WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation

by between 100 and 1,000 times - consistent with the ECRR*s own 2003 model

of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at

Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators'

Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and

visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical

sciences:

 

**The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic

falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima,

the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN

organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient

to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving

the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's

independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and

publish its findings.**

 

Some birthdays deserve celebration - but not this one. After five decades,

it is time the WHO regained the freedom to impart independent, objective

advice on the health risks of radiation.

 

(http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm)