Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told Al Jazeera English [3], “Children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has disastrous consequences.”
Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion. Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of “Uranium in Iraq” told Al Jazeera English [4] that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.
Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.
In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants [1] have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English [2].
The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Originally posted by BrainevolutionYou do not state any of your sources but a few things occur to me
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.
Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organizatio ...[text shortened]... d, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq
An exaggeration surely!!!
[b]The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.[b]
Would you be less alarmed if the half life were shorter? Such a long half-life means it is barely radioactive. It is used in aircraft, armour plating, radiation shielding in hospitals etcetera because of its density.
Try reading this http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/
Sure I wouldnt want it sprinkled on my cornflakes and undoubtably some individuals will suffer but that is the unfortunate legacy of war. (And we have killed thousands anyway ....)
Originally posted by wolfgang59https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8812043282272915800&postID=756130149029229595
You do not state any of your sources but a few things occur to me
[b]Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq
An exaggeration surely!!!
The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.[b]
Would you be less alarmed if the half life ...[text shortened]... ill suffer but that is the unfortunate legacy of war. (And we have killed thousands anyway ....)
Originally posted by BrainevolutionAnd in other threads the focus is on non American, fundamentalist, terrorists.
[b]Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment./b]
Originally posted by BrainevolutionI'm not going to defend anyones actions in Iraq - the war was illlegal - but this is just exageratted nonsense.
In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants [1] have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.
And I suppose you lot will tell us next that smoking doesn't hurt anyone as well.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20241
In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of radiation-related sickness in the city:
“Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias.…
“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.…
“Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, ‘a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.’” (See: “Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military&rdquo😉
The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies associated with US military actions. “No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues,” a Defense Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies, however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime have blocked them.
Originally posted by wolfgang59Here's "something"; the conclusions of studies conducted in 2001 regarding the effects of depleted uranium weapons used in the First Gulf War 1991:
Something like my quote from the World Health Organisation.
The situation in the Iraq/Kuwait theatre, for which there is no environmental assessment, is somewhat different. Given the higher percentage of burned DU/RU in the tank-to-tank fire, the generally dry and arid climatic conditions of the area and the presence of a civilian population at the time of the battles, the potential for exposure to dusts and smoke of the combatants and civilian populations present during and after the battles is much greater. However, these exposures have to be seen against the background of other exposures to potentially toxic agents associated with this war. Although exposure to DU may have played a role in the induction of any health effects demonstrated to have been induced, it may prove difficult to disentangle its effects in this multiple exposure situation and make clear attributions of specific health consequences to specific agents. Nevertheless, continued exposure to re-suspended DU/RU dusts could have posed and could continue to pose, a health hazard to the civilian population in the regions affected by the hostilities. As the soluble component is "weathered" away the risks will tend to converge towards those predicted on the basis of the ICRP lung model, taking into account the particle size distribution and any influence of the bystander effect.
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Radiological-Toxicity-WHO5nov01.htm
Of course, many more depleted uranium weapons were used in the Second Gulf War and the Occupation so any health effects would be magnified.
Reuters reported this last December:
Incidences of cancer, deformed babies and other health problems have risen sharply, Iraqi officials say, and many suspect contamination from weapons used in years of war and accompanying unchecked pollution as a cause.
"We have seen new kinds of cancer that were not recorded in Iraq before war in 2003, types of fibrous (soft tissue) cancer and bone cancer. These refer clearly to radiation as a cause," said Jawad al-Ali, an oncologist in Iraq's second city of Basra.
In the city of Falluja in western Iraq, scene of two of the fiercest battles between U.S. troops and insurgents after the 2003 U.S. invasion, a spike in the number of births of stillborn, deformed and paralysed babies has alarmed doctors.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5B01I320091201