Photograph from The New York Times, Oct.10, 2005
Depleted uranium has been a subject very difficult to get published on. MAW member Joanne Lind would like you to get the word around. She has learned that in Iraq the U.S. military briefed press briefers telling them that "DU" and "depleted uranium" were words never to be used! Also, private scientists trying to test soil from Iraq battlefields said they would have been arrested if they were seen collecting samples.
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TO: Opinion page, Daily Hampshire Gazette
FROM: Joanne LInd, Ph.D., SociologistRecently I saw the photo (above) of an 11-foot sculpture in white marble recently installed on Trafalgar Square in London. Monumental in gravity, it is modelled after a real woman, who has no arms and only small, twisted legs. She is pregnant.
This sculpture brings before us a glimpse of an an inconceivably horrible future -- yet, oddly enough, a future that we are working with all our strength to create.
In Iraq we have used a kind of radioactive weapons. After processing nuclear fuel for power plants, the remaining uranium is called "depleted uranium" (DU). Yet, it is not at all depleted of its radioactivity. Nonetheless, it has been used by the military as an unusually heavy metal to harden tank armor and armor-piercing bullets. After DU-coated "bullets" (up to 4 feet long) penetrate and explode tanks, uranium dust rises with the column of fire and hot air, drifting downwind across the earth onto grass where cows graze and into drinking water.
Samples of earth taken from battlefield sites have been measured by Geiger counter to have a radiation level 100 to 150 times normal background level. In some places, ankle-deep dust has been found to be actually 50% uranium. The hulls of bombed-out tanks (on which youngsters, uninformed, have played) have measured at 20,000 to 30,000 times background level. These are findings of the American doctor, Asaf Durakovic, who has been awarded the International Peace Prize, sponsored by over 134 nations, for his work on the issues of radioactive warfare, depleted uranium, and the medical and environmental effects of radioactive weapons. A documentary film on his work has recently been released, "The Doctor, Depleted Uranium, and the Children." (For more information, see www.umrc.net/os)
Uranium still rests on the earth where it fell. It enters people as they breathe the air, drink the water, and eat the food. It causes functional disturbances and cancers in the living. However, what I focus on here is the long future. With a half-life of 4.5 billion years, uranium leaves behind a legacy of genetic damage, producing physical monsters far more grotesque than the deformity of the person who modeled for the sculpture in Trafalgar Square. Before long, the day will come when these individuals (getting born today with severe genetic defects, and some of whom are already toddlers), will enter their reproductive lives. THEY WILL PASS ON SPLIT CHROMOSOMES.
Their children will, in turn, produce children with split chromosomes and weirdly deformed physical bodies in which to live their lives. This will continue on and on -- down the generations -- as the numbers directly damaged during each generation add to the geometrically increasing progeny of the damaged.
A new bill introduced by Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), a medical doctor, is called "The Depleted Uranium Weapons Study Act" (H.R. 2410). Yet, the public is woefully ignorant about depleted uranium. We need to inform ourselves regarding what it is that our elected, appointed and military representatives do when they pull the trigger for radioactive weapons. For decades now, scientific study has shown that when radioactive particles are breathed or ingested they cause damage to living bodies. (See the eminent Dr. Helen Caldicott's overview of studies, "Depleted Uranium: Scientific Basis for Assessing Risk": www nuclearpolicy.org/files/nuclear/DU report final 7 6.pdf)
We are told that we are in danger from terrorists, and that we must protect ourselves.
BUT IN DOING THIS, WE ARE ATTACKING THE HUMAN RACE ITSELF!!
Is this logical? Is it done in ignorance? Or is it morally grotesque?
