The same sort of article appeared in Salon.com. It is a sign of the
bankruptcy of the liberal media which went along with the criminal war in
the Balkans.

At 12:00 PM 1/13/01 -0600, you wrote:
>When I first saw the headline, I guessed that Gina Kolata would be the
>author.  I guessed right, the purpose
>of this article is clearly to cover the back end of the military with as
>much bs as possible.  I don't know
>what resources people may have on this list to counter this article, but
>it is certainly outrageous to claim
>that science knows enough about depleted uranium to claim that its
>health effects are nil.
>
>Anyway, for those of you looking for another reason to distrust "the
>paper of record", here it is:
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
>
>January 13, 2001
>
>Fray in Europe Over Uranium Draws Doubters
>
>By GINA KOLATA
>
> A  furor has been growing in Europe for weeks over contentions that
>some allied troops contracted leukemia from
>    exposure to depleted uranium used in NATO ammunition in the Balkans,
>and that civilians were put at risk by
>military testing.
>
>But physicists and medical experts say it is biologically impossible for
>depleted uranium to have caused the leukemia,
>and they doubt that the metal caused any illnesses in Europe.
>
>If the uranium was causing leukemia, it would presumably do so by
>emitting radioactive particles that would damage the
>bone marrow.
>
>But Dr. Frank von Hippel, a physicist who is a professor of public and
>international affairs at Princeton University, said
>depleted uranium was not much of a radioactivity hazard. It is what its
>name implies — depleted. It is what is left when
>the more highly radioactive uranium 235 has been removed from its more
>abundant atomic cousin, uranium 238.
>
>Uranium 235 is used to fuel nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. But
>uranium 238 "is very weakly radioactive," Dr.
>von Hippel said.
>
>Even if one assumes that there is a ton of depleted uranium dust for
>every square kilometer in Kosovo, he said, its
>radiation would be just one one-hundredth, or 1 percent, of the
>naturally occurring level of radiation in the environment.
>"So this is not a very significant hazard," he said.
>
>Moreover, uranium 238 emits alpha radiation, said Dr. Michael Thun, who
>directs epidemiological research for the
>American Cancer Society, and that radiation does not even penetrate the
>skin. The radiation that is known to cause
>leukemia, gamma rays and X-rays, passes through the body and reaches the
>marrow, damaging cells and giving rise to
>disease.
>
>Uranium is a heavy metal, and as with all heavy metals it can be toxic.
>When it enters the body, it lodges in the kidney,
>which it can damage. But studies of a handful of gulf war soldiers who
>were hit by friendly fire and left with fragments of
>uranium 238 in their bodies have been reassuring, said Dr. Charles
>Phelps, the provost at the University of Rochester and
>a member of an Institute of Medicine committee that reported on the
>problem last year.
>
>Uranium 238 clearly was leaching into the soldiers' kidneys, he said.
>"They had very high levels of uranium salts in their
>urine," Dr. Phelps said. "But there is no evidence of kidney disease."
>
>Depleted uranium has long been used to strengthen weapons because it is
>extremely dense, 65 percent denser than lead. A
>weapon made with depleted uranium can penetrate even steel-armored
>tanks. It also ignites when it hits.
>
>"When you fire into or through steel, it actually vaporizes the steel,"
>said Dr. Bruce Kelman, a toxicologist who is a
>president of GlobalTox, a business in Seattle that studies industrial
>hygiene and toxicology for governments and industry.
>"You get a mist of depleted uranium and steel."
>
>Dr. von Hippel said that although the metal was radioactive, "its half-
>life is 4.5 billion years, which is, by coincidence,
>the age of the solar system." That means that it would take 4.5 billion
>years for half the uranium 238 atoms in a chunk of
>the metal to decay by emitting radioactive particles.
>
>Because the radiation does not go to the marrow, it is biologically
>impossible for depleted uranium to cause leukemia,
>said Dr. John Boice, scientific director of the International
>Epidemiology Institute, a research concern in Rockville,
>Md., and an expert on radiation and cancer.
>
>"To get leukemia," Dr. Boice said, "you need to get the radiation to the
>bone marrow. And uranium 238 will not get to the
>bone marrow."
>
>Dr. Bruce Boecker, a radiation biologist at the Lovelace Respiratory
>Research Institute in Albuquerque, said, "I don't
>think it causes leukemia at all."
>
>If a person inhales uranium 238, it lodges in the lungs where, in theory
>at least, it might cause lung cancer or it might
>travel to the lymph nodes and theoretically cause lymphoma.
>
>But Dr. Boice said extensive studies of workers who processed uranium,
>some exposed to high levels by breathing
>uranium dust, did not find any association between inhaling uranium 238
>and developing lung cancer or lymphomas.
>
>Lymphomas do not seem to be caused by radiation in any case, Dr. Boice
>said. But lung cancer can be, although the study
>of uranium workers did not find that.
>
>"We would not have been surprised at these high levels to find a link
>with lung cancer," he said. "But there was none."
>
>Dr. Thun of the cancer society said even though science might not
>support the idea that depleted uranium is causing health
>problems in Europe, that does not mean that scientists should turn their
>backs on the concern. People think they have
>leukemia because they were exposed to depleted uranium, and those fears
>will not easily go away.
>
>"What I've been telling people," Dr. Thun said, "is that we need a
>systematic, open and prompt evaluation of the situation,
>which would involve determining the cases of leukemia, determining the
>age of the patients, the diagnosis, and the type of
>leukemia.
>
>"In most cases, one of the major reasons for doing a systematic
>evaluation is to determine what is actually going on and to
>provide some real information, rather than rumors."
>
>                            Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
>
>
>
>--
>Ivan Handler
>Networking for Democracy
>[log in to unmask]
>

Louis Proyect
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