Nexus - 0213 - New Times Magazine-pages

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NEWS ... GLBBAL NEWS ... sure to low-level radiation but with the latent effects of that radiation on the immune system, effects not considered in the Whyte paper. Sakharov, the most eminent and authoritative nuclear scientist to reveal the official misgivings about the health consequences of bomb-testing kept secret by all parties in the arms race, calculated that the tests would ultimate- ly kill millions of people worldwide, immediately and over time. Sakharov's theory offers the first explanation of the great epidemiologi- cal mysteries of our times. The decline in mortality rates for infants and old people in the USA and the advanced Western European countries flattened out during the years of atmospheric bomb tests. There was only a moderate rate of decline after the partial test-ban treaty was signed in 1963. In the 1980s both routine and accidental emissions from military and civilian reactors con- tinued, and mortality rates are again on the rise in the USA, UK, and France. According to the UN Annual Demographic Yearbook, in these same countries the death rate for 25-44-year- olds, presumably the healthiest and most productive component of the labour force, has been rising since 1983 for the first time since World War II. The Atlanta Center for Disease Control acknowledged this anomalous trend among American males. In the September 1990 issue of The American Journal of Public Health it was admit- ted that in states with high AIDS mor- tality rates, there are "associated" abnormal increases in “other immune defects", including septicemia, pneu- monia, pulmonary tuberculosis, dis- eases of the central nervous system, heart disease, and blood disorders. Persons in this age group were born between 1945 and 1965. They were, therefore, most heavily exposed in utero to the latent effects of bomb-test radiation that most worried Sakharov. The consequent harm to their develop- ing hormonal and immune systems would emerge later when, as young adults with impaired immune respons- es, they would encounter the new strains of sexually transmitted viruses and bacteria that Sakharov predicted would also result from radiation- induced mutation. Particularly after the Chemobyl dis- aster, we can no longer continue to ignore the radiation link to immune- deficiency diseases foreseen by Sakharov. Sakharov complains that “to the best of my knowledge, no notice of these publications of mine was taken in the West, probably because my name was still quite unknown... Although this is no longer true in my case, the poor use Western journalists make of their archives and reference works... still amazes me." (Source: Would You Believe? Spring 1993, Number 44) DRUG COMPANIES : WHAT HAVE THEY GOT TO HIDE? Britain's prime minister, John Major, faces his first important test on his resolve to create more open govern- ment, with the introduction of a private member's bill aimed at abolishing the secrecy that surrounds the licensing of new drugs. The bill, which would open thou- sands of previously unpublished drugs trials to public scrutiny, is supported by numerous health and consumer groups. However, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has warned that if the bill becomes law its member companies will boycott the British drug licensing system. Any company that wants to sell a new drug must present a vast amount of research data to the government's Committee on Safety of Medicines. At present, these data, along with the views of the CSM, are kept from the public by a secrecy clause in the 1968 Medicines Act. This clause has, on occasion, left the public completely in the dark over drug safety. Pinecone Banas ine A Tae N21 IMMUNE SYSTEM DEFECTS FROM NUCLEAR BOMB TESTING In the 8 February 1992 issue of The British Medical Journal, R.K. Whyte, a Canadian paediatrician, reports some disturbing evidence from official gov- ernmental sources. Ingested fission products from nuclear weapons tests conducted in the atmosphere during the 1950s had caused in excess of 320,000 infant deaths in the United States and England by 1980. Whyte shows that the increase in neonatal deaths in those years can be explained only by exposure to radioac- tive iodine and strontium injected into the atmosphere by the superpowers’ early nuclear testing programmes. Whyte's findings validate predictions made in 1958 by the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and cited in his recently published Memoirs. Sakharov was concerned, however, not only with the immediate consequences of expo- Vol 2, No 13 - 1993 NEXUSe9 (Source: New Scientist, 9 Jan '93)