Rachel Corrie Chapter 109  Olympia WA

Dr. George Hill Speaks Out on Depleted Uranium

Physicians for Social Responsibility presents viewpoints that reflect the social concerns of medical doctors. PSR recently produced their opinion of the health and public health issue surround depleted uranium. Not all physicians agree with this report. George Hill, MD, an associate member of Veterans For Peace - Rachel Corrie Chapter 109 in Olympia, WA has some concerns.

DU:HEALTH AND PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES ARISING FROM THE USE OF DEPLETED URANIUM MUNITIONS October 2005 Physicians for Social Responsibility.

PSR Publications and Related Links on Depleted Uranium

I am very disappointed in the PSR study on U238 "DU".  It quotes various Pentagon, RAND , UN, and WHO studies, and pretty consistently takes the position that "We just don't know."  I suspect they had too much help writing it.  RAND is closely tied to the Pentagon; UN and WHO have a lot of status but are subject to US governmental pressure.   The conclusion, after interminable apologies, is a little better, and it does support the McDermott bill HR 2410 to study health effects on returning troops.   

The Pentagon suppressed their own study of U238, which was prepared to warn troops of hazards.  PSR didn’t include that scandal, but does point out that the Pentagon refuses to divulge studies of health effects of U238 on veterans of Gulf War 1.

PSR also notes  " Since the fall of Hussein, the United States has explicitly forbidden the UN Environmental Program from doing the requisite environmental sampling to determine the extent of DU contamination that in the second Gulf War was spread into numerous Iraqi cities involved in military operations."

The questions and requests of Dan Fahey are pointed and useful.   Issues re particle size and wind dispersion are essentially glossed over.

A book "Discounted Casualties" which is in our VFP library, compiles The Chugoku Shimbun newspaper series from Hiroshima that involved four months of world travel and interviewing by an excellent reporter.  This book contains anecdotal evidence and also a lot of powerful statistical evidence which is not quoted in the PSR report.

I will be offering a rebuttal in more detail soon, since I prepared at the time we showed the movie "The Doctor The Dying Children and Depleted Uranium," a documentary about a German physician who worked with Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and who then spent forty years consulting in tropical medicine in Baghdad.  He was very impressed with the sharp increase in birth defects and pediatric leukemia in Iraq after Gulf War 1.  His findings were not quoted by PSR.

I usually appreciate PSR very much, and have been a member at times since 1965.

Sincerely,

George Hill