Depleted Uranium Blasts to Increase At Livermore Lab - Video News Clip

If you look off into the distance in the photo to your left? You will see the San Francisco Bay, roughly about 40 miles away.

How has California let the Livermore Lab get away with this for over 45 years? Do the people perhaps not know how dangerous it is to explode so much Depleted Uranium and Tritium out into the open air around so many people?

I may live outside the US but I will be telling everyone I know not to visit Calif unless they want to return home poisoned for life.

This surely must be one of the worst things that could affect human health. This is as bad a news item as hearing about Agent Orange many years ago.

I wonder if the Beckhams know whats on their doorstep since they'v just moved their for a new start. Maybe someone should at least let them know.

It is possible to fight this relying on the Tenth Amendment, should anyone be so inclined.

And they tried to blame it ALL on smokers and secondhand smoke from cigarettes? Now we know that the secondhand smoke theory for cancer is ALL just a smokescreen (no pun intended) for the DU they've been saturating the atmosphere with for years. Don't blame a few whiffs of cigarette smoke for contracting cancer!

You Americans are so stupid you will still be discussing how free you all are, as you are being led on masse into the gas chambers.. and your authorities and their mind control matrix, the "media" know it.

Dear Charlie,

You are right. Our nation is ignorant of the true depths of these evil-doers who illegitimately rule over us as dictators.

We have no real media. The people can not read the truth nor watch it on TV. Only those who get news on alternative and foreign media have any clue what is happening. Our schools, churches, and even scientific organizations are, by and large, in the pocket of our corrupt government or are controlled by them, and thus do not tell nor teach the truth. The vast majority is clueless and brainwashed because of the slick psychological operations maneuvers waged against the citizens for many decades.

Americans are only now starting to suspect something *might* be wrong.

Goddess help us. But more importantly? May goddess help the world. We have done so much damage to the entire planet that all of us who do know? Well, we are deeply upset, ashamed, and disgraced. Many are so depressed as to render them inactive in their feelings of utter helplessness and hopelessness.

Please help get out the word...We are in a Mayday situation here. The people can not even vote new, decent people into power because the voting system is compromised (rigged). Our lawmakers (Congress) are acting as if they have no heart, no conscience whatsoever. Many say it goes way beyond monetary bribes. Our political leaders [sic] are being controlled to act against the best welfare of the citizens they purport to serve.

Politics is nothing but a big sham. It's dramatic theatre... a game that they play for us to keep us amused, distracted, and thinking that there is still a political system.

Who will win? Hillary? Obama? Dennis even? Repbublicans? Democrats? It truly matters not. They are all just mere puppets acting as if they are doing something. In actuality, however, it is the controllers - BIG MONEY criminals - behind the scenes from not just inside the US but internationally, who are running everything here.

The US is deep in the throes of Fascism. The rest of the world knows this. Americans are only now starting to get a clue.

Cathy Garger

this is definitely the US government's speed..................my idea is to ship every single politician in this country to Iraq OUTSIDE the Green Zone with NO weapons..........dump them and see just how long they survive......ha ha........let the REVOLUTION begin!............they have started it..........WE will finish it..........................

Depleted uranium
The uranium remaining after removal of the enriched fraction contains about 99.8% 238U, 0.2% 235U and 0.001% 234U by mass; this is referred to as depleted uranium or DU.
The main difference between DU and natural uranium is that the former contains at least three times less 235U than the latter.
DU, consequently, is weakly radioactive and a radiation dose from it would be about 60% of that from purified natural uranium with the same mass.
The behaviour of DU in the body is identical to that of natural uranium.
Spent uranium fuel from nuclear reactors is sometimes reprocessed in plants for natural uranium enrichment. Some reactor-created radioisotopes can consequently contaminate the reprocessing equipment and the DU. Under these conditions another uranium isotope, 236U, may be present in the DU together with very small amounts of the transuranic elements plutonium, americium and neptunium and the fission product technetium-99. However, the additional radiation dose following intake of DU into the human body from these isotopes would be less than 1%.

It doesn't matter what percentage of exposure is the problem, whether it's 1% or 100%. Uranium IS uranium and not ALL people are immune from it's very negative effects. Everyone's body is different and everyone's body responds differently, based on their genetic makeup. Your argument FOR depleted uranium is absolutely worthless as you would need a controlled groups of people with the exact genetic makeup, expose them to depleted uranium and then see the results down the road. IMHO it would ALL be negative as the results have arrived from the Gulf War, Serbia-Croatia and now Iraq/Afghanistan.

Our friend is apparently someone who believes that the UN (and thus the WHO) is the consummate guardian of international public health. He is, however, very sadly mistaken. Just witness - as merely one example - the genocidal slaughter now in the millions of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples as two fine examples of how the UN works hard to protect innocent citizens...

Not.

This article by Dr. Rosalie Bertell is a must-read for all those who believe that inhaling U-238 that's been fired out of a tank or exploded into the California air is a picnic for the human body.

http://iicph.org/docs/occupational-hazards-of-war-du.pdf

In essence, dear Greater San Francisco Bay area, your high rates of cancers, respiratory disorders, and autoimmune system diseases ain't no accident. And until the residents there become better educated about this and demand an end to open air detonations of U-238 and other radioactive and chemically toxic materials? Things will only go from very bad to much worse.

Cathy Garger

While the peer-reviewed studies of health effects from natural uranium exposure are weighted against the probability that DU exposure, in and of itself, is likely to have caused an increase in leukemias or other cancers in the relatively short time since it has been dispersed in the Balkans environment, the science is controversial and the possibility cannot be ruled out. The Office of the Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, which reports to the US Department of Defense, has itself stated that DU can pose a chemical toxicity and radiological hazard under specific conditions [2].

Moreover, any impurities that may have found their way into the DU munitions used in either the Gulf or the Balkans -- including plutonium, actinides, and the highly radioactive manufactured isotope U-236 [3] -- pose unquestionably serious health threats, and the extent to which at-risk populations may have been exposed to these substances must be studied promptly and thoroughly by unbiased investigators.

...

As mentioned earlier, there is evidence that the DU munitions used in the Gulf war and in the Balkans were tainted with plutonium, U-236, and other substances far more intensely radioactive than U-238. Recent studies have pointed to the possiblility of genetic damage resulting from exposure to some forms of radiation emitted from particles such as those deposited by DU weapons [8]. Any such genomic effect, if substantiated, could point toward increased risk of cancer or leukemia in the lung or regional lymph nodes above the standard -- and controversial -- predictions of radiation protection models [9]. It is simply too early to say. Precisely for that reason, the health of military and civilian populations that have been exposed to DU in the Gulf and in the Balkans should be monitored closely in the years ahead.

http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/dupost.htm

Results
Animal studies firmly support the possibility that DU is a teratogen. While the detailed pathways by which environmental DU can be internalized and reach reproductive cells are not yet fully elucidated, again, the evidence supports plausibility. To date, human epidemiological data include case examples, disease registry records, a case-control study and prospective longitudinal studies.

Discussion
The two most significant challenges to establishing a causal pathway between (human) parental DU exposure and the birth of offspring with defects are: i) distinguishing the role of DU from that of exposure to other potential teratogens; ii) documentation on the individual level of extent of parental DU exposure. Studies that use biomarkers, none yet reported, can help address the latter challenge. Thoughtful triangulation of the results of multiple studies (epidemiological and other) of DU teratogenicity contributes to disentangling the roles of various potentially teratogenic parental exposures. This paper is just such an endeavor.

Conclusion
In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1242351

YOU ALL SHOULD READ THIS ONE!!

http://www.kptv.com/news/13807178/detail.html

A VERY GOOD article!

http://www.coastalpost.com/07/08/04.html

Cathy Garger is a prolific activist writer with no real knowledge of the subject beyond the fact that LLNL is planning to do some explosives testing. Garger mischaracterizes DU as being an explosive itself. She closely camps on to whatever Bob Nichols, the pretend reporter with the Project Censored award for bad science fiction, tells her and he relies on Leuren Moret who claims to have been an LLNL scientist, when in fact she did work there, but as what appears to have been a glorifed computer lab assistant. She was a Senior Scientific Technologist in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing and she worked there less than one year. She claims to be a whistleblower, but mouthy as she is, she never filed an appeal with the Department of Labor which would have heard an appeal and whose records are publicly available. So, the odds are pretty strong that she is no whistleblower either, but it sounds politically correct to claim to have been one, so she is in her mind. She also claims to be an "independent scientist" and that probably just means that no one will hire her because she doesn't know enough science to make a living at it beyond lecturing on the anti-DU circuit. If you want to learn more, read the articles at the Yahoo Group DUStory .. there will be an excellent 4 page article that dissects some of Moret's writings, videos and claims posted there by the end of the weekend. I am also submitting the article to the Coastal Post in Bolinas since the Editor, Don Deane promised he would publish an article about the other side of DU. You are also free to write me .. I work out of my living room and 56K dial up computer .. in my living room; before my elderly but very affectionate cat died last year about this time, she used to curl up on my lap and put her head on the mouse. I am a real dangerous spook. Unlike Moret, I don't solicit donations or sell DVDs and I don't get paid for spending a lot of my free time on this DU issue.

Roger Helbig

I have attached Blaine Howard's articles on Gamma Scout Meter and DU -- Moret's latest stunt in Hawaii - I did not realize I could upload files to this site. I will add Blaine's other article after we have made some minor editorial changes.

The writer refers to a Coastal Post article // I had a nice talk with Don Deane, Editor last night - he was actually pretty nice for the extremely late hour that I called him, just before I left work about midnight. He agreed to publish an article and I am sending him the article I just got from Blaine Howard about Moret and the anti-DU crusade. There is no one dying of leukemia as a result of exposure to DU -- that is totally false. No one will ever tell you who this person is, only that some nameless person is. That's so that you can not verify the accuracy of the story. I know one fraud, Douglas Lind Rokke, Major US Army Reserve (retired), PhD Education - he pretends to be a career Army officer who blew the whistle on DU -- most career Army officers spend a lot longer than less than two years on active duty // yes, that's all the time that Rokke actually spent in the Army -- he was activated as a Reservist for Desert Storm, sat the war out safe and sound in Riyadh, then was attached to a mainly civilian team from Rock Island Arsenal that examined and decontaminated tanks that had been hit with DU during the Gulf War -- Rokke falsely claims that he is a disabled combat veteran dying from exposure to DU -- he never saw combat so he is no combat veteran and he is not dying from exposure to DU, nor is anyone else and the Department of Veterans Affairs in Baltimore has closely monitored every soldier that actually was hit by DU in the Gulf War -- Rokke also claims to have treated casualties -- well, he was a medic in the Army National Guard before he got his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Reserve, but he never went to war while in the Guard, but did treat a couple who he encountered on the roadside on the way home from drill in Illinois -- he justly got a medal for that commendatory act and it probably helped him go from being Sergeant to Lieutenant Rokke, but it was not wartime and he treated no one who had been exposed to DU. He also sort of forgets to tell you that the Doctor in Doctor Rokke is really a PhD in Education and that if he had been a better manager, he might have qualified to be Superintendent of Schools instead of just being a substitute teacher. He never was full professor and he is not a physicist or health physicist (the Army called him that after the Gulf War, but the Air Force told me I was an Electronic Engineer too after the Vietnam War (neither one of us could make a living as what our supposed equivalent military specialty was .. he had no Physics or Health Physics degree or real experience and I did not have an Electronic Engineering degree) so he became a professional anti-DU crusader and I found I had an exceptional knack for resolving contractual problems and ran contracting offices -- The big difference is that I don't lie about who I am or what I know and Rokke now makes his living doing so .. Leuren Moret in Berkeley is very similar and so is Dennis Kyne in San Jose. More on them later. Go visit the Yahoo group and learn about DU and why you should not be shaking in your boots about it. Blaine Howard's article will be posted to this site in a day or two.

Roger Helbig

This article is a literature review that considers only literature that supports its contentions. I have questioned who performed the peer review. The author Hindin clearly acknowledges the influence of the Traprock Peace Center which also sponsored Moret and Rokke tours and used to post the forged Grove Memorandum from 1943 on its website. When it became obvious that it was a forged document, they took it off the site, but you can still see it in the wayback machine or some other site that captures the way a website was in the past. This is typical of the way science is being misused by the anti-DU crusade. They developed a political point of view, started by Saddam Hussein and by peace activists who visited Iraq when Saddam wanted freedom from the UN Sanctions under which he agreed to end the Gulf War without having to surrender and then butchered the Kurds and Marsh Arabs who revolted against him when General Schwartzkopf got conned into letting him keep flying helicopters (thinking that they would be rescue and medivac, not gunships slaughtering people in the streets -- that same kindly old man started the myth that DU had caused horrible birth defects but there is no experience of similar defects in the children of Uranium miners who had been studied for about a 100 years -- there also was no control for any of the other problems in Iraq like the fact that a major city like Basrah did not have running water! This article supposedly was peer reviewed, but no one will say who the peer reviewers are or just exactly what their qualifications were. They also don't tell you that you pay to publish here ..

How much is Environmental Health charging?

A3 We charge a flat fee of £750 (€1110, US$1505) for each accepted manuscript. Discounts of £30 are available if authors submit manuscripts formatted with Endnote (more information), Reference Manager (more information) or Publicon (more information). There is a surcharge of £50 for any payments for individual articles that are not made by credit card.

Now, is this the same kind of quality article that you would find in a reputable scientific journal or is this the kind of journal that publishes what it is paid to publish. I welcome the authors comments. They never would reply to my e-mails. I will dig them up later.

Atch is the letter I got from Lawrence Livermore about Leuren Moret, who portrays herself as "independent scientist and whistleblower" and Marion Fulk, who Moret claims was a Manhattan Project scientist .. he may have been a very young college grad with the Manhattan Project, but then you would have expected that he would have begun work at the lab much earlier in life, perhaps when it was founded after WW-II instead of nearly 20 years later. Also the Rokke military records, that were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, need to be opened with a double click to be read ..

Please read this about what Mr. Helbig is truly all about.

He truly believes that the US is doing a great job with its
radioactive contamination of the US, Eurasia, and the rest of the planet.

I realize that someone must do this job for the Empire because
they have been using Uranium-238 since the 1940s in the US and it
has harmed a whole lot of people.

It is important that people like Mr. RH defend the Empire's use of this
deadly poison gas.

It is his job to shoot the messenger...

I do not listen to anyone but scientists. Leuren Moret knows what is going down
and did work at Livermore Lab for 5 years. She is a geologist and has intensely
studied radiation and got all but her dissertation completed for her Ph.D. She is
an extremely intelligent woman.

But there are other scientists whose works I read. Please google the names
Rosalie Bertell
Ernest Sternglass
Chris Busby
Asaf Durakovic
All of these have their Ph.D.s orM.D.s in science related fields.
All say that U238 is very very bad news.

Here is the article about the man who defends the use of toxic and radioactive
DU at every opportunity and who wishes to destroy anyone who does not think it is
a good idea to put ceramic Uranium Oxide out into the air we breathe.

http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=748

Cathy Garger

http://www.americandaily.com/article/19863

Who Has Weapons of Mass Destruction? We do.
By James T. Moore (08/08/07)

There's something horribly bizarre going on. But our mass media apparently never considered it bizarre enough to write about. So I will.

We’ve hunted for five years for weapons of mass destruction which we swore over and over that Iraq had, but didn’t; while all along we’ve been using WMD’s---lethal chemical weapons---not only on the Iraqi people, but on our own soldiers, who can’t help getting in the way.

This killer chemical is known as “depleted uranium dust” (DU), and is a by-product of the chemical ingredients used in making artillery shells.

Please don’t call it the fortunes of war. That’s going too easy on the battle-happy goons at the Pentagon. But wait. I’ll let a Sergeant in Baghdad (who asked not to be identified) assigned to a Bradley Fighting Vehicle give it to you straight, in his own words: “After we shoot something with depleted uranium ordnance, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer. We don't know the effects of what it could do. If one of our vehicles burnt with a DU round inside, we wouldn't go near it, even if it had important documents inside. We play it safe."

And play it safe they should, because lest you think this Sergeant is making mountains out of molehills, listen to what Nuha Al Radi, Iraqi artist and author of the “Baghdad Diaries” had to say. “Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia. The depleted uranium left by U.S. bombing has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.”

Shortly after saying this Nuha Al Radi died of leukemia.

So, just what is “depleted uranium dust” and what makes it so deadly? Well, this writer, being chemically illiterate, will have to defer to Dr. Dan Bishop who is on the International Depleted Uranium Study Team. Dr. Bishop tells us that natural uranium (NU) is fairly safe because most of it is excreted from the body within 24 hours. But depleted uranium (DU) is a different animal. When a DU bomb hits a hard target most of its energy becomes heat; hot enough to ignite the DU. This heat, Dr, Bishop says, converts up to 70% of the DU to a super fine dust. It is this dust---particles about the size of the ash in cigarette smoke---that does the damage, and makes it different from natural uranium (NU) which seldom reaches such a small size.

What damage does DU cause? These minute particles get into the lungs, become lodged in place, then dissolve slowly into the bloodstream and lymphatic fluids causing severe damage: DU was identified in the bloodstream of Gulf War veterans nine years after the war. This testifies to the permanence of DU-oxide in the lungs.

Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate, as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bone tissue. Cancer of the lymph system, which has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now common.

And it is this lethal, depleted uranium dust now lodged deep in the Iraqi environment that is poisoning by radiation a significant portion of the adult civilian population, and up to 600 Iraqi children per day, and God only knows how many American soldiers.

The Deadly Dust, a poem by Douglas Westerman, is a stunning and fitting tribute to the many victims of depleted uranium poisoning: “Child and soldier, as one we breathe the dust deadly. Our strength it saps, burns, sickens and kills, this powder accursed. We hurt, weep, die, sperm and ovum corrupted, born without eyes little sister mine. Birds fall, die, turn black. Death we embrace gladly. We cry, stop this poisoned madness.”

Which brings us sadly back to the Unproductive Hunt. The fact that the Bush administration never found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is so absurd it’s uncanny. We’ve been using them.

"The minority statement [Busby] is presented in a spirit of openness and fairness. The other members of the Board acknowledge that it advances considered opinions which are genuinely held. However, they take no responsibility for the accuracy of its content, and dissociate themselves from its reasoning and conclusions, which they believe to be seriously flawed scientifically."

Final DU report

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20070824/OPINION02/108240010

Everett, Wash.
Published: Friday, August 24, 2007

War Crimes

Using depleted uranium shells is wrong

OK, everyone ... why not try Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz at the World Court in The Hague for impeachable offenses and crimes against humanity? The main charge, of course, could be the undeniable use of depleted uranium (DU) in all munitions above 20mm cannon shells. The "supposed evidence" could be presented in absentia and determined by the Supreme War Crimes Tribunal of the World once and for all. Let us all work to search for the truth and reality in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq once and for all.

If the war-crime charge of using DU is accurate, our soldiers, U.S. mercenaries and all Iraqi people are doomed. We are killing our own troops with cancer of the lungs by breathing in the uranium isotopes attached to fine dust particles when the DU rounds are exploded.

Be careful, you people who are against this war and are speaking out. You can be arrested under the newest Patriot Act provisions. And think about some of your favorite candidates for president. My favorite is Dennis Kucinich. Bless him and all the Veterans for Peace that have pledged non-violence. I learned enough about violence on my one tour in Korea — 1953-1954 was my police action experience. Tell Bush to send his daughters and I at least will respect his part of his participation in life. And then advocate for the lottery in compulsory service and demand rich as well as poor, male as well as female. That should promote world peace forever.



FORREST W. FROWNFELTER

Tulalip

© 2007The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA

The Arizona Daily Star
Published: 08.26.2007

Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of toxic exposure
By Carla McClain
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving the Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back to active duty in Iraq.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has joined growing ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are behind their illnesses — mostly cancers, striking the young, taking them down with alarming speed.
The number of these cancers remains undisclosed, with military officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack of evidence the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone. The U.S. Congress has ordered a probe of suspect toxins and may soon begin widespread testing of our armed forces.
"He got so sick, so fast"
Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit was deployed to the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport arriving soldiers and Marines into combat areas.
He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't remember him ever missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a cancer of the mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers and tobacco chewers. He was none of those.
"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this kind of cancer — they had no answers for us," said his wife, Dixie.
"He got so sick, so fast. We really think it had to be something he was exposed to over there. So many of the soldiers we met with cancer at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about the polluted air they lived in, the brown water they had to use, the dust they breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."
As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what it meant when he saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the smokestacks that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was stationed for three months in 2005.
"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about their stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said. "For Jim to say something like that, to complain, was very unusual.
"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures of her son bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died of kidney cancer."
Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale, yet another soldier — now fighting terminal colon cancer — described the scene there, of oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine factory and a sulfuric acid factory, all spewing unfiltered and uncontrolled substances into the air.
"One day, we were walking toward the port and they had sulfuric acid exploding out of the stacks. We were covered with it, everything was burning on us, and we had to turn around and get to the medics," said Army Staff Sgt. Frank Valentin, 35.
Not long after, he developed intense rectal pain, which doctors told him for months was hemorrhoids. Finally diagnosed with aggressive colorectal cancer — requiring extensive surgery, resulting in a colostomy bag — he was given fewer than two years to live by his Walter Reed physicians.
He is now a couple of months past that death sentence, but his chemo drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is eating into his liver and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and three children at their Florida home.
"I don't know how much time I have," he said.
Suspect: depleted uranium
None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing them. But they suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures, coupled with the intense stress of daily life in a war zone weakening their immune systems.
"There's so much pollution from so many sources, your body can't fight what's coming at it," Valentin said. "And you don't eat well or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There's no chance to gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting all kinds of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with them."
The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium — the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.
Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe" campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country.
However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny this, citing four studies, including one by the World Health Organization, that found levels in war zones not harmful to civilians or soldiers. A U.N. Environmental Program study concurs, but only if spent munitions are cleared away.
Returning solders have said that isn't happening.
"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks, and there was DU everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."
The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for miles, said Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to at least some depleted uranium. Many vets from the Gulf War blame the chemical used in that conflict for their Gulf War syndrome illnesses.
Congress orders study
As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a comprehensive independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be identified and tested — is working its way through Congress.
"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.
"We want an independent agency to do independent testing of our soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These incidents of cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about back in our districts are not just anecdotal — there is a pattern here. And yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."
What's happening today — growing numbers of sickened soldiers who say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from military brass — almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.
Doctors flabbergasted
Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of it.
Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005, he underwent his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half his tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.
Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.
Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack, undergoing another surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks later, the cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth surgery in January 2006.
By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue was gone, and doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from his wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his stomach.
Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on his neck — "literally overnight," his wife said.
Suffering severe complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale endured 39 radiation treatments, waking up one night bleeding profusely through his burned skin. The day after his radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at the edge of the radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.
"As this aggressive disease grew though chemoradiation, it was determined at this point there was no chance for cure," his oncologist wrote then.
By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and, most frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors were erupting all over his upper body, his wife said.
"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it — that this happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said.
Efforts to contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful, but a leading head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer Center reviewed the course of Lauderdale's disease.
"This a a very wrenching case," said Dr. Harinder Garewal. "This is unusually aggressive behavior for an oral cancer. I would agree it happens in only 1 percent of cases."
When oral cancer occurs in nonsmokers and non-drinkers, it tends to be more aggressive, he said.
"My feeling is the immune system for some reason can't handle the cancer," he said.
Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dixie and their two grown children still feel the raw grief of loss, but not anger, she said.
"But I am convinced something very wrong is happening over there. Is anyone paying attention to this? Is the cancer ward still full?" she asked. "I would hate to see another whole generation affected like this, but I'm very afraid it will be."
Find more resources about cancer and other diseases in our searchable database at azstarnet.com/health
● Contact reporter Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at cmcclain [at] azstarnet.com.