Depleted Uranium BBS discussion board

Asaf Durakovic began examining gulf war veterans when he worked as chief of nuclear medicine at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Wilmington, Del., in the 1990's. Since that post was abolished in 1997, he has continued with his privately funded research in Toronto.

In a recent interview, he said his analysis over the last three years of body fluids of more than 40 American, British and Canadian gulf war veterans who have turned to him keeps turning up evidence of depleted uranium and uranium 236, a more radioactive uranium isotope.

Dr. Durakovic said that, unlike many other institutions involved in testing for uranium, he uses mass spectometry tests that measure the relative abundance of each isotope in the body.

He said he found depleted uranium, including uranium 236, in 62 percent of the sick gulf war veterans he examined. He believes that particles lodged in their bodies and may be a cause of their illnesses.

GulfWarVets.com	GulfWarVets.com Includes the following reports and much, much more. Very up-to-date as of 2007. Recommended! “Depleted uranium kills our troops” billboard in Montana "Depleted Uranium: Pernicious Killer Keeps on Killing" by Craig Etchison, Ph.D. (Feb. 19, 2007) "CNN News Video on Depleted Uranium and Iraqi troops" Do US troops know about the dangers of depleted uranium? CNN's Greg Hunter reports (Feb. 5, 2007) "Uranium 'killing Italian troops" Italian soldiers are still dying following exposure to depleted uranium in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, their relatives say. (Jan. 10, 2007)
	Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets A death sentence here and abroad by Leuren Moret
DU Fact Sheet	Military Toxics Project Information Sheet – June 2003 (first version) "Depleted" Uranium Munitions: Nuclear Waste as a Weapon
August 13, 2004	Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD M.D. Says Depleted Uranium Definitively Linked, August 13, 2004 By Christopher Bollyn A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan has become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for many of the symptoms. “Gulf war vets are coming down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous conflicts,” said Barbara A. Goodno from the Department of Defense’s Deployment Health Support Directorate.
August 21, 2004	DU Syndrome Stricken Vets Denied Care Pentagon Hides DU Dangers to Deny Medical Care to Vets, August 21, 2004 By Christopher Bollyn Far from the radioactive battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another war is being waged. This war, over the use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, is being fought between the military top brass and the men who understand the dangers of DU: former military doctors and nuclear scientists. This war is for the truth about uranium weapons, and the consequences of their use, and has been waged for more than 13 years—since the U.S. government first used DU weapons against Iraq. Most Americans, however, are unaware of this historic struggle, because the Pentagon has used its power to prevent information about DU from reaching the public. John Hanchette, editor of USA Today from 1991 to 2001, in a recent interview with anti-DU activist Leuren Moret, said he had written several news stories about the effects of DU on gulf wars veterans. Every time he was ready to publish a story about the devastating illnesses afflicting soldiers, however, the Pentagon called USA Today and pressured him not to publish the story. Hanchette was eventually replaced as editor and now teaches journalism to college students.
	Doctor's Gulf War Studies Link Cancer to Depleted Uranium By MARLISE SIMONS January 29, 2001 Asaf Durakovic began examining gulf war veterans when he worked as chief of nuclear medicine at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Wilmington, Del., in the 1990's. Since that post was abolished in 1997, he has continued with his privately funded research in Toronto. In a recent interview, he said his analysis over the last three years of body fluids of more than 40 American, British and Canadian gulf war veterans who have turned to him keeps turning up evidence of depleted uranium and uranium 236, a more radioactive uranium isotope. Dr. Durakovic said that, unlike many other institutions involved in testing for uranium, he uses mass spectometry tests that measure the relative abundance of each isotope in the body. He said he found depleted uranium, including uranium 236, in 62 percent of the sick gulf war veterans he examined. He believes that particles lodged in their bodies and may be a cause of their illnesses.
New Internationalist September 1999 [Full issue here]	Poisoned Legacy Felicity Arbuthnot investigates the worldwide spread of cancers and deformities since the Gulf War.
Dr. Busby	From Boston to Babylon This is a brief overview of the DU problem by a notable critic of DU. By: Dr Chris Busby, scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, and sits on the UK government's Depleted Uranium Oversight Board. He is an international expert on low-level radiation, and Green Party Science and Technology speaker. He spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly about nuclear terrorism and his recent journey to Iraq in search of evidence of the effects of depleted uranium. "Professor Doug Rokke says that the corpses they discover after these tanks have caught fire are called "krispie critters" -- they're like little bits of charcoal, but highly radioactive. Anyone who handles them gets the disease. It's awful. " "Since about 1995 I've been suggesting that Gulf War syndrome is partly or wholly caused by exposure to depleted uranium, through high local doses from particles to tissue. This is not a model which is used by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, though this is beginning to change. At that time, it was believed that uranium had a very low radiological impact, because it was an alpha emitter, and because it was a very weak emitter (ie had a very long half life). On the other hand, the amount of radiation involved in the Gulf was very great, because the quantities used were huge. DU is not very radioactive, but they were chucking it about in very large quantities. The 350 tonnes of uranium dropped in Iraq are equal to about a kilogramme of plutonium. If somebody dropped a kilogramme of plutonium on this country, there would be hell to pay."
Marion Fulk	This Webmaster is especially interested in this "dust theory" of why lightly radioactive (but alpha) is possibly harming millions of innocent victims in severe and carcinogenic ways. Nano-particles pinpointed by Christopher Bollyn – American Free Press January 7, 2005 ... “DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one's genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon's response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.” The U.S. government has known for at least twenty years that DU weapons produce clouds of poison gas on impact. These clouds of aerosolized DU are laden with billions of toxic sub-micron sized particles. A 1984 Dept. of Energy conference on Nuclear Airborne Waste reported that tests of DU anti-tank missiles showed that at least 31 percent of the mass of a DU penetrator is converted to nano-particles on impact. In larger bombs the percentage of aerosolized DU increases to nearly 100 percent, Fulk told AFP. Depleted uranium is harmful in three ways, according to Fulk: "Chemical toxicity, radiological toxicity, and particle toxicity." Particles in the nano-meter (one billionth of a meter) range are a "new breed of cat," Moret wrote. Because the size of the nano-particles allows them to pass freely throughout the organism and into the nucleus of its cells, exposure to nano-particles causes different symptoms than exposure to larger particles of the same substance. Internalized DU particles, Fulk said, act as "a non-specific catalyst" in both "nuclear and non-nuclear" ways. This means that the uranium particle can affect human DNA and RNA because of both its chemical and radiological properties. This is why internalized DU particles cause "many, many diseases," Fulk said.