WHO Refuses to Publish
Report on Cancers in Iraq Caused by Depleted Uranium
By Denis Halliday
September 13, 2013 "Information Clearing House - The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.
September 13, 2013 "Information Clearing House - The World Health Organisation (WHO) has categorically refused in defiance of its own mandate to share evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of Depleted Uranium and other weapons have not only killed many civilians, but continue to result in the birth of deformed babies.
This issue
was first brought to light in 2004 in a WHO expert report “on
the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population resulting
from depleted uranium (DU) weapons”. This earlier report was
“held secret”, namely suppressed by the WHO:
The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO. (See Rob Edwards, WHO ‘Suppressed’ Scientific Study Into Depleted Uranium Cancer Fears in Iraq, The Sunday Herald, February 24, 2004)
Almost
nine years later, a joint WHO- Iraqi Ministry of Health Report
on cancers and birth defect in Iraq was to be released in
November 2012. “It has been delayed repeatedly and now has no
release date whatsoever.”
To this
date the WHO study remains “classified”.
According
to Hans von Sponeck,
former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,
“The US government sought
to prevent the WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where
depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and
environmental dangers.” (quoted in Mozhgan Savabieasfahani
Rise of Cancers and Birth Defects in Iraq: World Health
Organization Refuses to Release Data, Global Research, July
31, 2013
This
tragedy in Iraq reminds one of US Chemical Weapons used in
Vietnam. And that the US has failed to acknowledge or pay
compensation or provide medical assistance to thousands of
deformed children born and still being born due to American
military use of Agent Orange throughout the country.
The
millions of gallons of this chemical dumped on rural Vietnam
were eagerly manufactured and sold to the Pentagon by companies
Dupont, Monsanto and others greedy for huge profits.
Given the
US record of failing to acknowledge its atrocities in warfare, I
fear those mothers in Najaf and other Iraqi cities and towns
advised not to attempt the birth of more children will never
receive solace or help.
A United
Nations that is no longer corrupted by the five Permanent
Members of the Security Council is what is needed.
Denis Halliday - Former UN
Assistant Secretary-General, was the United Nations Humanitarian
Coordinator in Iraq from 1 September 1997 until 1998. He is
Irish and holds an M.A. in Economics, Geography and Public
Administration from Trinity College, Dublin.
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