The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag

by Wladimir Tchertkoff

  Statistics show that, over the last three years, the death rate has exceeded the birth rate by a factor of 1.6. What’s going on? Before, we had infectious diseases, plague, cholera, smallpox, typhoid, all sorts of deadly diseases. We had epidemics. During wars people died of wounds, from septicaemia…But when millions of people are dying from heart attacks!.. In Europe and everywhere else in the world we are constantly being told: “It’s because we smoke too much, we drink too much coffee, too much sugar…” But who can explain to me why these things are sending us to our graves? Their toxic effect is nothing…zero, in comparison to the effect of caesium with the two factors working in synergy: radioactivity multiplied by toxicity. But what it causes is not really an infarction. It is a new disease that I want to call “toxic cardiomyopathy from radioactive caesium”.

  To untangle the strands of this problem would have required the best brains available. Because unfortunately, our understanding of what’s going on here is being completely distorted. Knowing nothing about the real situation, we go from one extreme to the other. Some say the situation is absolutely terrifying, others that there is nothing to worry about. It’s really alarming, but not just because of Chernobyl. It had begun long before. You know what I am talking about. It’s terrible, there’s no doubt about it, for the people here, in Polessie, who had already been subjected to radioactivity from caesium well before 1986, as is shown in the official statistics. Then on top of that, they suffer the effects of the disaster at Chernobyl. That is the cause of all these unexpected cancers. We expected the cancers to appear in the 1990s but they started well before that. In our research, based on autopsies, we have shown that the thyroid gland accumulates radioactive caesium in a very concentrated way.

  Q.—So thyroid cancer is not caused only by radioactive iodine, as we are told?

  Bandazhevsky.—It is the double action of caesium on many organs that is the principal explanation in my approach to the problem. Apart from the fact that caesium is distributed differently in highly differentiated structures, it also causes an alteration of the whole organism. The pathology needs to be studied as a whole. The thyroid gland cannot be treated in isolation as if the other organs of the body are not affected. It is the whole body that is ill. I don’t agree with the diagnosis of “asthenic vegetative syndrome”, as if the rest of the body is well. It is a much broader syndrome caused by caesium penetrating the whole organism: incorporated radioactive elements syndrome. It causes a variety of pathological changes and it manifests itself differently depending on the concentration. The early manifestation, caused by so called low dose radiation, is cardiovascular and nervous disease. Then, if the dose is heavier, the endocrine system is affected, then the liver, etc. To put it brutally, the organism begins to disintegrate, as evidenced by the reduced life expectancy. Humanity has become saturated with this poison for fifty years78.

  78 The atmospheric nuclear weapons tests began in the 1950s.

  After impassioned discussion with his wife Galina, who knew the danger that his decision would pose to the family, Bandazhevsky published his findings and, in a television programme which caused a sensation, he denounced the government’s policy of non-intervention.

  In April 2000, in between his two arrests and before he was sentenced to eight years in prison, we talked to Rose Goncharova, a geneticist, about the value of Bandazhevsky’s work.

  6. NESTERENKO AND GONCHAROVA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BANDAZHEVSKY’S DISCOVERIES

  Rose Goncharova, geneticist.—Shortly after the accident at Chernobyl, we began to notice an increase in somatic morbidity in Belarus.79 That is, all the common illnesses of the cardiovascular system, the digestive system, gastritis, liver and kidney problems, were all increasing. This information came first from doctors in Ukraine and then from Russia. But the evidence that people exposed to the chronic effects of low dose radiation may have an increased incidence of somatic illness is not embedded in the usual postulates of radiation biology and radiation medicine. According to radiation medicine the general somatic illnesses cannot be caused by exposure to radiation, even over a prolonged period, particularly given the low levels of radiation to which the population of Belarus is exposed. Official radiological medicine recognises only those diseases caused by high levels of radiation (acute radiation sickness). At lower levels, but after prolonged exposure, it recognises cases of chronic radiation sickness in people who are involved professionally with sources of ionising radiation. And of course, all sorts of cancers in various parts of the body. As was listed at Hiroshima in Japan.

  79 Somatic: concerning the body (rather than the mind). In radiological medicine, it is used to indicate organic illnesses other than cancer. All the illnesses described by Y. Bandazhevsky as a consequence of internal low dose contamination by Cs-137 are somatic pathologies. The official doctrine, based on the Hiroshima experience, where the victims studied had been exposed to very high levels of external radiation, does not recognise radioactivity as one of the causes of the somatic pathologies that have appeared in great numbers in the territories contaminated by the disaster at Chernobyl.

  But the facts tell a different story. In 1990, C. Shedlovsky, a doctor from Belarus, was able to show an increase in cardiovascular disease, digestive and respiratory problems in populations living in areas contaminated between 1 to 5 Curies. It is statistically significant in three districts of the Brest region—Luninets, Stolin and Pinsk. He showed that the illness in these districts was higher than in districts that were “cleaner”. The higher rates of illness in the contaminated areas were confirmed by many other studies, in Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia. But the most crucial thing was to determine the cause. There is no consensus on this issue within the scientific community.

  On this subject, I would like to point out that in Japan, after the bombs were dropped, certain groups of people had their health monitored over their lifetime: from what illnesses did these people suffer, what was the cause of death, what types of cancer did they develop, and in parallel to this, the radiation dose they had received was determined. Until that time, there was no evidence of physical morbidity in this category of the population. So it was possible to claim that radiation could not be the cause. The cause was stress, poor diet and emotional upheaval.

  It is a purely scientific problem: is somatic illness a consequence of chronic exposure to radiation following an accident like Chernobyl, for example, or is it not? The fact is that we have been living for years in conditions of chronic irradiation. It is not really accurate to say things like “the population has been the victim…” The population is still being subjected to radiation. They are being subjected to it now. As a researcher I am very interested in this problem. I collect information about the subject wherever possible and analyse it. As a geneticist, I came to the conclusion that this increase in morbidity may indeed be the result of exposure to chronic irradiation from Chernobyl. I published these findings in the abstracts that I prepared for the international conference in Vienna in 1996. My attention was drawn to Bandazhevsky’s work, which, in my opinion, was conducted correctly and rigorously from a scientific point of view. If you want to show the effect of a radiological factor on the body, you need to know the objective dose rates on the one hand and on the other, the particular health effect that you are studying within the population. With a well designed research protocol, if you can show a statistically significant correlation between the health effect under study and the concentration of radionuclides (and it is clear that the concentration of radionuclides determines the radiation exposure) you have proved that whatever health effect has been observed, has been caused by radiation. Bandazhevsky’s approach was competent and correct. This is how I began to develop my ideas, using Bandazhevsky’s work and that of his colleagues. They conducted their research perfectly correctly. They measured the concentration of radionuclides and related them to health effects. They were able to make objective measurements of the radiati
on in the body, not simply through autopsies, but also on patients using a human radiation spectrometer, the HRS. In Yahodvik’s study, carried out at Bandazhevsky’s institute, the concentration of radionuclides (primarily of caesium because it is the principal provider of the radiation dose) in the body of young women who had not yet given birth was determined, and this was correlated with indices of reproductive health. The results showed a close correlation between the pathological alterations observed and the concentration of caesium. This was proved. In our country, Bandazhevsky’s work was the first rigorous scientific research in this field.

  At the same time, similar work, but in a different context, was being done in Russia on children. This was the research done by the bio-chemist Neifach et al. They studied pathological alterations in children from a bio-chemical perspective. They were able to establish a correlation between the indices under consideration and radionuclide concentration.

  In 1998, there was an international scientific conference held in Rotterdam to look at the problems of treating lesions caused by radiation injury. I presented my results there too, though I could not actually attend, because despite my qualifications, my monthly salary is only 60 dollars, and so it was not possible. But I received publications from there and read for the first time the theses of one of the Japanese researchers from the group studying the health status and the life expectancy of Japanese people who survived the atomic bombings. This is where I first read about a statistically significant correlation between illness in atom bomb survivors and the dose received. It is of paramount importance: for the first time, we had obtained data showing that radiation causes, not only cancer, but also other common somatic illnesses. It is worth remembering that illness amongst the Japanese population that had lived through the bombing only began to be recorded thirteen years after the bombs were dropped. So we have no epidemiological data for these illnesses. But in Belarus, we began recording these things much sooner. This is why our research came up against the views of the international scientific community. It contradicted their basic principles: what somatic illnesses could we be talking about at such low doses! I believe that the fact that we have shown this is a great achievement for Belarusian scientists. On the other hand, I think that because we have published these findings, sooner or later, Japanese and American scientists are going to have to reveal this data to the public. Namely, that even today, somatic illness in Japan is determined by radiation.

  What is the explanation for this phenomenon? Up until now it was thought that radionuclides were distributed uniformly throughout the body, so that the dose seemed relatively low. But Bandazhevsky showed that the amount of caesium accumulated in the heart and in other vital organs was much higher than in ordinary muscles, so that the dose in these organs was much higher than the average. Bandazhevsky really seemed to have discovered something new.

  V. Nesterenko.—It is important that he carries on with his work now. He is 43 years old. He has a very good brain. But over this last year, he has been living a precarious existence and his future looks very uncertain. All the time I’ve been working in Belarus, nobody ever asked me to make an instrument that could measure levels of radioactivity in tissue samples as small as 5 to 10g. Yury was the only one to say “I am doing biopsies of kidneys, liver and I need to know what radionuclides my samples contain”. He was working with animals. He bred rats, and he fed them caesium and studied them. As a physicist, I know that I can make a crystal with a miniaturised well and I made him the instrument he needed. We can now determine the accumulation of caesium in a sample of 3g with a margin of error of 0.1 Bq/kg. It’s possible. Of course, we need money. That sort of instrument would cost 2000 to 3000 dollars. I already know where I can get this crystal in Kiev or in Kharkov. The crystal alone costs about 300 dollars. Then the system needs to be designed and assembled electronically. He really needs this instrument. He also needs a good microscope. But more importantly, we need to find premises. He has been forbidden from working in Gomel. He should really have been working in Minsk in one of the departments at the academy. But Platonov, president of the Academy at the time said: “Chernobyl is not an academic subject”. Then he confiscated all my equipment and I was forced to leave and set up my own non-governmental institute where I work today. I approached the current president, the new one, and I said: “I am a member of the Academy. I worked at the Academy. Give me back my institute; I won’t ask you for any money, I’ve been earning my own money for the last ten years”. His answer? “We’ve got plenty of institutes working on Chernobyl, we aren’t going to duplicate work already being done by the Ministries”. I think Bandazhevsky would get the same response. The Ministry of Health would prevent him from working. They would offer him alternative areas of research.

  Q.—How can an academic say that Chernobyl is not a subject of research? Does it make sense to you?

  V. Nesterenko.—Of course not! But the Party Central Committee had given the order to do whatever was needed to make sure “Nesterenko doesn’t get involved with Chernobyl”. Because, afterwards, “he will start writing letters to the Central Committee”. And if there is a letter, they will have to reply. Ask Rose Goncharova. She will tell you how generous they are with their finances for this sort of research... Yet, her findings have provided hugely important information, just like Bandazhevsky. New information that is impossible to ignore. If you look at his reports, he presents evidence of direct correlations; it’s easy to verify. His discovery is consistent with the laws of science. No-one had talked about it before. We suspected that radiation had certain effects, but Bandazhevsky is the first to produce quantifiable results. And those who are not convinced have only to verify them. No-one is preventing them.

  Chapter III

  CHRONICLE OF EVENTS

  The conflict between the two dissident scientists and the Ministry of Health came to a head in April 1999. After he had criticised the Ministry’s policy harshly during the television programme that had so terrified his wife, Yury Bandazhevsky gave an interview to Irina Makovetskaya, that was published on 26th April, the anniversary of the disaster, in the opposition newspaper BDG. Its headline was “Belarus has wasted too much time. We need to tell the truth to those in charge of our lives”. This interview set the tone and the elements of the drama, which culminated, three months later, in the scientist’s arrest.

  1. THE INTERVIEW

  I. Makovetskaya.—The Gomel Institute of Medicine is the youngest institute in Belarus. Presumably you deal with the effects of radiation…

  Y. Bandazhevsky.—Obviously. A medical institute situated in the heart of the contaminated territories could hardly avoid being involved with the effects of radioactive matter on the human organism, on prevention methods and on the treatment of the illnesses that it can cause. For the moment we are only studying caesium.

  —If you’re going to make statements about the damaging effects of radioactive caesium, you would need to have solid proof, wouldn’t you?

  —We have that proof. Our research is devoted to the relationship that there might be between a person’s state of health and the amount of radioactive substances accumulated in the body. To do that, we use the results of our experiments on animals in the laboratory, and clinical results from children and adults, including from autopsies. We are convinced now that radioactive caesium has a toxic effect on the body that causes very serious alterations in the structure of cells and tissues, leading to damaging lesions in the body and death. We have observed serious damage to cardiac muscle, which is the most frequent cause of death. The urinary system deteriorates because of the damage caused by caesium to the renal vascular system. These processes have serious consequences and lead to metabolic alterations. They will in time affect the liver, which will then lead to different sorts of hepatitis, cirrhosis, fatty liver disease. Almost everyone who comes into contact with radioactive caesium presents these sorts of alterations.

  Radioactive caesium also
accumulates in the thyroid, and therefore increases the severity of the damage. We are very worried about the quantity of malignant neoplasms that are appearing. It’s a disaster. Radioactive caesium acts at a cellular level, and it does not cause a specific disease, caused by a specified agent. It causes the death of cells, followed by the death of the whole body. Doctors try to prevent cancer by early diagnosis, but no-one is trying to prevent the genesis of these malignant processes. And this is a fundamental difference.

  —At what level does radioactive caesium become damaging to the body?

  —My belief is that any amount of this poison—and it really is a poison at a cellular level—is dangerous to the human body. Low levels are sufficient: in a child’s body, during pregnancy, when someone is ill, when someone is suffering from physical or psychological stress, it causes the slow death of the body.

  —It seems that much time has been lost in the Gomel region…

  —Time has been wasted throughout Belarus. And today, thirteen years after, we are still trying to explain this to the people who are in charge of our lives.

  —Are you saying that the enormous sums of money that have been spent over the last thirteen years to reduce the consequences of the disaster have been wasted?