—The only way to judge how effectively the money has been spent is to look at people’s health. And people’s health is deteriorating. That’s the answer to your question.
All measures should be aimed at reducing the presence of radioactive caesium in food. That is the only way to stop its destructive effect on people’s health. The government needs to radically tighten up their monitoring of food and impose norms to reduce the amount of radioactive caesium in food as far as possible.
—What do you think of the food people in the republic are eating?
—We do not pay enough attention to this question. Here is the proof: the National Commission on Radioprotection has just adopted so-called acceptable levels of radioactive caesium incorporation which, according to our research, are capable of causing serious pathological processes in the body. Today, people living in the towns can consume up to 340 Bq of radioactive caesium every day, and in the country, up to 463 Bq. And these are the official norms!
—Is the government aware of your views?
—My views are known throughout the world.
2. THE MINISTRY IS CHECKMATED
V. Nesterenko.—Every year, in April, there are parliamentary hearings on Chernobyl. President Lukashenko, who had been much criticised over the way in which funds that had been provided to look into the consequences of the disaster had been used, ordered the president of the State Committee for Science and New Technologies (SCSNT) to look at the problem. The results of the work that had been undertaken by the Ministry of Health’s institute on radiation and endocrinology needed to be verified. Between 1996 and 2000, seventeen billion roubles had been spent on a government programme to mitigate the consequences of the disaster. I had contested the validity of the 1998 register of contamination dose for inhabitants that had been produced by the Ministry of Health. Even though I am not a director of a State institute, the president of SCSNT had asked me to preside over the Commission, which as an academic I was qualified to do.
First I asked about the composition of the Commission and found out that among the members was a certain Professor Kenigsberg and others with whom I refused to work collaboratively. “Who would you recommend?” I replied that, as a medical expert, the first person that should be included was Yury Bandazhevsky, and he was then appointed. I named a few other people. But as they had not excluded Professor Kenigsberg and his partners, and I knew there would be no objective examination if they were present, I refused the presidency of the Commission although I agreed to take part.
Q.—It was while working for the Commission that Bandazhevsky wrote his own report separately and sent it to Lukashenko?
V. Nesterenko.—Yes. Every member of the Commission had to write their own report. In our group, Professor Stozharov, Professor Bandazhevsky and myself wrote our own final conclusions.
Y. Bandazhevsky .—Just to be clear, I knew that this commission would not present the true facts, that there would be a general conclusion, and I thought it was my duty to present my own conclusions. The second reason has to do with the fact that two months before, I had written to President Lukashenko to outline my views on the health problems that were facing the population, and I put the record straight. The report followed a letter I had already written. It had been included in the commission’s conclusions.
V. Nesterenko.—The letter certainly played a role. I know that Bandazhevsky’s name had been put forward for the post of Minister of Health in Belarus. It had been discussed several times. That was the result of his letter. But how had this commission ever come into being? There were a lot of journalists present during the parliamentary hearings on Chernobyl when I had criticised the new register of doses. I had said that the register was inaccurate because of the indirect method of determining accumulated dose in the inhabitants: instead of taking real measurements of the radioactivity in becquerels accumulated in the body of each inhabitant, they measured the level of radionuclides in 10 samples of milk and potatoes, from each village. It was not representative of the real levels of contamination in people. Our measurements, using a human radiation spectrometer, showed that the register had given annual doses 2 to 7 times lower than the real contamination. It came as no surprise then to find that, using this method, they had only found 128 villages (56,000 inhabitants) in which the people had annual doses that exceeded the limit above which the population needed to be given aid. In the previous register in 1992, the number of villages was 1,102. With a million inhabitants. According to this new register, levels in most of these villages were below 1 mSv/year, which meant they were no longer eligible for government aid. One of the members of the government challenged me aggressively. “All you do is criticise. Prove to us that they’ve got it wrong”. Of course, he had been told that I had no proof. I replied: “OK I will, but only if I can choose ten scientists excluding those who compiled the present register. If you grant me this request, I will preside over the expert commission”. That’s how I became president. They let the genie out of the bottle. At the time I had five human radiation spectrometers (HRS) at my institute. We went to 45 villages that had been classified ‘no risk’ by the Ministry of Health and we measured the inhabitants. I printed up the results. I had the names of every person measured. It was impossible to refute.
I invited Professor Ostapenko, the new director of the Ministry’s Institute, whose work we were monitoring and I put it to him: “You’ve spent 10 billion roubles on this project. If you withdraw the register, the government will finance any revision that they ask you for. If you allow us to prove that you did the work badly, you will have to refund the money”. In his statement to the commission, he said that he agreed with our conclusions and that he would withdraw the register.
Professor Stozharov, Yury Bandazhevsky and I wrote a very critical report on the mismanagement of government money. They were so alarmed that Kenigsberg, the vice-president of the institute, and the IAEA’s man in Minsk80, telephoned me (it was a Friday and we hadn’t finished writing the report) and asked me to come to the scientific council meeting to present our conclusions. I refused to go and told him that he would have our conclusions in good time. They complained to the Minister Zelenkevich, who wrote a 20-page letter to the president of SCSNT describing us as incompetents whose opinion could be ignored. We knew that our views would never be heard. With Yury Bandazhevsky’s agreement, we sent our report, which both of us signed, directly to the Security Council. According to its statutes, the Security Council is responsible for the safety of the state, and therefore, for the health of the population. I thought that would be of concern to them. What followed is interesting. Ministers Kenik from ComChernobyl and Zelenkevich from Minzdrav were invited to the Security Council and their document was sent back to the commission as non objective saying they needed to include our documents. Our five key points were included without exception along with two resolutions. The first, from Zametalin, the Vice-Minister of the Council of ministers, the other, Novitzki, Vice-President of the Ministry for Chernobyl. It was stated that the commission had found some obvious defects and the five ministers were invited to correct them as soon as possible on the basis of our conclusions. Re-establish the register etc…Everything that we had proposed was accepted and put forward as a directive to the Council of Ministers. Yury and I were listened to in meetings.
80 Mr Norman Gentner, a member of UNSCEAR, told us during the international conference in Kiev in June 2001: “Our source of information is the validated data supplied to us by the health services of the member States. We have official channels of information with Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. There are designated people whose job it is to transmit information to us. I could introduce you, for example, to Dr Kenigsberg, vice-director of the Belarus government register…” See Part Six, Chapter II, p.450.
Y. Bandazhevsky.—Why did I write my own conclusions? I wanted to present each argument point by point, in detail. If I had been brief, i
t would have been easy to refute it. Vassili Nesterenko can testify to the way we were treated. When I arrived with my colleagues, they wouldn’t give us the documents. They said: “They’re over there; you’ll have to look for them”.
V. Nesterenko.—We were very interested in the method they used to compile their register of doses. They refused to show us the documents. They brought them to us on the last day of the commission.
Y. Bandazhevsky.—We weren’t given tables and chairs. It’s interesting, isn’t it? “It’s OK. I’ll manage. Have you got a photocopier? I would like to copy some pages”. “It’s broken”. “Too bad” I said to my colleagues: “We’ll have to use pens and copy out these pages”. We copied the whole thing by hand. I came several times, and in order to copy extracts from the reports, I had to sit on the window sill. I laid it all out in written form explaining how these funds had been spent and what effect this had on solving the problems of Chernobyl. I quoted directly from their reports and the sums that had been spent on their in depth research.
V. Nesterenko.—He claimed in his conclusion that out of 17 billion, 16 billion had been spent on nothing. I told him at the time that he was signing his own arrest warrant…
3. BANDAZHEVSKY’S REPORT
This report analyses, in particular, some studies carried out under the supervision of Professor Kenigsberg. One of these was a study by a certain V. Buglova, who was closely associated with the IAEA, and held in great esteem by Kenigsberg himself.
Extracts
The summary report on the projects listed above, signed by Professor Kenigsberg, analyses trends in the dynamics of dose formation for internal irradiation in relation to the establishment of admissible levels of caesium-137 and strontium-90 in food products in Belarus. […]
The general scheme to update existing protection measures rejects any mandatory measures in the areas under consideration and proposes a transition to the adoption of voluntary and selective protection measures. In this regard, it makes it obligatory to take into account non-radiation factors (economic, social and psychological).
The recommendations made by the authors of this report amount to an abandonment of the principle of obligatory and universal respect for protection measures in the affected zones. Reading between the lines, we can detect the lifeboat ethic—“every man for himself”, the state being freed of all responsibility towards the health of the population.
This is in flagrant disregard of the constitution of the Republic of Belarus and of the law regarding public health. Instead of explaining to people what radioprotection measures they should take, they are told to choose whatever measures seem right for them. Furthermore, the authors recommend that factors other than radiation be taken into account, though the part they play is not specified anywhere. We must point out that we were not able to familiarise ourselves with the method that was used to obtain the conclusions cited above. The study report directed by V. Buglova, medical doctor, was not made available to us.
General conclusions.—The vast sums given to the Scientific Institute of Clinical Research into the Medicine of Radiation and Endocrinology (more than 17 billion roubles in 1998 alone) produced no useful results for the national economy in terms of effective health protection measures for the affected population.
In our opinion, this is due to the complete absence on the part of the authorities of any effective control over the planning of research topics undertaken by the Scientific Institute of Clinical Research into the Medicine of Radiation and Endocrinology. These should have taken into account the urgency, the significance and the economic usefulness of the studies, as well as the possibility of implementing the results obtained in public health policy.
The irresponsible attitude shown by the directors of the Scientific Institute of Clinical Research into the Medicine of Radiation and Endocrinology, in the use of funds granted to them by the state to solve the problems linked to the disaster at Chernobyl, resulted in a large proportion of the money being spent uselessly, without achieving substantial results.
Meanwhile, funding of research in areas that are already well known has been favoured over research into new and unexplored areas. Because of this, in most of the reports, there are no real methodical recommendations for medical practice, nor any scientific conclusions of international import.
In connection with the above, we consider it necessary that:
1. Action should be taken immediately to revise the scientific programmes to mitigate the effects of the disaster at Chernobyl, by favouring those approaches that produce tangible results and play a significant role in the national economy. To achieve this, an expert commission should be set up involving representatives from all government bodies and from other organisations that have a real concern in the matter.
2. The Ministry of Health and the Committee for Chernobyl must assume greater responsibility for the use of funds for scientific programmes to mitigate the effects of the disaster at Chernobyl. There must be effective oversight of the planning of scientific research from the point of view of their current relevance, their importance and their economic usefulness, as well as monitoring of the results obtained and of the possible applications in public health practice.
In order to implement these approaches, we propose the setting up of a scientific council on the problems of Chernobyl, made up of scientists from Belarus and from abroad.
The rector of the Gomel State Institute of Medicine
MD, Professor of Y.I. BANDAZHEVSKY
Knowing Bandazhevsky’s work and the importance he attached to the planning of research topics, in other words, the selection of topics, it would not be hard to predict in which direction scientific research would have gone in the territories contaminated by Chernobyl, if he had been appointed Minister of Health in Belarus, as had been envisaged.
V. Nesterenko.—Of course, it was a very hard blow for them. But afterwards, the commission’s work was not followed up by any concrete action. In reality, given the norms that were established under pressure from the IAEA, people will get ill, not this year, but in ten years. The people making decisions today won’t be in power then. If you look at who has been in charge of the Chernobyl Committee, I can already name five different presidents. The country has changed its Minister of Health four times. They can always say, the scientists recommended it. Hide behind the scientists at all times.
This was the end of April 1999. The reprisals were about to begin.
4. REPRISALS
Y. Bandazhevsky.—In May, the Minister of Health sent three inspection commissions, one after the other, to my institute to monitor programmes, teaching, education and I don’t know what else. They didn’t find anything noteworthy. I was officially on holiday and I was busy with my scientific work…I had gone to Moscow to support some of my students who were defending their theses. It was at that time that I was awarded a medal from the Polish Academy for my contribution to the development of medicine. Then, it was June, the exam period…In July I found myself in prison.
V. Nesterenko.—When the three inspection teams came up with nothing, this was the situation: on the basis of the decision taken by the Security Council and of the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Health needed to seriously reconsider everything—withdraw the register, recognise their mistakes, and change everything. It was impossible to contradict us on the scientific aspects of our work. Impossible to refute it. So what do they do? They were left with only one option: discredit the people who had signed the report. It was probably around this time that the famous letter denouncing Bandazhevsky was sent to the government. I’m sure it had been organised from within the Ministry of Health and at the institute: they needed to blacken his name. If just one member of the commission that had criticised them came under investigation, the whole problem would be removed—you can do nothing.
Q.—What denunciation are you talking about?
V. Nesterenko.—T
hey must have persuaded one of the staff at the Gomel Institute of Medicine to write to the authorities saying that Bandazhevsky was supporting the opposition financially. In the letter it states that he has a foreign currency account and that he supports the opposition. Faced with a government directive, what else could they do? They had to get rid of him. Because we could continue to cause trouble.
Q.—But who are “they”? Where are they?
V. Nesterenko.—At the Ministry of Health.
Q.—Do they have links with the international lobby?
Y. Bandazhevsky.—There’s no doubt about it.
V. Nesterenko.—It became very clear. The woman whose optimistic report had been rejected by the Higher Commission when I was president works for the IAEA now. She’s called Buglova. She worked with Kenigsberg—I have to mention names—who is the scientific deputy at the Institute of Radiological Medicine at the Ministry of Health that we had monitored. And in fact, it is he who directs this institute. There have already been several directors. But every time they appoint a new director, he manages to compromise their position in some way, the minister sacks them and there he is, once more, in charge. Anyway, Kenigsberg probably has close links to the IAEA. Buglova, who worked alongside him, and explained why enormous doses of radionuclides were admissible in foodstuffs, had to support his thesis. Some scientists signed a note criticising them, and saying it was not a serious study. And suddenly, I am asked to chair the conflicting experts’ commission of the High Commission of Certification. A majority needed to be determined after votes were tied on the board of experts on her doctoral thesis As President, my vote was decisive. We listened, we looked at everything and we came to the conclusion that the work… in which it was written that “due to the effective radioprotection measures taken to protect the inhabitants, Chernobyl has had no consequences in Belarus” was clearly a political order to “conclude that there are no consequences”. We concluded that the work was incorrect, that it did not reach the required scientific standard. Her work was rejected definitively with no right to present a thesis on the same subject again. She was angry. She left her job and works in Vienna now… for the IAEA as an expert scientist.
The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag Page 28
