The Crime of Chernobyl- The Nuclear Gulag
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However, the Ministry of Health refuses to recognise, with maniacal obstinacy, the existence of the problem and the practical results obtained by the Institute during its twenty years in operation. Such obstinacy over useful work. For example, the fact that by using a pectin-based adsorbent like “Vitapect, the levels of radionuclides in the body of a person consuming locally produced food, can be lowered by between 30% and 35%. Similar results have been obtained in Ukraine, where work was undertaken independently of “Belrad” by specialists from the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. But, for many years now, the Ministry of Health in Belarus will not even consider the mass production and use of pectin-based products in the territories that have been contaminated by radionuclides, even though they do not suggest any alternative solutions. The Swedish firm “SEMPER” produces food for children containing a pectin additive, but we cannot produce it here because it is not permitted.
In August 2007, a commission from the Ministry of Health came to the Institute. The visit was preceded by a letter to the government from the Ministry of Health. In the letter, the real facts about the Institute’s activities were distorted, and amounted to outright falsification and slander. The reaction was unequivocal: inspect and prosecute the Institute’s leadership. At this point, the commission came forward not to investigate, make constructive criticisms or suggestions, praise or inquire, but to punish and close the Institute. It did not work. How could it work given that the commission did not even bother to prepare for the inspection and was stumbling about in the dark with even the most elementary questions? All this was reflected in the final document, in what happened as a result of the inspection.
The president of the commission, a civil servant apparently respected somewhere, by someone, unable to understand the difference between a human radiation spectrometer and a radiological diagnosis, kept repeating with a doggedness that might have been admirable in different circumstances, that the Institute was conducting radiological diagnoses, in other words, medical interventions, which were illegal. Either he was never a very good student or he had forgotten all he had ever learnt in his long years sitting in his director’s armchair. A woman doctor claimed tearfully, though with a certain indignant tone, that she had heard of a case in which a child had died from taking pectin. In that case, various questions need to be asked: on what grounds had the Ministry of Health authorised the Institute, over many years, to produce and use “Vitapect”? Why is pectin used in the preparation of fruit purees and jam, and why are various pectin-based products on sale in Ukraine and in Russia in pharmacies and in food shops? Where is the logic, where is the concern for children’s health, if pectin poses a mortal danger?
It became obvious that the grievances listed in the commission’s report were invented and had no basis in law. However the Institute was forbidden from producing “Vitapect” in its laboratory and its network of radiological monitoring centres almost completely dismantled in 2008. In 2007, we were presented with various injunctions according to which we could no longer install our centres in schools because the children would be bringing “dirty” products there. It was proposed that we construct separate buildings or annexes, which was completely impracticable. So food products could not be brought to the school to be monitored for radiation but it was alright to eat them at home? Their logic was stupefying.
We found a way out and began to orient the activities of the Institute in a new direction: we set up mobile laboratories, equipped with all the necessary machines for monitoring children’s health, for testing food products, for running courses, seminars, showing training films, photographs and teaching materials. Today the Institute has three mobile units in operation but it is not nearly enough. The problem is finance: it needs to be remembered that almost all the work undertaken by the Institute was financed by our partners abroad: foundations, organisations, associations and social and charitable initiatives from Germany, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Japan, Austria, France, Switzerland, the USA, Italy, Great Britain and Lithuania.
To sum up what we have been saying about the Institute, there are three main orientations: looking for finance, fighting bureaucratic obstacles and finally the radioprotection of children living in areas contaminated by radiation.
As time went by, it became harder and harder to find partners from abroad. In 2006, when this book was in the final stages of preparation for publication in France, the situation was critical. The Foundation “France Libertés—Danielle Mitterand” had helped us to stay afloat, but in 2009 the government took away its funding and the Foundation was no longer able to support us. Our association (Les Enfants de Tchernobyl Belarus) remained the only real support (1,500 members without much money) but it was not enough. Alexei Nesterenko, like his father seven years ago, does not know where he will find the money to pay salaries next month.
6. THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—THREE MEN BATTLE FOR INDEPENDENT SCIENCE215
215 http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/sites/default/files/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf
In December 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences published a book in English by A.V. Yablokov, V.B. Nesterenko and A.V. Nesterenko entitled “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”. It had already been published in 2007 by “Nauka” in St Petersburg, and then, following some revisions and additions, it was published in Kiev in 2011 and in Japan by Iwanami in 2013. By 2007, more than 30,000 scientific papers had been written about the consequences of the disaster, mostly in Slav languages. Nearly 1000 research papers are quoted by the authors of this book, and in total it refers to over 5000 papers, published on paper and on the internet.
The figures obtained from this research are in direct contradiction to the conclusions reached by WHO and the IAEA. The authors estimate that worldwide, between 1986 and 2004, there have been 985,000 deaths that are attributable to the consequences of the Chernobyl accident. This figure needs to be compared with the estimates made in 2005 by the World Health Organisation and the International Atomic Energy Agency: fifty liquidators dead and up to 4000 potential deaths from cancer.
This new book presents an enormous amount of data obtained through independent research in the countries most affected. It represents a serious challenge to the nuclear powers, especially as the strategies that are normally used to discredit independent research on Chernobyl, cannot be used in this case. It will not be easy for the nuclear establishment to dismiss a publication from so prestigious an organisation.
*
A creative, politically active civil society, alert and informed public opinion remain the only hope, the only resource we have to oppose the domination of the industrial and military nuclear lobby, and its uncontrolled corruption at the heart of the UN organisations, whose role is to maintain peace and security in the world… Civil society does not hold the keys to power but it does have financial resources—large fortunes remain unused: there are rich, independent people in possession of enormous, extravagant wealth who could, if they so wished, finance independent initiatives, that not a single government in the world has so far supported, to defend humanity from the menace that nuclear technology presents to human health. This book began with a message in a bottle. That message remains, an appeal to people’s capacity, whether rich or poor, for regeneration.
Just as the Chernobyl disaster is absolutely unique in history, so is the Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad”. It is the only independent organisation in the world providing scientific proof of the official lies about the health consequences of the catastrophe, while protecting children at the same time. An island within civil society, highly qualified scientifically, surrounded by world wide nuclear totalitarianism. If the work undertaken by “Belrad’s” is not safeguarded in a sustainable way, in other words, on a permanent basis, it is condemned to failure. If Belrad were to fail, the academician Vassili Nesterenko’s unique challenge would be consigned to oblivion along with it. The partic
ular circumstances that made the creation of “Belrad” possible in 1990—the collapse of the USSR—will never be reproduced. If “Belrad”, with its experience and the accumulated data from 15 years of activity, were to disappear through lack of support, no other organisation could ever replace it.
Nine years after its first publication, this book ends, as it were, in mid-sentence. The terrifying experience recounted here is continuing testimony to the reality of the world in which we are living. Five years ago, we heard that an accident had happened at the power station at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan…
April 2015
The young Nesterenko
In the 1950s. Students harvesting potatoes. V. Nesterenko, first on left.
V. Nesterenko, director
of the Belarus Institute
of Nuclear Energy.
The young Ilsa
Vassili and Ilsa in Moscow.
Vassili Nesterenko
and A. Alexandrov
Vassili Nesterenko travels around the territories with a Human Radiation Spectrometer.
Taking measurements
of the children in Olmany
Ilsa and Vassili Nesterenko
The wife of Anatoli Saragovets
Anatoli Borovsky
Alexandre Grudino
Piotr Shashkov
Victor Kulikovsky
Anatoli Saragovets
The nuclear power station
Anatoli’s widow
Anatoli
Every day a team of specialists monitors the state of the building, the levels of radioactivity and humidity to prevent a chain reaction.
The young Bandazhevsky
Y. Bandazhevsky, first on the right, at the Grodno Institute
Galina and Yury Bandazhevsky
The Volodarka prison in Minsk
Galina Bandazhevskaya
18th June 2001
Yury and Galina Bandzhevsky
Lionia’s mother
Staraya Kamenka
From Staraya Kamenka to Gaishin, on the other side of river Sozh.
Documents illustrating
WHO’s dereliction of duty
Memo: Meeting at the World
Health Organisation. July 18, 2002
WHO: Dr. David Nabarro, Executive Director, and two staff of the Dept. of Protection of Human Environment, Dr. Richard Helmer Director and Dr. Michael Repacholi, just back from Belarus.
PSR/IPPNW Switzerland and WILPF: PD Dr. Jean-Luc Riond, President IPPNW (Engaged in the prevention of nuclear war, and of nuclear accidents like Chernobyl), Prof. Michel Fernex, Board member of PSR, the Swiss affiliate of IPPNW (15 years active in WHO Scientific Working Groups (SWG) of Tropical Diseases Research, T.D.R.; former member of the Steering Committee for Malaria, and later for Filariasis), and Ms. Solange Fernex, President of WILPF France (Women International for Peace and Freedom: engaged since half a century in the prevention of nuclear risks).
It became clear that WHO would have welcomed the participation of a representative of Contratom at this meeting. PSR/IPPNW Switzerland and WILPF are supporting the same demands as Contratom, regarding transparency and independence for medical research in the field of ionizing radiation, especially following Chernobyl.
The demand to amend the Agreement between the WHO and the IAEA (Res. WHA. 12.40), as a step to achieve independence in research and publication, is supported by WILPF, IPPNW, Contratom, and many other NGO’s. All these NGO’s act also to obtain the liberation of Prof. Yury Bandazhevsky, prisoner of conscience in Belarus. In close collaboration in this field, they will continue their fight in favour of Bandazhevsky and other physicians, prisoners of conscience in Belarus.
NGO’s consider that after Chernobyl, the WHO teams should have visited the Medical Faculty established in the region with the highest radiocontamination with Caesium, Strontium, Uranium and Plutonium. The Medical State Institute of Gomel was created and directed by Prof. Yury Bandazhevsky. The medical research team of Prof. Bandazhevsky completed over 20 theses on the dysfunction of organs or systems as a consequence of the chronic accumulation of 137Cs in the given organs: pancreas, endocrine glands, thymus, heart or placenta. We have the impression that the WHO delegations had no permission to visit this Medical Faculty, working under the Health Ministry of Belarus.
Dr. Nabarro does not think that the WHO was actually absent in the field in Chernobyl until 1992, and the Legal Department of the organisation does not consider that the Agreement (WHA 12.40) is an obstacle for independence and transparency.
PSR/IPPNW is prepared to discuss this issue. Of course, we are aware of the work undertaken by the WHO Regional Office, essentially through the Helsinki Project Office for Nuclear Emergencies and Public Health, with the remarkable findings of the team of Dr. Keith Baverstock in the early nineties, confirming the epidemic of thyroid cancers in children. Unfortunately, this stochastic effect following Chernobyl was only “accepted” 5 years later by the IAEA and the UNSCEAR, this delay having negative consequences for the therapeutic help to the patients. We also very much appreciate the “Guidelines for Iodine Prophylaxis following Nuclear Accident” (WHO, 1999).
However, the 700 participants at the WHO Conference of November 1995, organized by Dr. Hiroshi Nakajima, received an information sheet (1), indicating that the plans for the IPHECA project were finalized by the IAEA in May 1991. The author of this project was not the WHO but the IAEA, possibly due to Article I point 3 of the Agreement with the IAEA,which says: “Whenever either organisation proposes to initiate a programme or activity in which the other organisation has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement”.
IPPNW, WILPF and other NGOs are asking since years to amend and shorten this sentence in the following way: “...the first party shall inform the other.”
Other modifications of the Agreement were proposed in a letter to the Ministers of Health of all WHO member states present at the WHA 2001 and 2002 (See attachment 2: letter signed by Prof. Abraham Béhar former President of IPPNW France and President of IPPNW Europe, P.D. Dr. Riond, and Prof. Fernex, and the document distributed in 2001). We consider that the wording of the Agreement may explain e.g. why the genetic consequences were not included in the IPHECA research project of May 1991, whereas dental caries in children had to be studied by the WHO.
Dr. Repacholi informed us on his recent trip to Belarus. The demonstration that breast cancer is also linked to radiation in the Chernobyl context is alarming. A lot of basic research is still progressing. The 2 million US$ provided by Japan are spent in Gomel, and should provide further knowledge on thyroid cancer (carcinogenesis).
When trying to discuss the liberation of Prof. Bandazhevsky, Dr. Repacholi was met with a frosty response, as the personalities he met in Minsk were precisely those mentioned in the critical report of Bandazhevsky (Attachment 3). Amnesty International considers that this report on the work performed in 1998, with a grant of 17 billion BY roubles, provided mainly by WHO, IAEA, OCHA, UK and Germany, by the Clinical Research Institute of Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology (including non-independent scientists), was the actual reason for the sudden imprisonnment of Bandazhevsky, soon after he delivered his report, ordered by the Government.
We would like to know whether the WHO agrees or not with the scientific critics of Bandazhevsky on the work done in the above-mentioned Institute, with tax-payers money.
Dr. Nabarro asked us what we would suggest as projects for the most affected part of the population: the children.
A classical approach for the WHO is to convene Scientific Working Groups (SWG) on most relevant pathologies expected in a region. We may therefore make following suggestions :
1. One SWG could be a counterpart of the 1956
meeting on “Effets genetiques des radiations chez l’homme”. (Rapport d’un groupe d’etude reuni par l’OMS, published in Geneva, 1957). Instead of H.J. Muller, Nobel prize holder for genetics, A.J. Jeffreys, professor for Genetics could be asked to select the best specialists in this field. In fact, papers by Dubrova could only be published in NATURE, due to the fact that Jeffreys was co-author. The methods discovered by Jeffreys were also used in Chernobyl by the Swedish team of Ellegren et al., and others in Israel for families of liquidators.
Other approaches by the group of Prof. Rose Goncharova in Minsk, should be considered: the continuous increase in the chromosomic alterations in rodents, living in more or less caesium- contaminated regions between Chernobyl and Minsk, after over 20 generations, is striking. In the mean time, the radiological contamination in the environment was progressively decreasing. The reduction of the chemical pollution in Belarus is also marked, since Chernobyl, as the industrial activities diminished, and the use of pesticides in agriculture is reduced or stopped, due to the deteriorating economical situation. Studies in fishes by this group are important, as except for the presence of a little over 1 Ci/km2 of 137Cs in the mud, there was no chemical nor any other source of pollution in the water of the ponds, where carps are still being studied by this team.