The World Health Organisation’s fatal conflict of interest on nuclear radiation

For the nuclear lobby, any research indicating harm from ionising radiation represents a commercial threat that must at all costs be averted

The World Health Organisation and nuclear power, Le Monde Diplomatique Chernobyl: the great cover-up For 50 years dangerous concentrations of radionuclides have been accumulating in earth, air and water from weapons testing and reactor incidents. Yet serious studies of the effects of radiation on health have been obscured – not least by the World Health Organisation. by Alison Katz

In June 2007 Gregory Hartl, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman for Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments, claimed that the proceedings of the international conference held in Geneva in 1995 on the health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster had been duly published (1). This was not so. Challenged by journalists a few months
later, the WHO repeated the claim, providing references to a
collection of abstracts for the Kiev conference and just 12 articles
(out of hundreds) submitted to the Geneva conference.

Since 26 April 2007 (the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl), a large
placard has informed WHO employees each day that one million children
in the area around Chernobyl are irradiated and ill. IndependentWHO,
the group organising the action, accuses the WHO of a cover-up of the
health consequences of the catastrophe, and of failing to assist
populations in danger.

The WHO, they insist, must end the agreement made in 1959 which binds
it to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (2) and prevents
it from initiating a programme or activity in the area of nuclear
power without consulting the IAEA “with a view to adjusting the matter
by mutual agreement” (Article 1, Point 2).

Independence from the IAEA would permit the WHO to conduct a serious,
scientific evaluation of the disaster and provide appropriate health
care to contaminated people. A resolution to this effect is in
preparation for the World Health Assembly in May 2008 (3) and an
Appeal by Health Professionals has been launched (4).
Industrial and military lobby

According to its statutes, the IAEA (a UN agency which reports to the
Security Council) is mandated to “to accelerate and enlarge the
contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity
throughout the world”. It is in fact a lobby, industrial and military,
which should have no role to play in public health policymaking or
research.

The IAEA has vetoed conferences planned by WHO on radioactivity and health and, in turn, the WHO has endorsed the nuclear lobby’s grotesque statistics on mortality and morbidity relating to the Chernobyl accident – 56 dead and 4,000 thyroid cancers (5). Denial of disease inevitably implies denial of health care. Nine million people
live in areas with very high levels of radioactivity; for 21 years now
these populations have had no choice but to consume contaminated food,
with devastating effects on their health (6).

For the nuclear lobby, any research indicating harm from ionising radiation represents a commercial threat that must at all costs be averted. Research on damage to the human genome (one of the most
serious consequences of the contamination) was not part of the
international project requested of the WHO in 1991 by the health
ministers of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation. Yet dental
caries was made a research priority. And although these countries had
addressed their research request to the WHO, it was the IAEA which
planned the project.

This conflict of interest has already been fatal for hundreds of
thousands of people according to studies by independent scientists and
institutions (7). And the greatest burden of disease and death is yet
to come – given long latency periods, the increasing concentration of
radionuclides in internal organs from food grown in contaminated soil,
and damage to the human genome over many generations.
Hundreds of epidemiological studies in Ukraine, Belarus and the
Russian Federation have established that there has been a significant
rise in all types of cancer causing thousands of deaths, an increase
in infant and perinatal mortality, a large number of spontaneous
abortions, a growing number of deformities and genetic anomalies,
disturbance and retardation of mental development, neuropsychological
illness, blindness, and diseases of the respiratory, cardiovascular,
gastrointestinal, urogenital and endocrine systems (8).

But who will believe them? Four months after the meltdown Morris
Rosen, the IAEA’s director of nuclear safety, said: “Even if there
were an accident of this type every year, I would still regard nuclear
power as a valuable source of energy” (9). Public information on the
real health consequences of Chernobyl could seriously change the
debate about nuclear options. And that is why the WHO is afraid of the
children of Chernobyl…..
http://mondediplo.com/2008/04/14who