Posted on 02/15/2002 5:28:48 PM PST by Spar
Italian Soldiers' Uranium Risk Comes Under Debate
Fri Feb 15, 5:50 PM ET
By Rossella Lorenzi
FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters Health) - An Italian political party has called for a parliamentary inquiry into the health risks of depleted uranium after military doctors said a soldier's cancer may be linked to exposure to the substance.
The Northern League urged the government to clarify whether Italian peacekeepers in the Balkans were at risk from the depleted uranium used in armor-piercing weapons.
"Ten thousand tons of depleted uranium are said to be left in the area where our soldiers operate," it said in a statement.
NATO (news - web sites) and many health officials have denied that the munitions cause cancer, but controversy continues to boil around the subject.
On Wednesday it was revealed that a military medical commission had decided that a 23-year-old soldier who developed Hodgkin's lymphoma after returning from the UN peacekeeping mission in the Balkans deserved compensation as his illness was a result of his military service.
The military doctors said that vaccines and ionizing radiation from the uranium "are oncogenic risk factors that might have had a key role in the genesis of the lymphoid neoplasm," according to media reports.
"This is the first time that a link between depleted uranium and Hodgkin's disease is recognized in a sick soldier. This is simply revolutionary," Marshall Giuseppe Pesciaioli of Cocer Esercito, which represents troops, told Reuters Health. "Not to mention the ethical issues towards the population in the Balkans. We dropped thousands of tons of uranium there."
At least 13 Italian soldiers have died of cancer since serving in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia, sparking a national outcry which brought the defence minister Sergio Mattarella to set up a commission of inquiry in December 2000.
The investigative panel, headed by Dr. Franco Mandelli, studied 28 cases of cancer from December 1995 through January 2001 in 39,450 soldiers. Last year, the commission report concluded that there is no proven link between depleted uranium and cancer in soldiers. Another report from the panel of experts is expected within 2 months.
"Those findings are full of statistical mistakes," Falco Accame, president of the Ana-Vafaf Association for those killed and injured in the armed forces and former president of the Defence Committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, told Reuters Health.
"Among many mistakes, they calculated the risks over all the soldiers who went to the Balkans during that period, and not in those military really exposed to the risk," he said. "Those serving in safe areas should have not been taken into consideration."
The soldier at the center of the current dispute will have all his medical costs covered and a privileged pension.
But according to Accame, compensation is not the only measure that needs to be taken. "We need an inquiry to determine the responsibility of those who denied any risk with depleted uranium."
"The reason why there are so many Italian soldiers sick is simple: our soldiers were left in t-shirts, totally unprotected. Someone has to pay for this," he said.
On the eve of Milosevic's trail testimony yet.
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
1. The Norther League are secessionist whack jobs.
2. Less than 10 metric tons of DU have been used in the Balkans by NATO forces.
3. The mortality rate, from cancer, for Italian males (per the International Agency for Research on Cancer) is ~290 mortalities /100k population per year.
The mortality rate from cancer for Italian soldiers serving in the Balkans is 28 (cases or mortalities?)/39,450 population *5 years, or 1/20th the national average for males, if those 28 were in fact fatalities due to cancer, and not occurances.
While I don't have a breakdown by age in order to view military age mortality rates, it's not looking good for our friends in Northern Italy.
The only thing that needs to be studied is why crap like this keeps getting resurrected and posted on FR in an attempt to help a mass murdering socailist puke escape the justice his countrymen have proven utterly unwilling or incapable of bringing him to.
You wouldn't have any leads on that particular topic as far as research, would you Spar?
His (SM's) countryman (Serbs) are willing and capable to bring him to justice he deserves. How can you say "utterly unwilling or incapable", when Serbia was blackmailed to extradite SM and literally stolen from Belgrade's jail to appease western inquisitors??? Serb's were denied the opportunity to charge SM in Belgrade's district court for crimes he committed. Makes me suspicious that the west is hiding their dealings with SM that cost dearly Serbian people.
Is it because SM wasn't lynched in Belgrade that you draw such conclusion?
That's right - none.
Victimhood is so much more politically attractive than the hard, dirty work of cleaning house, isn't it?
So long as Vojislav Seselj roams free, having only killed non-Serbs after all, any pretensions of Law and Order in Serbia are a joke.
P.s., how's that investigation of the murder of Slavko Curuvija coming along?
Yes, Curuvija, Stambolic and etc. cases stalled, but that's I believe, with the west stealing the prime suspect. I wouldn't be so sure V. Seselj killed only non-Serbs...
I appreciate your impatience with the Serbian justice, but it is wrong to strip the people of Serbia the opportunity to judge crimes committed against their own people.
Your instincts are correct though, this will only hurt European support for the NATO's Kosovo occupation and what NATO did in Yugoslavia those 78 days.
And if you can, tell me how high up the food chain he is/was.
THE DU STORY HAS BEEN DISCREDITED.
Tell you what, instead of me wasting both my and the staff at the Italian Embassy's time, why don't you just get a clue and quit posting every Slobo friendly article that you lay your eyes on? If not that, then at least have the decency to screen them for the least semblance of a basis in reality before you post them, huh?
My reaction to this story was also that it seemed unlikely cancer would develop so fast. Anybody know when the earliest cancers of this type appeared at Hiroshima?
Like it or not this Italian soldier is about to draw disability pay based on exposure to DU in Kosovo dropped by NATO.
Could it be that the Italian soldier was made sick not from DU (I agree DU is not harmful) but from areas contaminated by plutonium improperly incorparated within the DU, as has been recently discovered? I am no MD but I am pretty sure even small amounts of plutonium are harmful.
Well, for the ignorant, unschooled and propaganda driven (like yourself), 'the story has been discredited'. But then, again, just when did you get your doctorate degree in medical physics? Just what medical or scientific reports do you base your baseless assertion on? More of the propaganda ginned up by your NWO cohorts? Like the (non)massacre at Racak? Like the "100,000 dead Albanians"? Like the '700 dead Albanians' at Trepca?
For the nonce, would you care to deal in the currency of proven fact and reality or will you insist in reveling in your self-deluded state of ignorance?
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