Cancer Rate In Fallujah Worse Than Hiroshima
By Tom Eley
July 23, 2010 "WSWS" -- The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the
ghastly consequences of a US military onslaught in late 2004.
According to the authors of a new study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth
Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," the people of Fallujah are
experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual
mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic bomb
strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the International Journal of
Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence
of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby
nations.
The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one of
the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted the
US-led occupation of Iraq-a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on the
basis of lies-Washington determined to make an example of the largely Sunni
city. This is called "exemplary" or "collective" punishment and is,
according to the laws of war, illegal.
The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long
been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the assault
contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells to
increase their effectiveness.
In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and
February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a team
of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold since
before the US attack five years ago, and that the forms of cancer in
Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic
bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.
In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer
rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in
populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult
lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every
1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times
higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has
increased sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000
girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US
assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births.
This alteration is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US
atomic attack of 1945.
The most likely reason for the change in the sex ratio, according to the
researchers, is the impact of a major mutagenic event-likely the use of
depleted uranium in US weapons. While boys have one X-chromosome, girls have
a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one chromosome
through genetic damage.
"This is an extraordinary and alarming result," said Busby, a professor of
molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific
research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group. "To
produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have
occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to find out
what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot be certain
without further research and independent analysis of samples from the area."
Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the
"extraordinary" increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher
than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US
atomic strikes of 1945. "My guess is that this was caused by depleted
uranium," he said. "They must be connected."
The US military uses depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in
armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once
these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the uranium
is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the explosion. It
can remain there for years, easily entering the human bloodstream, where it
lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA produced in the sperm and
eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn, serious birth defects in the next
generation.
The research is the first systematic scientific substantiation of a body of
evidence showing a sharp increase in infant mortality, birth defects, and
cancer in Fallujah.
In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the
United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of
radiation-related sickness in the city:
"Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of
the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads,
two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs.
In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers
and leukemias..
"In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24
percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75
percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed..
"Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they
witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births have
also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that
doctors in Fallujah have said, 'a significant number of babies that do
survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.'" (See:
"Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military")
The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no
studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies
associated with US military actions. "No studies to date have indicated
environmental issues resulting in specific health issues," a Defense
Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies,
however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime have
blocked them.
According to the authors of "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in
Fallujah," the Iraqi authorities attempted to scuttle their survey.
"[S]hortly after the questionnaire survey was completed, Iraqi TV reportedly
broadcast that a questionnaire survey was being carried out by terrorists
and that anyone who was answering or administering the questionnaire could
be arrested," the study reports.
The history of the atrocity committed by American imperialism against the
people of Fallujah began on April 28, 2003, when US Army soldiers fired
indiscriminately into a crowd of about 200 residents protesting the
conversion of a local school into a US military base. Seventeen were killed
in the unprovoked attack, and two days later American soldiers fired on a
protest against the murders, killing two more.
This intensified popular anger, and Fallujah became a center of the Sunni
resistance against the occupation-and US reprisals. On March 31, 2004, an
angry crowd stopped a convoy of the private security firm Blackwater USA,
responsible for its own share of war crimes. Four Blackwater mercenaries
were dragged from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and hung from a bridge
over the Euphrates River.
The US military then promised it would pacify the city, with one unnamed
officer saying it would be turned into "a killing field," but Operation
Vigilant Resolve, involving thousands of Marines, ended in the abandonment
of the siege by the US military in May, 2004. The victory of Fallujah's
residents against overwhelming military superiority was celebrated
throughout Iraq and watched all over the world.
The Pentagon delivered its response in November 2004. The city was
surrounded, and all those left inside were declared to be enemy combatants
and fair game for the most heavily equipped killing machine in world
history. The Associated Press reported that men attempting to flee the city
with their families were turned back into the slaughterhouse.
In the attack, the US made heavy use of the chemical agent white phosphorus.
Ostensibly used only for illuminating battlefields, white phosphorus causes
terrible and often fatal wounds, burning its way through building material
and clothing before eating away skin and then bone. The chemical was also
used to suck the oxygen out of buildings where civilians were hiding.
Washington's desire for revenge against the population is indicated by the
fact that the US military reported about the same number of "gunmen" killed
(1,400) as those taken alive as prisoners (1,300-1,500). In one instance,
NBC News captured video footage of a US soldier executing a wounded and
helpless Iraqi man. A Navy investigation later found the Marine had been
acting in self-defense.
Fifty-one US soldiers died in 10 days of combat. The true number of city
residents who were killed is not known. The city's population before the
attack was estimated to be between 425,000 and 600,000. The current
population is believed to be between 250,000 and 300,000. Tens of thousands,
mostly women and children, fled in advance of the attack. Half of the city's
buildings were destroyed, most of these reduced to rubble.
Like much of Iraq, Fallujah remains in ruins. According to a recent report
from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system six years after the
attack. "Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water
supplies," the report notes. "Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of
Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on
residents' health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhea,
tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases."
The savagery of the US assault shocked the world, and added the name
Fallujah to an infamous list that includes My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Guérnica,
Nanking, Lidice, and Wounded Knee.
But unlike those other massacres, the crime against Fallujah did not end
when the bullets were no longer fired or the bombs stopped falling.
The US military's decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium, all but
proven by "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah," was a
wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet
born in 2004.
The Fallujah study is timely, with the US now preparing a major escalation
of the violence in Afghanistan. The former head of US Afghanistan
operations, General Stanley McChrystal, was replaced last month after a
media campaign, assisted by a Rolling Stone magazine feature, accused him,
among other things, of tying the hands of US soldiers in their response to
Afghan insurgents.
McChrystal was replaced by General David Petraeus, formerly head of the US
Central Command. Petraeus has outlined new rules of engagement designed to
allow for the use of disproportionate force against suspected militants.
Petraeus, in turn, was replaced at Central Command by General James "Mad
Dog" Mattis, who played a key planning role in the US assault on Fallujah
in 2004. Mattis revels in killing, telling a public gathering in 2005 "it's
fun to shoot some people.... You know, it's a hell of a hoot."
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