There good doctor doesn't even address a few issues that will make their report inconclusive at best when it is submitted for peer review.
1) It does not address the impact the oil-for-food program had on the pre-natal care of Iraqi children.
2) The statement "the prolonged effect of ionization caused by the enormous energy emission and light energy from the massive bombing is, over a period of more than ten years, equal to one hundred Chernobyls" is unqualified. The depleted uranium never reached the radioactivity level near Chernobyl. When there is global fallout from DU, we'll talk.
Nonetheless, this report is centered around the hypothesis that radiation from DU is causing these birth-defects. Let's take some other examples to test the validity of this claim.
From Chernobyl: There have been no excess leukemias, congenital abnormalities, adverse pregnancy outcomes or any other radiation induced disease in the general population. Chernobyl Health Effects
If the Iraqi doctors claim is true, then where a higher level of radioactivity occured higher levels of disease would also occur. The Chernobyl health reports seem to contradict this.
Need some more? Let's take the works of John D. Zimbrick, Ph.D. School of Health Sciences Purdue Univerity concerning the affects of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
An excellent reference for all manner of questions regarding the A-bomb survivors is the book by William J Schull, Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Wiley-Liss, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012 (1995) ; ISBN # 0-471-12524-5. This is a scholarly book and yet is written at a level that the intelligent layperson can understand. It has a wealth of historical as well as scientific information about the studies, spanning the entire time period since the bombs were dropped. Following are answers to the specific questions asked:
1. Much information is available; for example, in the book cited above.
2. In 1995, 50 years after the atomic bombings, approximately 50 percent of the survivors were still alive. The exact number is difficult to state, but it could exceed 100,000. (For example, 284,000 survivors were identified in the 1950 census; this would indicate that there were about 142,000 remaining survivors in 1995.)
3. No genetic effects have been detected in a large sample (nearly 80,000) of offspring. By this, we mean that there is no detectable radiation-related increase in congenital abnormalities, mortality (including childhood cancers), chromosome aberrations, or mutations in biochemically identifiable genes.
4. Unfortunately, the epidemiologic studies on the survivors who received low doses of radiation (in the range of 0.01 Sv to 0.2 Sv) are equivocal regarding good measures of the risk of long-term health effects. This is because, even though the statistical sample available in the survivor studies is very large (nearly 100,000 subjects in the Life Span Study), it can be shown that many, many more subjects would be needed to draw reasonable statistically valid inferences from the data. Thus the data at low doses have large error bars and can be fit to mathematical models that show a threshold, no threshold, reduced effect, and in some cases even a beneficial (protective) effect, depending on the model one picks. There is no model that seems to be more valid than the others. Therefore, the consensus of the community of scientists interested in the A-bomb, as well as other, radiation studies seems to be that epidemiologic studies do not have the statistical power to give us answers to the low-dose questions. This issue is thoroughly discussed in the book by William J. Schull.
Wait, once again the Iraqi doctors conjecture is false as we now have larger samples to test the claim (Ukraine and Japan).
3) This one is pretty important: Much of the Iran-Iraq War was fought around Al-Basrah, the same place this study was done. Guess what was used? CHEMICAL WEAPONS.
The report was done on the exact same age group who would have been born after the war, but would have had parents who were old enough and in the right area to be exposed.
Since chemical weapons bind themselves to a particular function of the body (depending on the type of agent), these people would be walking around and fucking with a chemical agent now become terratogen.
The Iraqi doctors should submit their findings for peer review. Or maybe it was and deemed "inconclusive."
What we need more of is science, not agenda driven manifestos.
