> > >That morning , Kandy came to pick me up from the Mission. Former health >officer on the miners' union, she had been emailing me for ages since my BBC >film about Manganese and mad cow was shown on ABC Four Corners. Kandy had >lived on Groote with her husband for twenty years, having done the hippy >trail around the world back in the 1970s. Both of them had been employed in >the mines, and she had become concerned since her own blood tests had shown >high manganese and low magnesium. > > Kandy took me to meet a group of concerned woman in the local hall of the >mining village at Alyangula, many of whom had young children and were >connected to the mine in some way. > >This seemed a good opportunity for promoting the importance of magnesium >supplementation as a prevention against some forms of manganese >intoxication. Particularly important in any children who are concieved on >this island. For when magnesium is low and manganese is high, manganese can >substitute itself into vacant sites on magnesium activated enzymes, with >disastrous repercussions causing total inactivation of those enzymes as I >have mentioned previously.. > >What needs to be of the greatest concern to pregnant women, is the fact that >manganese can induce mutations in genetic material when high manganese / low >magnesium circumstances cause an inactivation of the magnesium ribosomal >enzymes - producing the genetic problem of Groote syndrome that is so widely >seen in the Aboriginal community down the road at Angurugu. Whilst >Aboriginals are no doubt more susceptible to this specific mutation for >dietary and genetic reasons, the Caucasian miners could well start developing >these and other types of mutations in their offspring. > >Amazingly, the potential of high Manganese to invoke mutations is >ironically being exploited in pharmacology to positive uses in the fight to >suppress the AIDS syndrome. Manganese can inactivate the magnesium activated >enzyme, reverse transcriptase, once the manganese to magnesium ration gets >too high in cells . This deprives the HIV virus of its ability to make >multiple copies of itself ; thereby severely suppressing the development of >the AIDS disease process. > >Kandy then took me up to the headquarters of the mine, where I had been >scheduled for a tour and then a meeting with the big brother of the company >!! One of the Union bosses then drove me around the different mine sites to >view the techniques of open cast mining - felling the forest, blasting, >stripping off the upper crust of laterites, mining the black manganese >dioxide ore bed, backfilling, then replanting. > >I must say that I was highly impressed with the replanted rainforest after >the mining operations had been completed. Indigenous saplings had been >utilized, managed and maintained by Aboriginal labour until it was certain >that the trees had taken root. I honestly could not distinguish between >original rainforest and replanted - save the height of the trees. It was >overtly apparent that this mining corporation was not operating like some of >the more dubious operations at work in S America and New Quinea. > >In the worker's canteen I met one of the miners who was pleased to meet with >me. He had been bereaved and left with two young children a few years earlier >after his wife had died of a motor neurone type disease identical to that of >the Aboriginal's Groote syndrome. Maxine had worked in the laboratory at the >mine where I was guided to next. I met the chief chemist in the lab who >showed me the black samples of manganese dioxide - referred to as the black >magic metal back in Byzantine times -which they spent all day analysing . > >Whilst it was reasonably apparent that the mining company had been doing a >highly impressive job >regarding the preservation of the environment and safeguarding some of the >socio-economic interests of the Aboriginal community, I did however feel that >there could have been an insidious problem with the issue of airborn >manganese being kicked up by the dust factor. Although the mine had been >attempting to dampen down the dust from time to time with water, there were >storage heaps and tailings heaps of manganese very close to the village of >Angurugu ( just a few hundred metres from some houses ) and storage heaps >around the jetty very close to the mining village of Alyangula. All residents >had been complaining of black dust settling inside their houses - even the >houses that had air conditioning. > > It did seem to me that the problems of this community were fundamentally >based upon the high manganese bedrock so close to the surface - with all >local water and home grown food supplies being contaminated. But the dust >from the mining operation had considerably exacerbated the problem. It should >be remembered that once manganese is inhaled - like aluminium and silver, etc >- it does not need to travel to the lungs and cross into the blood, etc; it >can be absorbed directly into the brain via the nasal-olfactory tract. > >I was then ushered into the manager's office who seemed more interested in >tape recording every thing that I was up to for an hour whilst failing to >divulge anything that they were up to - I could not even extract a map of the >main manganese outcrops on Groote from them !! Nonetheless, he seemed a nice >straight forward guy who was fresh to the job and genuinely interested in >environmental issues surrounding metals when his company hat was off. > >The manager was also keen to continually direct me onto the mining company >funded work at the Menzies School of Medicine in Darwin which had concluded >that Groote Syndrome was solely a disease linked to the genetics of a >specific aboriginal clan which had interbred with the Macassan sailors who >used to visit for trepang three hundred years ago. So why did'nt the disease > strike many years ago, and, furthermore, amongst all of those other races >around the world where the Macassans had interbred ? > >But I kept on reminding myself of Gayangwa lalara's words of local wisdom on >the first cases of Groote Syndrome. She categorically says that there was no >Groote syndrome around when she was a child. The first case struck her >father which happened after they had settled full time at Angurugu and after >the initial mining explorations had just began. The Aboriginal Elder of >Angurugu confirmed this to me. In fact, the only people who have stated >otherwise were the 'expert' authors of a spate of publications on studies at >the Menzies school of Medicine that had been funded by the mining >corporation itself. They had alleged that the aboriginees had stated that >Groote syndrome existed in the 18th century. I know whose observations I >can trust !! > >I returned back to Angurugu little the wiser. Much of the manganese dioxide >was going from this mine for incorporation into products that were being >manufactured all over the world - bricks, steel, aluminium / uranium alloys, >dyes, batteries, paint pigments, animal minerals and fertilisers - other >industries whose workforces have been associated with a raft of high >incidence clusters of these same classes of neurodegenerative disease. > >In the afternoon , we went out yamming. This entails parties of woman working >the woodlands to track down the particular species of vine that nourishes the >edible yam .I felt honoured to be able to push Roseanne out to the woods in >her wheelchair - a skeletal 33 year old victim with a stunningly beautiful >face. Like all Aboriginal people, she just accepts her faoldte. No self pity, >just a buddhistic way of living with her condition. I secretly wanted to >steal her back to the UK and somehow get her right again ! I could feel her >pain, a few faded traces of red nail varnish still smudged across her nails, >as though she had just about given up her final hopes of getting married and >living some semblance of a normal Aboriginal lifestyle. The other women >brought the crowbars, hatchets, and spades for digging and extracting the >yams; whilst Gayangwa's 9 year old grandson was monkeying around through the >mangroves with his machete, pairing back spearheads from the saplings and >then giving a poor tree snake hell - the one I had just seen coiled up a >tree.. > >It was like a spiritual ceremony working with these people. Gayangwa walking >around the forest forever staring upwards, surveying the canopy of the forest >in order to pinpoint any tell tale signs of the edible yam. I began to >wonder how she was not hypnotised by the bright sunlight stroboscoping its >way down the stringybacks to the forest floor. Where was that withered vine >that bore the crisp, heart shaped leaves of the edible yam ? The breeze >caught the leaves, their flipsides fluttervalving out a kind of mantra of the >forestfloor. Every so often Gayangwa had to break off her concentration to >scold her grandson who was tarzaning across our tracks on the vines . > >After about half an hour, one of the girls called across in Aboriginal >language. I soon got the gist that she had found one; a scorched up vine >which trailed downwards, going earthbound beside the roots of a mangrove >trunk . After alternate digging with the crowbar and then scratching the soil >out with our barehands, we eventually uncovered the first sightings of the >yam - laid out right across the backbone of the manganese bedrock.. As we dug >around the rest of it, I got embarrassed when I realised that I had ineptly >dug the spade straight through the middle of it - its sap already exuding >from the bruising ! > >I was interested in yams, because all of the victims who I had interviewed >had consumed them in high quantities. And analytical tests already conducted > had revealed manganese at excessive levels of 1000 ppm in the yam roots. The >women were telling me that the yams made you itch all over if you ate them >uncooked, which made me wonder what other toxic substances could be lurking >in their tissues - some allergic photosensitising agent perhaps ? My >enthusiasm and desire to investigate this further immediately reminded me of >my total lack of funding resources and inability to take this whole research >any further forwards - until I had some firm offer of funding . This was very >frustrating. > >As we left , I could see the poor helpless Roseanne waiting back at the >trackside for us in her wheelchair - in desperate need for some line of hope. >God, at her age, she deserves it, surely ? . My anger surged again , as I >remembered the absurd , irrational and totally unscientific reasoning behind >the British Ministry of Agriculture's rejection of my proposal for a three >year grant funding project - which their minister had invited me to submit >in the public forum of a BBC film. This project could have advanced some >major discoveries/developments into the causes and prevention of these >diseases - for a minute percentage of the two million pound award that went >to various conventionally acceptable professors for re-assessing >quesstimates of the future incidence dynamics of the vCJD epidemic - an >epidemic which never really came !! > >One of the reviewers of my proposal had misread the number of samples that I >had proposed for each cluster location - by twenty fold less - and accused me >of proposing too few samples per cluster location to be scientifically valid. >If this were the case, you could just increase the number of samples to be >taken, surely ? But despite my pointing this major error out to the Ministry, >they heralded this up as the key criticism, later promoting that reviewer to >their expert panel for assessing BSE research. Their appraisal got worse >still; splitting hairs over the fact that I had used the term "slice" of soil >when referring to the section of soil that is dug out with my sampling trowel >! One of the reviewers actually asked what the word "slice" meant, despite >widespread use of this term in the 'gospel' of soil sampling guidelines >decreed in the Natural Resources Management Ltd instruction book . NRM are >the most reputable sampling lab in the UK !! Having been falsely accused of >not including soil pH, redox potential in my analyses, the Ministry also >disapproved of my intention to use small cardboard boxes for holding the soil >samples - the very boxes supplied by the NRM !! > >Well, I suppose I should have learnt the lesson by now that the Ministries >and their global corporations like to hide their mega manganese or organo >phosphate interests behind farcical disputes over the suitability of >cardboard boxes or the terminological confusion surrounding soil slices. >But how do they have the heart to place these fastidious nit-pickings in >front of this crippled young girl ? don't they have children themselves ? As >my anger eventually drained itself out in the afternoon heat , I stopped >myself short of getting into imaginary spear and machete attacks on the >Ministry of Agriculture's offices in London !! Was the manganese beginning to >get to my very own serotonin receptors by now, I wondered ? >
