Forward from mart. Doctor who diagnosed Yushchenko's "poisoning" admits that he can prove nothing.
The truth slowly begins to trickle out - but only *after* the 'Valveeta Revolution's' electoral coup of course. =============================================== http://www.bhhrg.org/LatestNews.asp?ArticleID=58 The doctor who diagnosed Mr. Yushchenko's poisoning admits that he can prove nothing. Date: 27 January 2005 During the presidential campaign in Ukraine, the then opposition candidate (now president), Viktor Yushchenko, famously developed severe facial disfigurement. At a press conference held in Vienna on 11th December 2004, his doctors in the private Rudolfinerhaus clinic claimed that they had obtained proof that he had been deliberately poisoned. This allegation has now made its way into the mainstream media as an accepted fact, and Yushchenko himself has embellished the diagnosis by stating firmly, on several occasions, that someone was trying to kill him. In particular, he has alleged that he fell ill after dining with the head of the Ukrainian secret police, Igor Smeshko, and the implication is that Smeshko was involved in the attempted assassination.[1] BHHRG authors have already dealt with some aspects of the poisoning story in other items on the web page,[2] but the group has since conducted interview with two of the doctors involved in the poisoning affair. It turns out that the diagnosis may be faulty, and that its publication was hotly contested within the Vienna clinic. Before Christmas 2004, BHHRG contacted Dr. Lothar Wicke, Medical Director of the Rudolfinerhaus, and conducted an interview with him by telephone. Dr. Wicke resigned his post as medical director following the press conference on 11th December 2004, at which the head of the clinic, Dr. Michael Zimpfer, and Mr. Yushchenko's own doctor, Dr. Nikolai Korpan claimed to have obtained certain proof that his patient had been poisoned. Zimpfer had said there was "no doubt" that Yushchenko was the victim of dioxin poisoning, and that the dioxin had been administered by a third party. He speculated about "bioterrorism" and suggested that the poison had been administered in "a soup that contains cream".[3] This lent credence to the theory that Yushchenko had been poisoned over dinner, and allowed people like the former KGB defector to Britain, Oleg Gordievsky [4] , to speculate that Mr. Yushchenko had eaten Ukrainian borshch with sour cream in it. But the dinner is reported to have consisted of boiled fish, meats and salad.[5] Few media reported Dr. Wicke's resignation.[6] Fewer still had reported the sharp disagreements which had occurred between Dr. Wicke and his colleagues at the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in the run-up to the 11th December press conference. Those disagreements had started in September, when Mr. Yushchenko's facial disfigurement began, and when poisoning was first mooted. At that stage, Dr Korpan, a cryosurgeon who rents a surgery in the clinic but who is not employed by it, issued a statement on the clinic's notepaper saying that Yushchenko had been poisoned. These reports were immediately carried by pro-Yushchenko media in Ukraine, to whom Dr Korpan seemed very happy to speak.[7] Dr Wicke disagreed with this statement, and with the manner in which Korpan issued it. He himself gave an interview, which was quoted by Le Monde, in which he said, "If toxic substances had been found, then the doctors treating Mr. Yushchenko" - i.e. Korpan and Zimpfer - "should have informed me, and I would have been obliged to inform the prosecutor. I did not do so because no such thing was discovered." [8] It was because of Wicke's intervention that the Rudolfinerhaus clinic carried on its web site, between 30th September and 11th December, a statement saying, "We would like to note decidedly that on the occasion of Mr. Yuschenko's stay in our hospital to date no traces of poison were determined." Despite this statement, the poisoning story continued to circulate in the media during this period, even though other possible diagnoses were also reported in the mainstream European media, including pancreatitis and a herpes virus. Although the news reports about Dr. Wicke's resignation made it clear that he had formally resigned because of a work overload, they left their readers in no doubt that the real reason was disagreement over the Yushchenko issue. Dr. Wicke confirmed this interpretation when BHHRG's rapporteur telephoned him. He said that he did not think that a medical clinic should be used for political purposes, and that Ukraine should chose its own president without the interference either of the USA or Russia. He voiced criticisms of Dr Zimpfer's television appearances, but was mainly critical of Dr. Korpan. Dr. Wicke also pointed out to BHHRG that the Rudolfinerhaus clinic does not have the necessary equipment to test for dioxins. He added that no one seemed to know at that stage where the tests had been carried out. (This point was clarified only later.) No one had asked these elementary questions at the press conference. Wicke also said that the statement issued by the clinic itself on 12th December concerning the diagnosis was self-contradictory. It said both that the dose of dioxin found in Mr. Yushchenko's blood as "1,000 times higher than is bearable by a human being" and also that he was fully capable of working normally and well on the way to recovery.[9] Dr. Wicke also told BHHRG about the death threats he had received following his refusal to accredit Korpan's diagnosis of poisoning in September. He had an anonymous phone call from Ukraine, in which he was told "watch out for your life". The caller spoke English. Following this call, Wicke contacted the police and was put under protection. When BHHRG spoke to him, it was clear that this Viennese doctor was still living in fear. He was reluctant to elaborate too much on the telephone and said, by way of explanation, "I have a family."[10] Wicke also made the point that forensic doctors and the police ought to have been involved if there was a suspicion of poisoning, yet no forensic or prosecuting authorities had been conducted. Wicke initially promised BHHRG to say more after Christmas, but when BHHRG's representative rang him back in January, he said he wanted to say no more about the matter. In the meantime, BHHRG rang the man who subsequently turned out to have performed the dioxin tests. Professor Bram Brouwer of the Free University of Amsterdam runs a private company called BioDetection Systems. It specialises in using biological methods (genetically modified cells) to detect substances in food.[11] It advertises an especially quick method of screening food products for dioxins, these substances being more difficult to detect by other methods. The company does work for the health and safety authorities, especially the European Union, and monitors the levels of dioxins in certain foods. This is to prevent contaminated food being sold to humans. In 1999, for instance, chickens in Belgium became infected with dioxins as a result of recycling animal fats in their feed. Dr Brouwer told BHHRG that he had contacted the Rudolfinerhaus in November when he saw Mr. Yushchenko on television. Although he is essentially a food inspector, his specialisation being in environmental and not forensic toxicology[12], Brouwer evidently thought that his method of detecting dioxins should be used. In fact, his method may be quick at detecting the presence of dioxin but it is not very precise about registering quantities.. He told BHHRG that he needed subsequently to send the samples to two other laboratories (one in the Netherlands, the other in Germany) to have the precise levels, and the precise kind of dioxin, properly identified: his biological method could do neither. Dr Brouwer's intervention may explain why Mr. Yushchenko cancelled a visit to the United Kingdom for his tests. BHHRG has ascertained something that no other media have reported, namely that a neurologist, two dermatologists and two toxicologists (one of them is one of the leading toxicologists in Europe) were on standby to examine Yushchenko, but that he cried off at the last minute. BHHRG has been told that those British specialists are now highly sceptical about the dioxin diagnosis. Brouwer initially told BHHRG that the dioxin levels were so high that the only explanation for them was that a third person had administered them, i.e. that Yushchenko had been deliberately poisoned. He said, "I cannot imagine any other explanation." It was this formal claim that Mr. Yushchenko had been deliberately poisoned which then made its way back to Vienna, and thence into the world's press, as an established fact. But Brouwer also admitted that it would take 3 - 4 weeks after contracting the dioxins for any effects to be produced on the skin, and that the pains Yushchenko experienced would take about a week to develop. In other words, even this diagnosis means that it is impossible that Yushchenko was poisoned at the dinner with Smeshko on 5th September, because he developed the symptoms immediately, the following morning. When asked why he had not contacted any forensic doctors or criminal toxicologists, let alone the prosecuting authorities, Dr Brouwer had no answer. Brouwer also confirmed that the levels found in Yushchenko's blood could not possibly have killed a human being. He said, "In fact, we do not know what dosage would be necessary to kill someone, because there is no recorded example of a person ever dying from dioxin poisoning." This is indeed the case: BHHRG has consulted another medical expert on poisons, who confirmed that dioxin is probably among the last things you would ever try to use to kill someone. Brouwer confirmed that the dosage in Yushchenko's blood was not enough to kill even a rat, let alone a human. Yet Yushchenko affirms that he was the victim of an assassination attempt. Dr. Brouwer then told BHHRG that the Yushchenko case was almost identical to an incident which occurred in 1998, when two Austrian women had suffered from an similar outbreak of chloracne. Indeed, the Yushchenko case is only the second recorded case of dioxin poisoning at this level. He said, "It was exactly the same pure compound of dioxin, which you never find in food poisoning, and the dioxin levels in the blood were similar. In fact, the levels in one of the women's blood were slightly higher than in Yushchenko's case." The definitive medical article on the case describes the symptoms as follows: "Patient 1, who had the highest TCDD level ever recorded in an individual (144,000 pg/g blood fat), developed severe generalized chloracne, whereas in the second patient, despite heavy intoxication (26,000 pg/g blood fat), only mild facial acne lesions occurred. Both patients initially experienced non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms."[13] Brouwer told BHHRG that the women were believed to have contracted the dioxin from working in a textile factory where the material was contaminated. And when BHHRG asked how he could therefore say with certainty that Yushchenko had been deliberately poisoned, when the only known precedent for a similar dioxin contamination was believed to have been caused by an industrial accident, Dr Brouwer had to admit that, in fact, he could not say that Yushchenko has definitely been deliberately poisoned. He told BHHRG, "I cannot say how the dioxins got there." In other words, the deliberate poisoning thesis, so confidently proclaimed in December, and so instrumental in painting Mr. Yushchenko as the victim of a criminal regime, is not even insisted on by the man who himself made it. ======================================== [1] According to C. J. Chivers of the New York Times, General Smeshko was in fact working behind the scenes to facilitate the Orange Revolution, not trying to kill the candidate. See "Back Channels: A Crackdown Averted. How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path," New York Times, 17th January 2005. [2] "Booze, Salo and Mare's Milk...Did Yuschenko poison himself?" by Chad Nagle, 20th December 2004, http://www.oscewatch.org/LatestNews.asp?ArticleID=55 [3] See for instance Radio Free Europe Newsline, 13th December 2004 [4] On CNN International, 17th December 2004 [5] See "A Dinner in Ukraine Made for Agatha Christie," C. J. Chivers, New York Times, 20th December 2004 [6] The Austrian papers mentioned it: "Rudolfinerhaus: Ärztlicher Leiter geht" by Helmar Dumbs and Regina Pöll, Die Presse, 11th December 2004; "Rudolfinerhaus: Viele Gerüchte, eine Demission Ärztlicher Leiter Wicke zurückgetreten", Der Standard, 12th December 2004; see also "The Yushchenko poison plot fraud" by Justin Raimondo, 15th December 2004, http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4164 [7] For instance, Korpan gave an interview to Ukrainska Pravda on 10th October 2004, in which he suggested that Yushchenko had been poisoned with a "chemical or biological agent". [8] "En Ukraine, le chef de file de l'opposition se plaint d'avoir été empoisonné", by Joëlle Stolz, Le Monde, 13th October 2004 [9] At the time of writing (27th January 2005) the September and the two December statements are still on the web site of the Rudolfinerhaus, http://www.rudolfinerhaus.at/. (Click on "Über uns" and then "Aktuelles".) [10] The intimidation practised against Wicke was also discussed in a long report in Le Figaro, "La ténébreuse hospitalisation viennoise de Iouchtchenko" by Maurin Picard, 10th December 2004. Picard claims that Korpan is being pursued by the Austrian medical authorities for practising without the requisite qualifications: his diploma from Uzhgorod in Ukraine has never been validated in Austria. ================================= [11] http://www.biodetectionsystems.com [12] See his c.v. on the university's web page: http://www.falw.vu.nl/Onderzoeksinstituten/index.cfm?home_page.cfm?fileid=08 39F610-3807-440B-AB8723A79B27C07E&pageid=368A258C-B80A-4827-B611AD302B24B11D &subsectionid=1283CFA1-03D3-4BA3-9F21CDD13625FE25 [13] Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol 109, No. 8, August 2001 by Alexandra Geusau et. al. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2001/109p865-869geusau/abstract.html ========================================== Serbian News Network - SNN news@antic.org http://www.antic.org/
