The Doctor, The Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children CUTTING EDGE:
Tuesday 15th February at 8.30 pm Uranium munitions were used for the first time by US and British Allied Forces in the 1991 Gulf War. Servicemen who saw them in action were very impressed. When a depleted uranium (DU) shell hits a tank, it penetrates the steel armour as if it were paper at the same time part of the uranium round vaporises and ignites inside the tank, causing the ammunition present to explode and kill the crew. This double action is what makes the weapon so appealing to military strategists. The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children, screening on SBS Television on Tuesday, 15 February at 8.30 pm in the Cutting Edge timeslot, follows two men, Professor Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a former colleague of Albert Schweitzer, and Tedd Weyman, deputy director of the Uranium Medical Research Centre in Toronto, Canada. They travel to Iraq to search for evidence that DU ammunition was used by the ton in the recent war, as they are convinced that DU is responsible for Gulf War Syndrome that has undermined the health of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. However, the USA and British governments claim there is no evidence that uranium ammunition is to blame for Gulf War Syndrome which has now been diagnosed in more than 150,000 war veterans. The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and the Dying Children also hears from two veterans of the first Gulf War - Kenny Duncan and Jenny Moore, who describe their exposure to DU weapons and the congenital abnormalities of their children. The program also contains an interview with Prof. Asak Duracovic who spent twelve years working for the US Department of Defense, studying soldiers suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. When he publicly voiced the belief that uranium ammunition was to blame, the Pentagon sacked him. In October 1991, Prof. Gunther was invited to review the health system in the wake of the UN embargo. "The paediatric hospitals were overcrowded, infections were rife, and children were dying of malnutrition. From 1991 to 1993, I encountered disorders which I hadn't seen in 40 years of working in Iraq: a veritable epidemic of leukaemias, congenital fissures and other deformities and disorders." The deformities reminded the professor of those seen after the Chernobyl disaster. Related SBS Website : http://www.sbs.com.au/whatson/ http://www.sbs.com.au/whatson/index.php3?id=940 Serbian News Network - SNN news@antic.org http://www.antic.org/
