Uranium Actinides.

Asaf Durakovic

Chemical toxicity of uranium has been known for 200 years. Since the time of [Merlin's"] work who published in ah, [fercifal actinides?] we have, ah, medically important [actinides?] ah, uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, californium, and so on. We'll start with uranium which is primordial element of the universe, because it's the only one that didn't decay by the virtue of 4.5 billion years of half-life. But uranium half-life is also a guarantee that it is not very powerful external source of radiation. You can sleep on the slab of uranium without any health effects, but I do disagree with Dr. Robbie of today, that ah, ah, non [stocastic?] theories ah, apply to the internal emitters, because if we talk about c--target hypotheses we know that you need hundreds of thousands of rads to kill the cells if it's delivered to the cytoplasm but only several rads to kill the cell if ah--of radiation is delivered to the nucleus. And in the event of uranium, whether it is depleted or enriched on whatever kind of uranium it is, we see uranium plus uranium daughters which are [protactinium, thorium?] and bunch of other isotopes which do have capacity to irradiate a nucleus and with very, very, very low dose ca-they can cause the death of the cell i--and/or alterations of the cell, which means, really, it's denies our further subscription to the threshold theory of so many ah, ceverts or so many rems. And I can [pursue?] o--on it if I have time later, because I worked with uranium for 25 years.

Ah, uranium is an isotope that comes in three forms for our practical measurements--235, 238 and 234. It was ext--described for the first time in the [...?...] Mountains in Czechoslovakia and Germany in the 16th century and Hitler was very much aware of uranium, because his scientists, including Einstein, including ah, ah, ah, Hungarian scientists, including ah, [Seelon?] including [Teller?] knew very well what uranium potentially contains and they proposed to--some scientists--not those--but some scientists proposed to Hitler to develop nuclear weapons. Luckily enough, Hitler was rather stupid politician. He reinforced German tanks with uranium and that was Deutscher [Stahl?] which ah, really did not develop the nuclear weapons and that is lucky for us, be--because we would be singing "Deutschland Uber Alles" today instead of "O, Beautiful..." [laughter]

So, uranium miners and lung cancer has been very well documented and I'm not talking about archaic documents of the century ago. I'm talking about documents of year ah, two years ago. I have papers on my desk here about uranium cancer incidence in Czechoslovakian miners, in the miners of Namibia, in the miners of India, in the miners of ah, everywhere. So, uranium miners do develop lung cancer, same as depleted uranium would probably have capacity of causing lung cancer as well, as we are going to talk about at the end of my talk, when we talk about Persian Gulf Disease, Gulf Syndrome, and depleted uranium in the [veterans?] which has been taboo and it's b--which has been sacred cow of which neither [...?...] nor science can discuss today.

But I'm going to present to you the data today that will make obliterated seven years of silence because for the first time, I'm presenting now statistically significant increase of uranium in the urines of the Persian Gulf veterans who were my patients and it is not government committees who diagnosed them, it is not government reports, it is I who examined them in my clinic and I know of their symptoms, so when the ah, reports say that my patients were not sick of kidney disease, I can prove that they were sick, because I send them for second--for consecutive surgeries for six and seven times. But let's talk about science.

Ah, [Tule Greenland?] is U.S. airplane that fell with uranium weapons, and uranium was scattered over Greenland, U.S. government has to pay lots of money to clean Greenland. [Tolotrast?] ah, we had it mentioned today, and [Tolotrast?] did kill patients who were studied for [sounds like hepatobilliary?] disorders because [Tolo--Tolotrast?] was ah, heavy [alphameter?] who killed those poor patients. Plutonium, we'll just mention briefly--that regardless of some literature which is totally incomprehensible to me, saying that even plutonium is a [hormeses?] element that is good for you to have plutonium, we know for a fact that no substance on the earth matches plutonium in toxicity although some people say cobra venom is more dangerous botulism toxin is more ve--dangerous--but we know that we are talking about molecular quantities vs. atomic quantities of plutonium. I am making public statement this respected consecrated territory of the Academy of Medicine that mankind does not know anything close to ploni--plutonium in toxicity. Anyway, [americium?] is another element that is ah, ah, ah, [actonite?] element that has capacity to localize in liver and bone causing malignant alterations in both of the organs. [Polonium?]--it's not cigarette nicotine and tars that kill patients--it polonium, because polonium is contained in cigarettes .5 [...?...] a cigarette.

Those are [...?...], but let's talk about uranium which is our favorite subject of today after the Gulf War declared that it's non-toxic substance. In 1834, Christian [Gottlob-...?] at the University of Tubingen, said "...?...keine...ein wilkung" which means "without much of the ah, disturbance of the body." But in the large doses given intravenously uranium causes quick death of the experimental animals and of the people. And in [18?]53 Lacomte says that uranium produces [aubiguria, anuria, glycosuria?] and [...?...] use it for production of experimental [...?...] practice in the [...?...].

How does uranium work on the glucose metabolism? When the glucose enters a cell membrane it has to be [phosphorated?] ah, ATP has to pass the phosphate to the sixth atom of glucose by the [hexocaines?] enzyme and because of mechanism [magnesium-hexocaines?] uranium blocks transfer of mighty phosphate to glucose. Glucose does not go to the cell, it goes out to the blood and you see gluc--go--glucosuria in the uranium contaminated patient. And that is seen in my patients also. We know that uranium is [nephro-?] toxic agent because it causes the death of the [proxima...?], [loop of...?] and cells of the kidney die.

Now, in the wisdom of people who know nothing about science--they say but the patients are healthy now. Every child in the jungle knows that uranium affects are reversible--that it causes affect and affect, if the patient survive, disappears, so the fact the patients do not have glucosuria today and albuminuria--blood in the urine, does not deny the fact that they were exposed to uranium by the [endogenously?], ah, exposure. Here is remedy for diabetes in 1930's, which is called [Van Ulan?]. It contains uranium nit--nitrate, vicerol, and red wine. Patients were dying happy because they red--they drank, ah, red wine. [laughter] [...?...] of uranium isotopes--pay attention to this table please, because [here?] is the key of my talk. Look at the ratio only. Ratio of natural uranium is 137.8. And this uranium 49, [depleted?] uranium 290--we'll come to it in a second. And in the places where they re--use uranium weapons--in the ah, target ranges, we see that the allowable level of uranium in the soil is 35 [picograms?]--[per?] gram of uranium 238. Now look at this table. The range here is up to 343 [picograms?] which means it is exceedingly higher than permissible dose. And to decontaminate such firing range would take 40,000 man hours or $5,000 dollars just for the production of one single bullet, and in--in Iraq, we had 600,000 tons of depleted uranium that were dumped in the desert and people were inhaling it and they came to my clinic in Wilmington, sick.

Now, let's go further. Ah, if you have--I'm not going to go to this slide because I don't have time. I'm going to talk about my patients and my methods that was completed last week in the conjunctions with [Dr. Shermer?] professor of radiochemistry, University of Waterloo, and University of [MacMaster?] whe--where I graduated from the medical school. We used seven patients with a known history of inhalation of uranium 213 [DU?] in the Gulf War. And they were contaminated seven years before this year. Now, method of sample preparation: we used 24 hour samples obtained from the exposed veterans, placed in the bottles dry and irradiated with neutrons in the reactor. This sample analysis for uranium 235 which has detection limit of .145 mill--nanograms of uranium 235. Interference of other elements is negligible. Uranium 238 was also studied by the neutral activation analysis and it shows high degree of accuracy.

Now, these is isotopes of uranium--depleted uranium [...?...] and we still know that composition even in the other slide, but these are the urines of my patients. And now, remember that the ratio that I presented before--138.5--whatever is greater than 138.5, it is depleted uranium, so nobody and no corporational committee and no pentagon, no V.A. can tell me that it is uranium from the well water, because all of the ratio--of the ratios of depleted uranium, which means that uri--uri--that is uranium that patients inhale in the Persian Gulf, because there is no other way, and these are uranium 235 in nanograms, and 238 it micrograms--Now, here we come to the point of truth. Normal excretion of uranium from the normal human being and I used India, I used China, I used Czechoslovakia, I used Africa. Normal excretion is in nanograms. Look at the right side of the table. It is micrograms--thousand times more. All of my patients--100% contained significant increase of uranium in their blood measured in nanograms--I'm sorry, in ah, micrograms and non in nanograms. And here is the ratio that we talked before. All of my patients have depleted uranium [...?...] by the factor of ten and fifteen. And I'll conclude here without going to the ah, analysis of the bone effects of uranium. I hope that I have three hours to talk about it but I don't and I'll have to stop here. Health Physics says concentration of uranium in [serum?] of healthy normal volunteers is in the range of 13 to 14 nanograms--not micrograms per liter, with a urinary [...?...] of 41%.

I will conclude here with a statement of Arthur Schopenhauer. He said, "when the book hits the head and when the empty sound is heard, it's not always the book's fault."