"FORGOTTEN FALLOUT": THE COMING COVER UP OF THE NCI REPORT!

With the media and public attention following the release of parts of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) fallout report, an extremely important point is too often overlooked. The NCI didn't exactly "release" the report to the public. The NCI was left with little choice but to release the report, to limit the public, and congressional relations damage it was receiving for "not" releasing the data. The fact is that the NCI had the summary conclusions for four years, and were not about to make it public last month if they didn't have to. What happened was that sections of the report were leaked to the media. And when it was published by USA TODAY on July 25, the cat was out of the bag. Immediately questions were asked by members of Congress concerning attempts by the NCI to withhold the information from the public. Failing to halt the mounting public relations crisis, the NCI reluctantly released its summary.

Throughout the process of preparing the report, and in delaying its release to the American public, there is an overwhelming appearance on the part of the NCI that they were deliberately attempting to cover up the key conclusions from the American people. It must be clearly understood that the federal government and its agencies responsible for the 1950's atomic bomb tests, had knowingly exposed American citizens to radioactive fallout in every single county of the nation! Even more disturbing information that the actual fallout levels across the country were a hundred times higher than the government had ever admitted to before. Up to 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer could have resulted nationwide. Concealed and covered up was the fact that all Americans were downwinders from the bomb tests, not just those located in the immediate area surrounding the Nevada Test Site.

Not only is the disclosure of the substance of the NCI report, and the fact that it had withheld it for over 4 years an embarrassment to the NCI. It also giving the appearance of heading towards a major confrontation with members of Congress, some of whom have direct over sight responsibilities over the NCI. Worse still is the fact that some of these rather angry members of Congress may have been victims of the nationwide fallout exposures themselves. Ranging from Utah freshman Congressman Chris Cannon (R)-Utah, who angrily demanded an investigation into the conduct of the NCI, stating that he was convinced fallout from the tests had killed his father, to the ranking minority member of the Senate committee overseeing the NCI, Senator Tom Harkin (D- Iowa), whose family had been raised in Iowa farm country listed as high-fallout risk and had suffered thyroid cancer and illnesses. Clearly the NCI is in deep trouble.

The response of the NCI is not limited to just making some of the report public and cutting their losses. Instead the NCI has chosen to not only to continue their efforts at suppressing the truth concerning the extent and dangers from 1950's bomb tests, but to escalate this behavior through a media disinformation campaign to down play the links between exposure to radioactive Iodine-131 from fallout and cases of thyroid cancer and other disorders. It has chosen to do so utilizing many of the same government scientists and agency officials who made a career for themselves, when the fallout was falling across American, covering up for the Atomic Energy Commission. (AEC). Worse, some of the parties referred to the media had been active participants in some of the worst human radiation experiments carried out by the AEC from the 1950's to the early 1970's, including some done on unwitting children.
 

WEAK LINKS AND MEDIA DISINFORMATION
 

From the moment the USA TODAY went to press with its first report on the NCI study, it was apparent to anyone familiar with the nuclear weapons and testing programs' legacy of human health effects, that once again the federal government agencies in charge of determining the potential death toll had called in the government's nuclear foxes to race out to the chicken coop and report on the current state of the chickens health. With all the disclosures and media reports since, instead of coming clean, the NCI has followed this approach, and tried to down play the importance and significance of the fallout report.

With the first media probing, including the original USA TODAY article, the NCI has referred the media to four sources of additional information to help put the report in context. Three of those are scientists. One headed the NCI study, Dr. Bruce Wachholz. And two "outside" scientists, Dr. David V. Becker MD, billed as world expert on thyroid cancer and other diseases, and Dr. Merril Eisenbud, billed as "one of the nation's premier authorities on atomic fallout." Also the media was steered to a 1993 study of thyroid cancer and other problems among Utah downwinders. That study done by University of Utah scientists, was a follow up of a controversial 1964 study done on 3,000+ school children in Washington County, Utah by the Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Public Health Service as part of public relations efforts to calm fears over radioactive bomb test fallout.

Dr. David Becker was quick to point out, and has hammered this point across in every interview he has done since, that while the NCI report shows large areas of the country received high levels of radioactive Iodine-131 fallout, evidence has shown the link between I-131 exposure and thyroid cancer is "weak" at best. In addition to the reassuring "weak link" business was information on how thyroid cancers were slow to develop, and had one of the highest cure rates of any cancers. Some mention was made how the situation would be clearer once a complete study has been done on the victims of the Chernobyl accident where there is a larger study population than previous studies. All in all, Becker put a positive spin on things for the American people. Iodine 131 all over the country? Yes, but never been proven to cause cancer and at best only a "weak link".

Past the credentials, past the "leading world authority", and past the "weak link", Dr. Becker left a few key points out. For instance he neglected to make clear that he himself had been a member of the NCI group responsible for the fallout study since the NCI was ordered by Congress to produce it in 1983. And that since at least 1996 he had been head of the NCI's working group on the effects of fallout on the population surrounding Chernobyl -- ie. the group that will determine what risks I-131 has for cancer and other illnesses. Nor did he mention, as is clearly pointed out in a bio of Dr. Becker prepared in advance of a speech he gave in 1996 at a pro-nuclear society dinner in Long Island, that in "HIS" studies and research he has never been able to find a link between exposure to Iodine 131 and thyroid cancer.

It is here that the more positive and non-controversial aspects of Dr. Becker's personal involvement with determining the risk of radioactive exposure to the thyroid end. Absent from the "world expert on thyroid cancer and diseases" identification was the history of a close relationship with some of the AEC's and later DOE's worst scandals, human radiation experiments, and the serious environmental and public health problems at the Hanford nuclear weapons facility. Dr. Becker failed to advertise that his official bio from Cornell lists as "Recent Publications" a 1990 paper on a thyroid related matter on which one of the coauthors was E.L. Saenger. Dr. Edward L. Saenger was in charge of one of the most notorious and last major human radiation experiment, involving the administration of high dose whole body radiation to terminal cancer patients at the University of Cincinnati. The purpose of the experiment done for the Department of Defense, was not to find out if the radiation helped the cancer patients, but to find out how much radiation bomber pilots could take before loosing control. This is not surprising since a check of documents at the Human Radiation Experiments Archive under Dr. Becker's name produced a 1950's memo asking for permission of the AEC to use radioisotopes on service men.
 

The biggest problem with Dr. Becker being used as an authority on there being a "weak link" at best between radioactive I-131 and thyroid cancer is also not mentioned by Dr. Becker either during his media blitz. It is the very serious conflict of interest exposed by Spokesman-Review Reporter Karen Dorn Steele on May 5, 1996. Reporter Steele is the reporter who broke the story of the massive releases of I-131 from the Hanford nuclear plant, and interestingly broke the story on the NCI report a day before USA TODAY. In her 1996 article she reported that Dr. Becker was involved in a serious conflict of interest problem relating to his proposed appointment to a Centers For Disease Control panel to determine the potential health risks of Hanford Downwinders exposed to radioactive I-131 released by the Hanford plant. The problem was that Dr. Becker was also currently receiving $350 per hour from the Hanford contractors as their chief defense expert in lawsuits brought by the downwinders for thyroid cancers caused by the Hanford releases. In addition Steele reported that by a unique arrangement, the American taxpayers were picking up the tab for Dr. Becker's $350 per hour fee.

The question that must be asked is how, can a man defending the potential victimizers accused of inducing thyroid cancers by radiation releases, also be allowed to determine what the risks were for national and international agencies, and thus be in a position to insist there were no victims in the first place? A very "weak link" indeed. Knowing all this, especially Dr. Becker's involvement as chief defender of the Hanford contractors, the NCI has some serious questions to answer. Not just about pointing media reporters to Dr. Becker following the release of the fallout report, but in ever allowing him to serve on the group that produced the report, or in heading up its international risk assessment group to determine the risks of thyroid cancer from the Chernobyl accident. $350 per hour says it all!
 

 
Next on board to assure the American public that things were not as bad as they seem with the NCI report, was "one of America's premier fallout experts", Dr. Merril Eisenbud. In his case, even more so than that of David Becker, the omissions of the long-term involvement with the nuclear weapons establishment are even more serious.

Following the first news reports of the NCI fallout study Dr. Eisenbud was telling USA TODAY and others, "The basic question is whether iodine 131 causes thyroid cancer, that's what counts. Whether it causes cancer in humans has never been decided for certain." What Eisenbud failed to tell the media was that this was based on a lifetime's work as one of the leading AEC scientific experts in the public relations management of fallout hazards, and from decades of actively deceiving the public as to those hazards. Likewise no mention is made of the depth to which Dr. Eisenbud had been involved in the human radiation experiments tragedy.

A careful check of the archives of the Human Radiation Experiments Archives maintained by the Department of Energy first shows the involvement of Dr. Eisenbud in the late 1940's when he was involved in studying the health dangers faced by the nation's uranium miners. Here, in one of the most inexcusable examples of hiding radiation dangers, the AEC and its scientists studied America's uranium miners and found they were being subjected to gross over exposures from radiation, in both the mines and the mills. They found that no attempts were being made to provide adequate ventilation for the mines, and the miners, and the mine operators, were not aware of these problems.

The response of the AEC was to keep the study secret, and not only not inform the miners of the dangers they were working under, but to not require any measures be taken to reduce the levels of radon and radon decay daughters they were being exposed to. The end result was the needless deaths from lung cancer of hundreds, and perhaps thousands of American miners and mill workers.

Dr. John Goffman in his testimony concerning the human radiation experiments discussed the plight of the uranium miners in some detail, and the involvement of Dr. Merril Eisenbud in particular. He testified that Eisenbud was one of the first AEC scientists to clearly determine that the miners were being overexposed and that there would be an epidemic of lung cancers if something wasn't done about it. The AEC responded to Dr. Eisenbud's report by transferring him to another job at the AEC and Dr. Eisenbud kept quiet. The result was indeed a tragic and unnecessary epidemic of cancer among the miners, and years were to go by before proper actions were taken to protect the miners.

In the official findings of the Human Radiation Experiments Report prepared on Presidential orders, the actions of the AEC regarding the uranium miners was listed as the direct cause of the lung cancer epidemic among the miners, and was condemned in the strongest terms;

"The miners, who were the subject of government study as they mined uranium for use in weapons manufacturing, were subject to radon exposures well in excess of levels known to be hazardous. The government failed to act to require the reduction of the hazard by ventilating the mines, and it failed to adequately warn the miners of the hazard to which they were being exposed, even though such actions would likely have posed no threat to the national security."

It was during his work with the AEC on Project Sunshine that Dr. Eisenbud truly showed his expertise as a premier expert in fallout cover up. Project Sunshine was an outgrowth of efforts by the AEC to monitor worldwide fallout levels, not only in the air and water, but in animal and human tissue as well. It was conducted in secret until 1956 when it was made some what public as part of the efforts to reduce public concern over fallout, and to prevent such concerns from interfering with the on going testing program. Dr. Eisenbud was in charge of one of the three AEC laboratories involved in the program.

One of the key fallout isotopes being measured was strontium 90, an isotope with a long half life, and which was know as a bone seeker, in that the body failed to see a difference between it and normal calcium. It is absorbed and deposited in teeth and bone as calcium is. One of the ways to reduce the public relations problems with rising strontium 90 levels was to stop referring to the levels by standard radiological terms, and instead call them "Sunshine Units". Dr. Eisenbud was a key figure trotted before the press to assure the public that there was no danger from the strontium 90 fallout, and to assure them that the number of Sunshine Units people were receiving were well below that likely to cause cancers or other illnesses.

What the public was not told at the time, and were not to be told until the Presidential ordered report on Human Experimentation in the 1990's, was the darker side of Project Sunshine. According to the final findings of that report Project Sunshine;

"Project Sunshine, a worldwide program of data gathering, including human data gathering to measure the effects of fallout, was kept secret from its 1953 inception until 1956, and AEC officials and researchers employed deception in the solicitation of bones of deceased babies from intermediaries with access to human remains. It appears that concern for public relations played a key role in keeping the human data gathering, and the very existence of Project Sunshine, secret."

It was the "human data gathering" involved in Project Sunshine that clearly shows the efforts to which the AEC personnel went to, to maintain both secrecy concerning their activities, and to deceive the public about the potential fallout hazards they were being subjected to from the ongoing bomb tests. Under the project the AEC researchers literally engaged in "body snatching", covertly obtaining human tissue, mostly from dead babies, to study the worldwide levels of strontium 90 being released by the bomb tests. To do this they engaged in outright lies and deception, using third parties with access to the dead bodies they wanted samples from, and hiding the true purposes even from them, by stating they we doing "radium studies" and needed the tissues for that, not for studying fallout levels.

Even more important than the rather grotesque activities in covertly stealing tissue from dead babies, Project Sunshine over all engaged more in public relations management of fallout concerns than in fully providing the truth to the American public. In Chapter 13 of the report on human radiation experiments the issue of secrecy is discussed in great detail. The chapter ends with what must be kept as the relevant position regarding the assurances of no danger given by Project Sunshine officials during the 1950's, Dr. Merril Eisenbud included;

"AEC officials in general, headquarters staff members in particular, mostly preferred to reassure rather than inform. Convinced that trying to explain risks so small would simply confuse people and might cause panic, they feared jeopardizing the testing vital to American security. Their policy prevailed. A formal public relations plan became as much a part of every test as the technical operations plan. Carefully crafted press releases never to my knowledge lied, though they sometimes erred. Yet, by the same token, they rarely if ever revealed all. Choices about which truths to tell, which to omit, could routinely veil the larger implications of a situation. . ."

Aside from the basic over riding question of objectivity and credibility the past history of Dr. Eisenbud's involvement in AEC/DOE efforts to manage the public relations aspects of fallout, and how it is unacceptable that the same would be taking place with the NCI study, it should raise another equally relevant question. Why is there no open discussions on the part of the NCI, the DOE, or any other government agency on what are the health impacts of the other 359 radioactive isotopes that rained down across American along with the iodine 131 studied in the NCI report? Especially absent are such isotopes as Strontium 90 and Cesium 137. Perhaps it is time to push aside the public relations concerns and address those as well, especially when the cancers they and scores of others can cause are not as easily treatable as thyroid cancer, and their relationship to radiation exposure cannot be called a "weak link".

In recent days Senator Tom Harkin D-Iowa has called for such information to be released.

The last disturbing point concerning Dr. Eisenbud's involvement with down playing the importance of the NCI fallout report, stems from his deep personal involvement with a whole series of AEC/DOE Human Radiation Experiments. His testimony as part of the oral history of the human experiments is one of the most lengthy. To fully appreciate its significance to the matters at hand this writer strongly recommends the reader take the time and follow the link provided here, and carefully read and study his testimony for yourself.

One of the examples from the Human Experiment Oral History that caused this writer the most revulsion was Dr. Eisenbud's discussions concerning experiments on children. After discussing the problems in finding children for studies involving radioisotopes, and how it was easier to use institutionalized children as they could be monitored easier, Dr. Eisenbud talked about how he would obtain children from a pediatric unit of a New York hospital, remarking how the child would be given the radioactive material, sat in a chair for 20 minutes while the thyroid was scanned and concluded by remarking:

"The child has got a lollipop and has watched TV. ......Then, one day, I was asked whether we had informed consent. It never occurred to me that I would need it."

A person with that kind of historical baggage with the AEC's mishandling of nationwide fallout hazards, the lies and deceptions of Project Sunshine, and participation in a wide range of human radiation experiments, has no place today in 1997 in attempting to reassure the American public that the NCI's fallout report is nothing to worry about. If that is the best the NCI can do to find support for its position, the American public certainly has a damned lot to be concerned about. Likewise the media has some explaining to do as to why they didn't bother to check that historical record before allowing such parties to issue public relations assurances to the American people.

The last media spokesman for the NCI study, its head Dr. Bruce Wachholz also has a long work record with the AEC/DOE and has been involved in some of their worst public relations problems. As a member of the Department of Environment at the DOE Wachholz was deeply involved with dealing with the problems of the natives of the Marshall Islands, including the public relations flaps faced by the U.S. Government over thyroid cancer and other problems among those exposed to the 1954 Bravo test. He also dealt with studies of the health risks of the natives who had returned to Bikini Atoll in in 1960 as part of a U.S. effort to defuse international relations problems over the island being too hot for the natives to return. The U.S. response was to do a clean up program, declare the island safe, and return the natives. In 1978 the natives had to be removed once more because they were becoming contaminated from radioactive isotopes entering the food chain. Wachholz was involved in the follow up studies of those natives.

In addition he has been involved in a variety of panels and boards established to set radiological risk tables for various exposed groups such as members of the armed forces, downwind residents, and has an fairly extensive list of references among the documents contained in the Human Radiation Experiments Archive.

It should also be noted that a year before the NCI report became public Dr. Wachholz was involved in a major public relations flap over the report, when an advisory panel from the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) requested a copy of the fallout data from the NCI. The request was refused in a letter sent from the NCI to the CDC written by Dr. Bruce Wachholz. Members of the CDC charged publicly at the time that the NCI, and Dr. Wachholz were actively trying to suppress the study.

Given the above examples it is apparent that the National Cancer Institute has some explaining to do. Why, after failing to prevent the release of the fallout study, it is still trying to control the media, and most importantly the American public's response to the information contained in the report? It is also of interest that the NCI has not been forth coming with an official list of all those who made up the group that prepared the report itself. If the type of people being used by the NCI to defend its report, and to down play the significance of public health risks is any example, perhaps we have an answer to why we are not being told who wrote the report. One of the first actions taken to investigate the NCI's behavior regarding suppressing the report perhaps should be an extensive investigation into the ties to the agencies responsible for releasing the fallout in the first place, and in devoting decades to covering it up, among those involved with preparing the report, and in delaying its public release. Until that happens the cover up will continue.