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CNN Live Saturday
Weapon Used in Gulf War Blamed for New Civilian Casualties
Aired May 11, 2002 - 12:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: We turn our attention now to Iraq, as the U.S. considers confronting Saddam Hussein once again. A weapon used in the last engagement is being blamed for new civilian casualties. It is the depleted uranium bullet used in the 1991 Gulf War. CNN's Nic Robertson takes us to Iraq's southern city of Basra where the bullet is said to be the cause of sickness and death.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The tears are real. The anguish on this mother's face, unmistakable.
Her daughter, 8-year-old Maryanna (ph), has leukemia, we are told. For three years she's battled the cancer, but now it's gone to her brain and they fear she'll soon die.
"Tell Bush," she cries, "they've made a good weapon. Look at the disease in my child."
In this children's leukemia ward, no other parents argue her view. They're suffering today, the result of allied bombing in 1991. Iraqi cancer specialist Dr. Janan explains.
DR. JANAN GHLIB HASSAN, PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGIST: And in 2000, the percentage of cancer, all the cancer kids, is 242 percent.
ROBERTSON: Up 242 percent since the Gulf War, she says, because the area around this Basra hospital is close to Kuwait and was exposed to allied aircraft using depleted uranium, or DU, weapons.
HASSAN: Because (UNINTELLIGIBLE) inhaled, it is still in their lungs and still (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ROBERTSON: Deaths from cancers more frequent now, she says, because of a lack of drugs.
(on camera): Do you think he'll survive?
HASSAN: I don't know.
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Despite the anecdotal claims, the problem for many international experts evaluating the impact of DU weapons is Iraq's lack of hard, credible evidence. MICHAEL CLARK, BRITISH RADIOLOGICAL PROTECTION BOARD: There's very little evidence, actually, coming out of that area that's in the scientific literature that could be properly evaluated. There are only these claims. Not proper scientific or medical papers.
ROBERTSON: Even without hard scientific research, Dr. Janan says she is sure DU is behind the increase in cancers and an increase in birth defects.
HASSAN: Exposure of the product during the war and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the war, most of them in soldiers, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), and scientifically speaking, this may be (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
ROBERTSON: In her office, Dr. Janan shows me pictures of children she says were born congenitally deformed. We track one of them down.
Zana Jasin (ph) is 1 1/2 years old. She was born with improperly formed arms and hands. Her mother, Mase (ph), tells me her husband was a soldier and drank from a DU-contaminated well in the desert. She shows how Zana Jasin (ph) tells her there is something wrong with her hands. She says she kisses them to make them better. Mase (ph) says she knows there's no cure, but despite blood tests says she's afraid to have more children.
DR. JAWAD AL-ALI, BASRA ONCOLOGY CENTER: It's not easy to confirm that the depleted uranium is present in the patient, because usually it is present in a very minute amounts which can't be detected by simple instruments, and we haven't got these instruments.
ROBERTSON: On the streets of Basra these days, everything looks normal. But Iraqi scientists surveying radiation levels a few years ago claim 45 percent of the population is at an increased risk of developing cancer. Cancer experts here expect 1,600 new cases this year. That's 116 per 100,000 people, 10 times the figure prior to the Gulf War, they say. Although they also say radiation levels in the city are back to normal now.
AL-ALI: But if you go to the desert, you know, it's different. You will find very high levels of radiation. And this could be carried by dust, by winds. It carries the dust which is contaminated by particles.
ROBERTSON: It is the airborne contamination that worries most Iraqi experts, who say 2,000 square kilometers of desert are affected.
(on camera): Some Western scientists say that civilians are at the most risk from depleted uranium munitions long after the conflict is over, when the spent shells are embedded in the ground and contaminate food and water supplies.
In those affected areas, they say that children are at the highest risk, because they play in the soil and have high hand-to- mouth contact. (voice-over): Of all the dangers on these former battlefields, international experts say it is the intact munitions that have the highest radiation risk, not the desert dust the Iraqis blame for the surge in cancer cases.
CLARK: In order to get a significant dose of radiation from the dust from a spent DU round, they'd have to inhale choking levels of dust. So you couldn't be exposed without knowing it. You'd be coughing and sputtering and finding it actually very difficult to breathe. And that's based on accurate calculations and experimental evidence.
ROBERTSON: Of the six children we were shown, all appeared genuinely sick. However, their illnesses may not fit internationally expected norms for DU contamination.
CLARK: If there was a genuine excess of uranium in the diets or in people breathing it in, so let's say the average person in southern Iraq was actually ingesting a lot of uranium, what you'd expect to see first is kidney problems from the chemical action of uranium, not the radioactivity. That, again, is the accepted scientific medical consensus of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium.
ROBERTSON: The facts here appear buried in politics. For those on the losing end of the struggle for understanding, their grasp of the facts seems no stronger than their weakening grip on life.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Basra, Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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