Dr. Caldicott’s lecture on banning nuclear weapons; Dai Williams on the health effects of depleted uranium weapons
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Protest sign, Washington, D.C. (flickr.com/photos/kalavinka)
First up on this week’s program is a lecture
Dr. Caldicott gave in Berkeley, California in June 2009, primarily focused on the need to ban nuclear weapons. She raises the central role played by the University of California in the production of U.S. nuclear warheads, the enormous theft of U.S. tax money to fund weapons and killing, the psychology associated with military might and abuse of power, and the urgent need for America’s scientific minds to be redirected from death toward saving the earth
and meeting human needs. She touches on the U.S. military’s first-strike policy, nuclear winter, and the psychic numbing that people use to block out the continuing danger of a global nuclear holocaust. She also describes in detail the medical effects of nuclear war, including the little-known effects of fire damage, and emphasizes how such a catastrophic event could happen by accident or design at any time.
Helen Caldicott, M.D.
Later in the speech, Dr. Caldicott addresses global warming and deforestation, which is intricately linked with climate change. She explains the ramifications of the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the U.S military, including the enormous increase in cancer incidence and birth defects in Iraq from the use of DU. The interview with Dai Williams later in the program gives more insight into the horrific health effects of DU weapons. Near the conclusion of her talk, Dr. Caldicott offers solutions to the nuclear and environmental problems she described, including implementation of the green-energy strategies in the report Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with Carbon-Free author, engineer Dr. Arjun Makhijani. She also recommends the audience read her book If You Love This Planet (WW Norton 2009), which covers all major environmental problems in great depth and provides ample solutions plus an appendix full of resources.
For more information on some of the topics in Dr. Caldicott’s lecture, listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interviews with nuclear-war fire-damage expert Lynn Eden, and with nuclear-winter researcher Prof. Alan Robock. Read the articles How Did an Idealistic President Become a Champion of Nuclear Power and By Default, Weapons Proliferation?, ‘Peace Prize’ President Submits Largest War Budget Ever, and Obama and the Works of Death. Hear Dr. Caldicott’s conversation with nuclear-war expert and former missile launch officer Bruce Blair, Ph.D. Listen to Dr. Caldicott’s interview with military spending experts Ellen Augustine and Barry Hermanson. Also hear Dr. Caldicott’s dialogues with Prof. Hugh Gusterson about the psychology of mindset of nuclear weapons designers and with global warming specialist Dr. James Hansen. Visit the Web pages of Tri Valley CARES and the Western States Legal Foundation which monitor U.S. nuclear weapons labs and campaign to ban nuclear weapons. Also check out the work of Beyond Nuclear, Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), Physicians for Social Responsibility, Global Zero and Abolition 2000, all of which are committed to nuclear disarmament.
Depleted uranium ammunition aboard the USS Missouri. Photo: Phan Brad Dillon, U.S. Navy
The last third of this episode (starting at 42:59) is an interview Dr. Caldicott conducted with Dai Williams, a British psychologist, occupational health expert and peace activist who has done extensive research on the cumulative effects of radioactive toxins, and the use of depleted uranium weapons by the U.S. military. This interview was part of Pacifica Radio’s The New Nuclear Danger series (2005) hosted by
Dr. Caldicott. Williams explains how he first heard about the toxicity of depleted uranium weapons from environmental epidemiologist Rosalie Bertell, PhD, GNSH. Dr. Caldicott provides some background on the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium (DU) by reading from her book The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex (2004). Williams talks about the military’s willingness to win battles using radioactive materials while they simultaneously cover up the health effects of DU. Dr. Caldicott analogizes how the Pentagon won’t talk about nuclear winter, though they concur this phenomenon would occur after a global nuclear war. Williams mentions a book by psychologist Irving Janus (Victims of Groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes, 1972). He then describes in detail how DU weapons hit their targets, and provides some shocking information about how NATO covered up its use of DU in the Balkans region. He describes the various radioactive weapons the U.S. has used since 1991. William says he is concerned that there will be an increasing number of U.S. veterans from the 2003 Iraq War and their families who will suffer devastating health effects from soldiers’ exposure to DU (his concerns have been amply validated in the four+ years since this interview first aired). Dr. Caldicott says she is eager for more verification about the extent of depleted uranium use.
Dai Williams
For more information on DU, visit the websites of WISE Uranium Project and the Depleted Uranium Project. See the report Depleted Uranium: Scientific Basis for Assessing Risk. Watch the documentaries Gulf War Syndrome: Killing Our Own and Poison Dust on-line. Read the 2009 article Legacy of War: Iraq Littered With High Levels of Nuclear and Dioxin Contamination, Study Finds: Greater rates of cancer and birth defects - Depleted uranium among poisons implicated as well as earlier articles Gulf War II Syndrome? Military Equipment and “Pneumonia”, Gulf War Syndrome, Depleted Uranium and the Dangers of Low-Level Radiation, Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium, and Army shells pose cancer risk in Iraq: Depleted uranium causing high radioactivity levels. Read Gulf War I veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles’s novel Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War. To see innumerable photos of the terrible birth defects caused by DU exposure, search on Google.com for “depleted uranium” and click Images. See the March 4, 2010 news articles Docs Blame U.S. Weapons for Fallujah Birth Defects and Disturbing story of Fallujah’s birth defects.