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"We live on a recycling earth. You can’t put poison
into a recycling earth. We’re damaging the seed… that’s a death process.
We’re seeing it crop up as breast cancer, mentally retarded and hyperkinetic
kids. We’re seeing it crop up as infertility, and we’re seeing animal
species destroyed.
But we don’t seem
to have quite said ‘yes, that’s us. That’s our planet, that’s what we
did, and let’s stop it."
Dr. Rosalie Bertell , Breast Cancer Conference,
Austin TX, 2/1994
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Radioactive contamination--of our planet, fellow
species, our own bodies and future generations--is the single greatest risk to
our well-being today. We can’t see it, feel it or smell it. Few people
have the equipment to measure it. What is measured is often kept secret from the
public by the government and the nuclear industry. But it is there. It scares
us, but we don't talk about it. And so the problem grows.
As early as December 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission was
warned by its own consultants that "cancer is a significant industrial
hazard of the atomic energy business." Numerous studies have confirmed this
over the years.
High incidence of breast cancer and birth defects have been
linked to neighboring nuclear reactors. Connections between cancers, coronary
heart disease, and excessive medical x-rays are well established. Genetic damage
can cause increasing health problems and learning disorders in the descendants
of those originally exposed.
The most severely affected sectors of the U.S.
population--atomic miners, workers and veterans--have to compete for meager
benefits only recently made available by the government.
The rest of us can’t
even get the truth.
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Why Isn't This a Serious Part of
Our National Dialogue?
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County by county data exists for risk of thyroid cancer
from nuclear bomb testing. Winds carried fallout across the nation and
beyond. Why is the Dept. of
Health & Human Services stalling on sending
this report to Congress? Where is the information to discuss with our doctors our own level
of risk and how it may affect our children?
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80% of breast cancer is environmentally caused and
therefore preventable, but we hear more about diet, smoking and family
history than the nuclear industry.
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Medical experiments were deliberately and secretly
conducted on the most vulnerable members of our society—school children,
remote Native communities, mental patients, prisoners, soldiers and sailors.
Where is our outrage?
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Transportation of nuclear ores, metals, fuels, weapons
and wastes has resulted in numerous accidents and near-misses. Current
proposals will magnify the problem exponentially. Do you know where the
routes are?
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Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions are known to cause
disease in exposed U.S. veterans and civilian populations, and serious
birth defects in their children. Why does the U.S. continue to contaminate
nation after nation, as well as bases and firing ranges at home?
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U.S. nuclear powered space stations and mining colonies
on the Moon and Mars will begin a whole new era of nuclear waste production
within the next decade.
U.S. Star Wars plans are nuclear capable. How will U.S. dominance of space-based resources affect global peace?
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For over fifty years the U.S. government contaminated all
of North America, South Pacific islands, and much of the world’s oceans
with radiation. Why isn’t nuclear policy an important part of the
political debate?
Like an alcoholic family--where emotional survival is
maintained by an unspoken agreement not to discuss the disease openly--we are
living in a condition of nuclear denial.
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