September 5, 2005: On the occasion of the UN Chernobyl Forum from September 6 to 7 in Vienna on the effects of the reactor meltdown on the environment and health, IPPNW Germany demands the revocation of the agreement between WHO and IAEA of May 28 1959. This agreement ensures the proponents of nuclear energy and physicists in IAEA control over research programmes, their results and publications of WHO physicians that cover the health effects of the civilian use of nuclear energy and ensuing accidents. "The general public is not being protected from the dangers and risks of nuclear energy. Rather they are being protected from the truth! WHO is bound by an adhesion contract. Science at WHO is only allowed within the narrow limits defined by the IAEA!" criticised Angelika Claußen, Chair of IPPNW Germany. She calls for independent research into the effects of Chernobyl.
Studies conducted for the International Chernobyl Project of the IAEA took place from January 1990 to the end of February 1991. In 1990 alone, Professor Edmund Lengfelder of the Otto Hug Radiological Institute identified that the rate of new cases of thyroid cancers in children in Belarus was 30 times higher than the 10 year average before Chernobyl. But the IAEA report states: "The official data that were examined did not indicate a marked increase in the incidence of leukaemia or cancers. (
) Reported adverse health effects attributed to radiation were not substantiated either by those local studies that were adequately performed or by the studies under the Project
(
) The children who were examined were found to be generally healthy. (
) " As later independent research by the BBC has shown, all the important facts, including the evidence of a large increase in thyroid cancer, were already in the hands of the IAEA in 1991.
Nine years later, in a press release of June 13 2000, the IAEA stated: "Apart from the substantial increase in thyroid cancer after childhood exposure
.there is no evidence of a major public health impact related to ionizing radiation 14 years after the Chernobyl accident. No increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality that could be associated with radiation exposure have been observed." This assertion of the UN scientific committee has been proven to be incorrect. It denies that there has been a massive increase in thyroid cancers in adults and an increase in other types of cancers.
The IAEA press announcement for the present conference claims that 4000 deaths will result from the Chernobyl accident. This number includes 50 emergency workers, nine children who died of thyroid cancer and an estimated 3940 deaths from radiation-induced cancer and leukaemia. Even today, WHO still claims on its home page that there are "only" 30 deaths. How long do we still have to wait until the truth at last is revealed?
Further information (in German): www.ippnw.de/index.php and Dr. Angelika Claußen, M.D., Tel: +49-521-132877
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