Originally posted by pseudobrit
I'd say there's a lot of smoke coming from the gun up in the Balkans too, where the cancer rates are similarly high to those in Iraq around the "hot spots" where DU was deployed, AND the troops are experiencing "Balkan Syndrome."
And there were also chronic health issues in Korea, WW-II and -I, where we know that DU hadn't been employed because it hadn't been invented yet.
My point is that there's very reasonable explanations for these observed health issues, if we're able to objectively look (just takes time, money and science). For example, we know that there's a lot of adverse health effects from injesting fine particles, be they plaster or be they asbestos insulation, including cancer. And we know tha any old bomb is sufficient to pulverize a building to release these agents. In doing the science, have we practiced due care in assuring that we've properly run down through the causality budget to attribute the appropriate percentages for each cause? Well, if we're blaming everything on just the "latest and greatest" tech element, then the answer is no: we've failed to be scientifically objective in our risk attributions budget.
It turns out that radioactive elements cause much quicker symptoms that science had determined it would -- Chernobyl taught us that.
And looking at Bikini Atoll, many the adverse health effects have subsided far more rapidly than suspected: Bikini is now open to human visitation after only a 50 year quarrentine from multiple (around a dozen?) atomic blasts. Today, the only significant health restriction is to not eat any land vegitation that accumulatees Cesnium (sic), such as coconuts.
The epidemiology facts can mislead, but there are too many circumstances here to say that DU is safe until proven harmful.
Because the science is not complete, we're obligated to predict the implications based on trends observed in lower forms (rats, etc). The current general conclusion is that there are no gross and obvious health issues that have been found to be expected. We're still a long ways to having 100% fidelity on any human biological process: for example, we don't even know every process step by which cigarettes cause cancer! But the bottom line is that to the best of my knowledge, there's no obvious "low hanging fruit" that warn us of unaccepable significant long term hazards.
Comparing swallowing uranium or plutonium to taking an airline flight is a fallacy -- the flight exposes you to outside radiation over your entire body.
No, its not. The macroscopic effects of point and area doses are what have been historically examined and compared, because the resolution to do the science in any other form did not exist.
The science today is improving, but because of research resourcing limitations, logically, when you macroscopically have observed no significant hazard, you're unlikely to waste the resources to repeat the experiment. If you're examining if a new vaccine is effective for a deadly disease, your first figure of merit is but binary: "did the patient live or die?"
{knive} Does this metaphor make the danger clear?
It makes your approach clear.
Now continue your illustration and reduce the resolution with which you can view your scene. There will become a point where the only conclusion that you would be able to draw from that fatality is that it was likely due to a loss of blood, and you don't know how that loss of blood was caused.
That's where we're really at.
And when you know that there's many other possible environmental hazards for that subject - - car accident, animal attack, hemophelia, etc - - if you lack the resolution to identify the specific cause, it is scientifically irresponsible to jump to the conclusion that any one possible cause is strongly favored over any of the others.
-hh
) and then attack the vets as being "fakers" when they get sick from fighting? Talk about exploitation.
