WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT HIDING ABOUT VETERANS' CANCERS?

RB Stuart, Huffington Post - As early as 2007, four years after the war in Iraq, the medical journal Lancet Oncology observed a trend: that several cancer registries were being locked out of Veteran’s Administration data beginning late 2004 (a year after the war in Iraq). For decades the VA had voluntarily shared its data, allowing access to cancer patients. A Centers for Disease Control spokesman said that as a result of the lock out, “Potentially, 40 000 to 70 000 cases were missed nationally each year.” With the national estimate of cases askew, the spike in cancer rates of soldiers being diagnosed with cancer post 2003 deployment - remains unreported.

I have tracked nearly 40 soldiers since 2006 who have been diagnosed with rare, aggressive forms of cancer post-tour. Half have already died. The DoD and VA are less then forthright about this pattern – even as they approach the seventh anniversary of the war this March. The environmental culprit: depleted uranium and most recently the carcinogenic smoke from burn pits.

The United Nations Environment Programme has been conducting measurements of DU sites in Kosovo since 2000, later including Serbia, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq (the latter to be found with 42 contaminated sites). Their “Depleted Uranium Awareness” pamphlet admits there is a DU concern - but down-plays the cancer risks. DU is unable to penetrate the skin, but once there is inhalation or ingestion of the radiological DU dust, its toxicity has the ability to radiate the lungs and gut (multiplying in the cells).

Their projected time frame after exposure is 10 – 20 years before symptoms appear. But that is far from the truth, as soldiers lay ravaged in VA hospitals across the U. S. - or their family’s, kneeling at the foot of a needless grave, know all too well. Privy to the VA data since 2003, the DoD is familiar with their diagnosis of an uncontrollable wildfire of rare cancer, appearing four to 36 months after exposure. . .