Curious indeed

During the past three weeks I've been following a bogus story about birth-defects in Fallujah. Well, the birth-defects and illnesses part appears, sadly, to be true. The claim, made recently in a pay-to-publish journal, that the cause is depleted uranium is demonstrably flawed.

Although the "worse than Hiroshima" headline that accompanied coverage in the Independent was obviously going to generate interest, the story seems to have spread very rapidly. More than once, reading blogs and so forth, I'd wondered that it was being orchestrated and pushed.

As an added twist, the Tehran Times had reported, "Iraq's Ministry for Human Rights is expected to file a lawsuit against Britain and the U.S. over their use of depleted uranium bombs in Iraq."

It's not entirely implausible that with Iran's nuclear reactor about to start up there is something perhaps like a campaign to bring the potential of genetic damage to the fore as a sort of scare story or cautionary tale, in the hope that this will help to stave off a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Their new reactor is about to be started up in the next few days.

@ AndyS

> Care to provide some links?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

http://iopscience.iop.org/0952-4746/28/1/E03/pdf/jrp8_1_e03.pdf

http://www.infowars.com/deformed-babies-in-fallujah/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2360164/

http://www.rerf.or.jp/radefx/genetics_e/sexratio.html

http://artsci.wustl.edu/~copeland/atomicbomb.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dioxin-Contamination-Disrupts-Birth-Sex-Ratio-More-Girls-Than-Boys-69332.shtml

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Texans_Sue_KBR,_Halliburton_Over_War-Zone_Burn_Pits

> Actually, care to mention why you're spurting off here?

a) The health problem in Fallujah, and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan, appears to be absolutely ghastly and deserves attention;

b) hijacking the real cause in order to bolster the campaign against depleted uranium doesn't help matters;

c) the politicians and journalists to whom I've sent details haven't yet responded;

and so d) the hack into the Human Genetics Commission website, which may perhaps be related (e.g. birth defects) to some of the stuff I've been seeing, gives me an opportunity to bring the likely chemical poisoning to the attention of a bunch of technically competent people.