Chernobyl Legacy
The Chernobyl legacy is the subject of a webmontage that is very powerful and raises some unique bioethical issues. There is little written about the devastating legacy of malformed and mentally challenged child victims of the disaster, and this photojournalist has created a searing, narrated set of images that I encourage my colleagues to view.- Paul Root Wolpe
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What evidence is there that these congenital problems increased after the disaster, or linking such an increase to the fallout? This is indeed a searing portrait of inhumane treatment of fellow human beings (children being fed on the floor, etc), and we should be rightfully disturbed by it. But I can't tell from the video whether it has actually been established that the rate of birth defects rose by a statistically valid amount after the fallout. The WHO Chernobyl report I just pulled up at http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/who_chernobyl_report_2006.pdf seems to indicate (to my relatively untrained eye) that the increase is not substantial, and not enough to account for the majority of the children seen in the video.
What is the increase, has it been firmly established?
mary
- by mary on Apr 28, 2006 at 10:48 AM | link
Very disturbing and thought provoking.
- by Sheila on Apr 28, 2006 at 12:19 PM | link
Too bad the site is not visible for those who use Firefox :-(
- by Fritz on Apr 28, 2006 at 6:54 PM | link
Excellent comment from Mary. I'm also interested in the real impact of Chernobyl. There will be birth defects and childhood cancers in any population, due purely to the genetic potluck that is conception.
Everyone assumes that any of these conditions in Ukraine must be caused by fallout/radiation, but I haven't really seen a good paper that establishes a link. I'm afraid it might be a case of "seems so, must be so" public perception...
- by Dave on Jun 6, 2006 at 3:42 PM | link
Chernobyl, one of the most polluted places. Here http://pripyat.com/en/photo_gallery/ - more than 6000 photos from
this territory. More than 20 years passed, but knowbody knows exactly what is going on there. Also there are
articles, ivestigations, news
- by panda on Oct 20, 2006 at 10:45 AM | link