Cancer, Nuclear Weapons and Dirty Tricks

From: Counterpunch

The United Kingdom Veterans of the Atomic Atmospheric Testing in the Pacific and Australia have always maintained that they suffered harm, including cancer and leukemia. The government has consistently denied this.

Its argument is that except for very few of them, no-one received a radiation ‘dose’ significantly different from natural background. This was recently affirmed by the new Minister when she refused to concede that the test veterans were any different from any other ex-servicemen.

There have been two challenges. The first was an action against the Ministry of Defence taken by a group of some 900 veterans in the Royal Courts of Justice. This case (AB and others vs Ministry of Defence) was handled by Rosenblatt Solicitors of London on a pro-bono basis.

I was commissioned from the start in 2009 as an expert witness on this case. My position was essentially that the radiation risk model (the model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, ICRP) on which the whole case pivoted, had been proven to be unsafe by new scientific developments and by epidemiology.

The initial focus of this case was on Limitation (it happened too long ago) was won at the beginning of 2012 but then overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court. The second approach is the theme of this article.

The Veterans Pensions Appeals

Test veterans (or their wives, if they have died) may apply for a pension if they can show that their illness may have been caused by their service. The MoD has always refused such pensions. The level of proof in these cases is very low: there only need be “doubt” about causality based on reliable evidence. Any refusal decision can be referred to an Appeals Tribunal.

Beginning with Eva Adshead in 2006, I began to be brought in as an expert in these appeals. The story of the first appeal, for Gerald Adshead is given in Wolves of Water (Busby 2007).

The appeal was successful: the Secretary of State’s decision was overturned. From then on, I was brought in on 5 appeals, and also on a coroner jury case on Depleted Uranium and Cancer.

In those appeals that made it to the Tribunal, and the jury case, all were successful. But in 2010 there was a change in the process.

There were three outstanding cases which I had agreed to represent, where expert reports had been submitted, and which had been endlessly delayed – so much so that two of the veterans I had helped, Dawn Pritchard and Derek Hatton actually died before they came to the Tribunal.

These three cases were put together with 12 other cases and the whole bunch was ordered heard together. Apparently the Secretary of State was concerned that some cases had been won (mine) and some lost (not mine) and this was unfair to the veterans.

So there was to be this major combined case, which would set a precedent for all the cases that might follow – including some that had already followed and were being ‘stayed’ pending the outcome of the combined appeal.

What had been small local affairs had now hotted up to become a mega case in London lasting three weeks.

I was approached by Rosenblatt who asked me to act as expert witness for all the appellants. The outcome of this combined Pensions Appeals case would influence their decision on the High Court action. There was no money, they said, but would I do it anyway? I agreed, and produced several reports over three years.

Secret and missing evidence

In the course of the earlier litigation I had looked through all the paperwork Rosenblatt had assembled, all the historic reports and letters and documents relating to the test sites and exposures, maybe 30 large ring binders.

My arguments were all about internal exposures to the fallout, exposures which the MoD denied occurred as (they said) bombs were exploded far from where the veterans were.

I had been struck by the fact that although the MoD kept arguing that there had been no exposures, there were hardly any radioactivity measurements. So I made a Freedom of Information request for all documents containing any “radiation measurements”.

After a long time, and much stalling, the MoD sent a list of some 40 documents. I was told that I could have copies of two of these and I had to choose which ones. This was because “to photocopy more than two would exceed the £600 limit on copying defined in the Freedom of Information Act.” (Yes!)

The list omitted some reports which I had already obtained from contacts in Australia and so they were clearly holding back. I complained and haggled. By then I had figured it out. I had obtained reports on the clean-up of the Christmas Island runway carried out in 1963, after the tests were over.

Uranium mysteriously missing

(FULL ARTICLE---LINK)