Japanese and United Nations authorities have placed "a cone of silence" over medical information an endangered Japanese public is entitled to have about the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown.
"It is obvious that there is collaboration between the World Health Organization(WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) and also the Japanese government"to hide, to lie, and to cover-up vital medical information that must be made available to the Japanese population," says Dr. Helen Caldicott, the medical doctor who has been showered with honors and awards for her long-time opposition to the dangers of nuclear power manufacture and nuclear war.
"Many doctors have been ordered not to inform their patients that their symptoms could be related to radiation, leaving them in a state of despair," Dr.Caldicott says. (They) "need to know the truth about their situation and that of their children."
Dr. Caldicott, who has received 21 honorary doctorates for her work, says that to make matters worse, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "has passed a secrecy law which will almost certainly intimidate the media from keeping a very close watch over the tenuous (nuclear) plant."
The government, she says, and Tokyo Electric Power Co.(TEPCO), "have been reluctant to divulge reliable data and information about radioactive releases, the ongoing state of the severely damaged reactors, the continuous outflow of radioactive water into the sea, and the possibility of a serious accident and radiation release in the event of another earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale which could well trigger the collapse of the seriously damaged buildings numbers 3 and 4."
Damaged Building 3 contains over 100 tons of molten radioactive fuel which "would almost certainly release massive quantities of radioactive elements"threatening millions of people with radioactive contamination," Dr. Caldicott points out.
She goes on to say that if precariously damaged Building 4 should collapse, 400 tons of extremely radioactive fuel will plunge 100 feet to the ground, releasing its cooling water with possible ignition of the fuel. This could release ten times more cesium than was released at Chernobyl or the equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
Since the meltdowns three years ago, 400 tons of polluted radioactive water have been flowing from Fukushima continuously into the Pacific Ocean every day, Dr. Caldicott says.
Dr. Caldicott reminds that the IAEA published reports after the April 26, 1986, meltdown of the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Soviet Russia, that "there were no health effects due to radiation exposure." This was an astonishing piece of misinformation as, according to one reliable report, by the year 2009, some 1 million Europeans had died. In Belarus alone, the percentage of healthy children dropped from 80% before the catastrophe to 20% afterwards.
What's more, of the 800,000 healthy youngsters called "liquidators" brought in by the Government from around Russia to fight the burning reactor, within 19 years more than 120,000 were dead.
Dr. Caldicott urged the public to "demand that TEPCO and the Japanese government continually inform the public about the events that are and will be occurring at the Fukushima reactors, without cover-ups and denials of the facts."
Should another major release of radiation occur, she said, the public must be informed immediately and evacuation begun immediately.#
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