Life's Delicate Balance
Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer
by Janette D. Sherman, M.D.

Excerpts from Chapter 5
RADIATION
From Bikini Island to Long Island

"I call Heaven and Earth to witness this day:  I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse.  
Choose life -- that you and your offspring shall live."
The Bible, Deut. 30:19

RADIATION FORGOTTEN  

The short term memory of this nation appears remarkably impaired: a kind of collective Alzheimer's condition... whether this impairment is purposeful or by neglect remains to be seen.

A slim volume, Operation Crossroads - The Official Pictorial of the first atomic bomb tests on the Marshall Islands, published over fifty years ago is enough to give a person nightmares.  How did these tests and subsequent releases of radioactive material from 800-plus bomb detonations remain so buried in the public's memory?

In a foreword to the book, Vice Admiral Blandy, the Commander of Operation Crossroads, wrote of the atomic bomb: [it] "is the most lethal destructive agent yet devised by man.  Its energy release is staggering; its radioactivity is slow-killing poison."

...

This was an exercise in killing: "The islands were sprayed with DDT to insure healthful condition of the Task Force personnel" and "Rotenone [a pesticide toxic to fish] was placed in the current along the outer reef, and fish gathered in as they came to the surface," so that they might be identified and tested.

In 1954 the fallout from a hydrogen bomb test released on Bikini Atoll reached nearby Rongelap.  Examinations by Dr. Rosalie Bertell found that of 76 "unexposed" Marshall Islanders who returned to Rongelap in 1957, 60% had lowered blood monocyte counts as of 1961. By 1982-86, only 13.7% of 58 remaining Rongelapese had entirely normal blood counts. As for the population who were exposed to the radioactive fallout, as of 1993, Brookhaven National Laboratory with US Congressional funding, still had not released complete blood count data on the exposed Rongelapese

There are questions about Long Island's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and other nearby nuclear facilities contributions to cancer in adults and children.  New York States' Attorney General charged that BNL's owner, Associated Universities, "had covered up evidence of widespread contamination, quoting an expert who described it as 'an unanalyzed, undocumented nuclear waste dump.'"  

The release of radioactive materials into the air and water by BNL and the surrounding nuclear power plants, combined with wide-spread chemical contamination, are suspected to be significant factors in the breast cancer epidemic by the people living in Nassau and Suffolk counties of Long Island.  A $19 million study to address the issue of high breast cancer rates on Long Island barely addresses chemical pollution, and the radiation issue, not at all.

A look at any map showing either cancer incidence or cancer deaths demonstrates that no cancers are randomly distributed throughout the population --- not any cancers, not anywhere in the world, not even lung cancer.