Nuclear victims rally

Press, 16 April 1980, Page 8

Nuclear victims rally

NZPA-Reuter Washington. - Ailing American victims ' of radiation, exposure have gone to the White* House with a report demanding that government and industry take responsibility for using them as “guinea pigs.” Some of the 50 members of the delegation blind or in wheelchairs, others had no hair, andmany were suffering from a variety of cancers. They said their suffering was caused by massive radiation doses in connection with atomic blasts or working in the United States nuclear industry’. One former serviceman who was involved in weapons tests said he had terminal cancer and had lost four children and four grandchildren to radiationrelated genetic problems. Some had witnessed at close range several of the 235 United States nuclear weapons tests, staged in Nevada and the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific between 1946 and 1962. Others cleaned up bomb sites at Horoshinia and Nagasaki in 1945. The report was based on “citizens hearings for radiation victims” at the weekend where evidence was offered by scientists, doctors, nuclear-industry workers, and people living near test sites. “Without exception, these ;victims have expressed the [feelings that they were used (as guinea pigs,” the report isaid. | “The Federal Government ;must accept its responsibility for its experimentations.” ■ The experiments on human response to atomic blasts were disclosed in. .Defence Department documents released in 1978 under the Freedom of Information Act. I The report demanded an end to all such experiments. It also called for a com'pensation law to be enacted (for radiation victims.