Professor Youri Bandajevsky 

An appraisal by Professor Michel Fernex  

(Interview conducted by Mrs Ballantyne of the Woman's International League  for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and by Professor Andreas Nidecker of  Physicians for Social Responsibility  (PSR)

Following the interview of Professors Ostapenko, Kenigsberg and of Dr.Minenko concerning the scientific value of the work of Professor Youri I. Bandazhevsky, we asked the opinion of Michel Fernex,  Doctor of Medicine, Professor emeritus of Bâle University, Switzerland, and of Mrs Solange Fernex, ex European MP and president of the French section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. (WILPF)

Question:  Have you any first hand knowledge of the  Institute where Professor Bandazhevsky worked? 

Professor Michel Fernex:  I visited the Institute of Medicine of Gomel in autumn 1998 and was highly impressed by the level of this Faculty of Medicine.  Discussions with lecturers and staff showed the extent of their knowledge with regard to the health consequences of Chernobyl  and there was an active participation by the students during their courses.

As a pathologist and histologist having worked in Switzerland, France and Sweden with World Health Organisation grants (WHO) as well as in Senegal, I was in a position to appreciate the remarkable standards of this institute – with active researchers, small groups of assiduous, attentive students and impressive collections. 

Professor Bandazhevsky had prepared, for a parliamentary committee, which had arrived from Minsk the day before, a collection of the congenital malformations collected by his Institute over a period of 15 days (following therapeutic abortions or stillbirths). The number of malformations exhibited corresponded to what one might  expect over a 12 month period before the Chernobyl incident.

Question: What can you say with regards to the medical work of Bandazhevsky?

Professor Michel Fernex:   It is work of exceptional importance.  In no way do I share the criticisms formulated by the scientists whom you interviewed. In just a few sentences, it is impossible to give a full account of the numerous studies of Professor Bandazhevsky. I will focus on only one example, in a field  in which I myself worked, cardiomyopathy.

As a specialist in tropical diseases, I studied postpartum cardiomyopathy (rare in Europe) in Dakar as well as the cardiomyopathy of beriberi, an epidemic vitamin deficiency found in populations with diets consisting primarily of  white rice.

Bandazhevsky has described the "cardiomyopathy of Caesium" (Cs137): cardiac disorders in young children, but  also found among adolescent and adult populations, and consisting of  a degeneration of the cardiac muscle. It is characterised by progressive cardiac insufficiency, and cardiac arrhythmia.  After a certain duration of intoxication by Cs137, the disease becomes  irreversible.  Sudden death can occur at all ages, even in childhood.

This cardiomyopathy will, one day, bear the name of "Disease of Bandazhevsky", as it is was Bandazhevsky who, with the assistance of the physicists of the Belrad institute of radio-protection, demonstrated the constant correlation between high level Cs137 in the organism and functional heart disorders.

He measured, post mortem, the level of Cs137 per kg in the heart and described the characteristic morphological deterioration of cardiomyopathies: degeneration of cardiac fibres in the absence of significant cellular infiltrates or inflammation, and also in the absence  of coronary obliteration.
 

Question: Did Bandazhevsky express any wish that his name should be given to the disease?

Professor Michel Fernex:  No. Bandazhevsky takes a more global view of things.   Among the organs he studied, it is  the endocrine glands, the thyroid and the pancreas which accumulate the most Cs137. The heart and the spleen (immune system) come in 2nd and 3rd position. During pregnancy, it is the placenta which suffers from high  concentrations of Cs137. This leads to endocrine disorders, foetal anomalies, abortions, or children who are fragile after birth.

In Bandazhevsky's view, Cs137 causes a generalised  metabolic disorder, attacking all the organs, even  the brain. This metabolic disorder is not unlike beriberi, which also affects all the organs, sometimes the nervous system, especially in chronic cases, and often the heart.

The comparison goes beyond the clinical syndromes. If the radio-caesium intoxication ceases in time, the disease is reversible. The same applies to beriberi: provided B1 vitamin is given in time.

Question: Can this cardiomyopathy be cured?

Professor Michel Fernex: Bandazhevsky has worked in this field with Vassily B. Nesterenko, professor of nuclear physics.  They have shown that both in children and laboratory animals, given a proper diet, low in Cs137,  irreversible damage  to the heart can be avoided.

In their teaching programme designed for schools in the  Gomel area, they have focussed on "prevention": learning how to eat so as to avoid contamination. Unfortunately, a caesium-free diet is expensive. Ever since the catastrophe the poor have continued to contaminate themselves with  home grown produce (vegetables, fruit and milk from  their own cows) as well as wild  grown produce; blackberries,  mushrooms, fish.

In the most serious cases, the best solution would be to move the families out of the area to the non contaminated zones, as Nesterenko recommended as early as 1986. As this is impossible, one has to resort to intermittent courses of treatment using the drug pectin,  a sugar extracted from  apple which accelerates the elimination of caesium.

Question: Is the fact that the UNSCEAR does not cite the work of Bandazhevsky a proof of their inadequacy as is claimed by Professor Kenigsberg?

Mrs Solange Fernex:  

The 2000 UNSCEAR report on Chernobyl was very severely criticised in the United Nations Assembly by the delegations from Bélarus and Ukraine. Regardless of all the evidence,  the only consequence of the Chernobyl catastrophe that they acknowledge is 1800 child thyroid cancers  -  nothing more: "no increase in the total incidence of cancers" (paragraph 413), "the risk of leukaemia has not increased" (paragraph 413) "no increase in congenital malformations, or premature babies or stillbirths  (paragraph 383), in short, UNSCEAR claims " the majority of people in the Chernobyl area can look forward to a positive future"  (paragraph 421).

And yet, in September 2000, the President of Belarus, A. Loukachenko launched an appeal to the Millennium Summit of  the United Nations in New York to obtain  international assistance for Bélarus, where 25% of the territory is contaminated, and where the population is sick. If the claims of UNSCEAR that 1800 thyroid cancers were the only consequence of Chernobyl are true, then  Bélarus would have no need of international aid.  UNSCEAR is discouraging  donor countries from helping the countries contaminated by Chernobyl.

And in fact,  on June 6, 2000, the Director General of  UNSCEAR, Lars Erik Holm, clearly stated that the reports of a deterioration of the health of the population following Chernobyl are without any scientific basis and aimed solely at obtaining unjustified financial aid. During the Kiev Conference on Chernobyl (June 4 - 8, 2001), Dr. Gentner of  UNSCEAR explained how his  organisation selects research to be used and cited. Assessment is carried out by "recognised scientific authorities", that is to say, the laboratories of Los Alamos (New Mexico, the USA) and Commission of Atomic Energy (CEA, France), two laboratories which manufactured the atomic bomb and which are not neutral in the field of the health radiation effects.  With this sort  of  expertise, UNSCEAR is never going to cite the work of Professor Bandazhevsky on the health consequences of radiation.

In fact one could say that not being cited by UNSCEAR would appear to be a guarantee of objectivity and scientific transparency rather than a negative point.

As for the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA, MAGATE), its principal objective is: "to promote nuclear energy for human welfare and health throughout the world". Clearly, with such a mandate, the IAEA will never finance nor cite Bandazhevsky's work on the disastrous medical effects of radiation.

On the other hand, according to a presentation by the Belarus Minister for the Health in Kiev in June, it would appear that the financing of the research carried out by the Institute of Professors Ostapenko and Kenigsberg derives essentially from the IAEA, and it should be added that this research had been severely criticised in 1998 by Professor Bandazhevsky, acting as an expert on an Audit Board.

During the last WILPF International Executive Council meeting  (1 – 4 August, 2001), a resolution was adopted on Chernobyl requesting the United Nations to take into consideration the large quantity of research relating to the sufferings of the victims of Chernobyl instead of  the findings of UNSCEAR and the IAEA, which are liable to be distorted due to the conflict of interests.

The radiation risk model for health needs to be re-examined, as was required by a resolution, adopted on April 28, 2001, by the European Parliament.  The specific Chernobyl situation, where victims have been ingesting radio-nuclides for 15 years must be taken into consideration.

We have also asked for the immediate release of Professor Bandazhevsky, as well as an end to the administrative harassment of independent researchers, physicists and doctors in Chernobyl. 

Source W.T.