COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
Cancer in Iraq Vets Raises Possibility of Toxic Exposure
Carla McClain, The Arizona Daily Star
August 26, 2007
After
serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago - and receiving the Bronze Star
for it - the Tucson soldier was called back to active duty in Iraq.
While there, he awoke one morning with a sore
throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of
a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to
treat it.
As a result, his stunned and heartbroken family has
joined growing ranks of sickened and dying Iraq war vets and their
families who believe exposures to toxic poisons in the war zone are
behind their illnesses - mostly cancers, striking the young, taking
them down with alarming speed.
The number of these cancers remains undisclosed,
with military officials citing patient privacy issues, as well as lack
of evidence the cases are linked to conditions in the war zone. The
U.S. Congress has ordered a probe of suspect toxins and may soon begin
widespread testing of our armed forces.
"He Got So Sick, So Fast"
Jim Lauderdale was 58 when his National Guard unit
was deployed to the Iraq-Kuwait border, where he helped transport
arriving soldiers and Marines into combat areas.
He was a strong man, say relatives, who can't
remember him ever missing a day of work for illness. And he developed a
cancer of the mouth, which overwhelmingly strikes smokers, drinkers and
tobacco chewers. He was none of those.
"Jim's doctors didn't know why he would get this
kind of cancer - they had no answers for us," said his wife, Dixie.
"He got so sick, so fast. We really think it had to
be something he was exposed to over there. So many of the soldiers we
met with cancer at Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) complained about
the polluted air they lived in, the brown water they had to use, the
dust they breathed from exploded munitions. It was very toxic."
As a mining engineer, Lauderdale knew exactly what
it meant when he saw the thick black smoke pouring nonstop out of the
smokestacks that line the Iraq/Kuwait border area where he was
stationed for three months in 2005.
"He wrote to me that everyone was complaining about
their stinging eyes and sore throats and headaches," Dixie said. "For
Jim to say something like that, to complain, was very unusual."
"One of the mothers on the cancer ward had pictures
of her son bathing in the brown water," she said. "He died of kidney
cancer."
Stationed in roughly the same area as Lauderdale,
yet another soldier - now fighting terminal colon cancer - described
the scene there, of oil refineries, a cement factory, a chlorine
factory and a sulfuric acid factory, all spewing unfiltered and
uncontrolled substances into the air.
"One day, we were walking toward the port and they
had sulfuric acid exploding out of the stacks. We were covered with it,
everything was burning on us, and we had to turn around and get to the
medics," said Army Staff Sgt. Frank Valentin, 35.
Not long after, he developed intense rectal pain,
which doctors told him for months was hemorrhoids. Finally diagnosed
with aggressive colorectal cancer - requiring extensive surgery,
resulting in a colostomy bag - he was given fewer than two years to
live by his Walter Reed physicians.
He is now a couple of months past that death
sentence, but his chemo drugs are starting to fail, and the cancer is
eating into his liver and lungs. He spends his days with his wife and
three children at their Florida home.
"I don't know how much time I have," he said.
Suspect: Depleted Uranium
None of these soldiers know for sure what's killing
them. But they suspect it's a cascade of multiple toxic exposures,
coupled with the intense stress of daily life in a war zone weakening
their immune systems.
"There's so much pollution from so many sources,
your body can't fight what's coming at it," Valentin said. "And you
don't eat well or sleep well, ever. That weakens you, too. There's no
chance to gather your strength. These are kids 19, 20 and 21 getting
all kinds of cancers. The Walter Reed cancer ward is packed full with
them."
The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many
victims - and some scientists - is what's known as depleted uranium -
the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to
penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits
the air as fine dust, easily inhaled.
Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed
the tons of the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe"
campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country.
However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department
strongly deny this, citing four studies, including one by the World
Health Organization, that found levels in war zones not harmful to
civilians or soldiers. A U.N. Environmental Program study concurs, but
only if spent munitions are cleared away.
Returning solders have said that isn't happening.
"When tanks exploded, I would handle those tanks,
and there was DU everywhere," said Valentin. "This is a big issue."
The fierce Iraq winds carry desert sand and dust for
miles, said Dixie Lauderdale, who suspects her husband was exposed to
at least some depleted uranium. Many vets from the Gulf War blame the
chemical used in that conflict for their Gulf War syndrome illnesses.
Congress Orders Study
As the controversy rages, Congress has ordered a
comprehensive independent study, due in October, of the health effects
of depleted uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a
"DU bill" - ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be
identified and tested - is working its way through Congress.
"Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and
not go through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent
Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva,
D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill.
"We want an independent agency to do independent
testing of our soldiers, and find out what's really going on. These
incidents of cancer and illness that all of us are hearing about back
in our districts are not just anecdotal - there is a pattern here. And
yes, I do suspect DU may be at the bottom of it."
What's happening today - growing numbers of sickened
soldiers who say they were exposed to it amid firm denials of harm from
military brass - almost mirrors the early stages of the Agent Orange
aftermath. It took the U.S. military almost two decades to admit the
powerful chemical defoliant killed and disabled U.S. troops in the
jungles of Vietnam, and to begin compensating them for it.
Doctors Flabbergasted
Whatever it was that struck Jim Lauderdale did a terrifying job of it.
Sent to Walter Reed with oral cancer in April 2005,
he underwent his first extensive and disfiguring surgery, removing half
his tongue to get to tumors in the mouth and throat. A second surgery
followed a month later to clear out more of those areas.
Five months later, another surgery removed a new neck tumor. Then came heavy chemotherapy and radiation.
Shortly after, he had a massive heart attack,
undergoing another surgery to place stents in his arteries. Two weeks
later, the cancer was back and growing rapidly, forcing a fourth
surgery in January 2006.
By this time, much of his neck and shoulder tissue
was gone, and doctors tried to reconstruct a tongue, using tissue from
his wrist. He couldn't swallow, so was fed through a tube into his
stomach.
Just weeks later, four external tumors appeared on
his neck - "literally overnight," his wife said. Suffering severe
complications from the chemo drugs, Lauderdale endured 39 radiation
treatments, waking up one night bleeding profusely through his burned
skin. The day after his radiation ended, new external tumors erupted at
the edge of the radiation field, flabbergasting his doctors.
"As this aggressive disease grew though
chemoradiation, it was determined at this point there was no chance for
cure," his oncologist wrote then.
By then, the cancer had spread to his lungs and
spine and, most frightening of all, "hundreds and thousands" of tumors
were erupting all over his upper body, his wife said.
"The doctors said they'd never seen anything like it
- that this happens in only 1 percent of cases," she said. Efforts to
contact his doctors at Walter Reed were unsuccessful, but a leading
head-and-neck cancer specialist at the Arizona Cancer Center reviewed
the course of Lauderdale's disease. "This a a very wrenching case,"
said Dr. Harinder Garewal. "This is unusually aggressive behavior for
an oral cancer. I would agree it happens in only 1 percent of cases."
When oral cancer occurs in nonsmokers and
non-drinkers, it tends to be more aggressive, he said. "My feeling is
the immune system for some reason can't handle the cancer," he said.
Jim Lauderdale died on July 14, 2006, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Dixie and their two grown children still feel the raw grief of loss, but not anger, she said.
"But I am convinced something very wrong is
happening over there. Is anyone paying attention to this? Is the cancer
ward still full?" she asked. "I would hate to see another whole
generation affected like this, but I'm very afraid it will be."
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