[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 50 (Monday, May 2, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
STATEMENT OF MICHELLE CARTER, EDITOR OF THE SAN MATEO TIMES ON EFFORTS 
                   TO HELP THE CHILDREN OF CHERNOBYL

                                 ______


                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 2, 1994

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call my colleagues' 
attention to the testimony presented by Michelle Carter, editor of the 
San Mateo Times, before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, 
cochaired by myself, and my distinguished colleague from Illinois, 
Congressman Porter. On the eighth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear 
accident, the Human Rights Caucus drew attention to the continuing 
humanitarian needs of the youngest victims of the catastrophe. Our 
distinguished colleague and my California neighbor, Congresswoman Anna 
Eschoo, joined us in considering the legacy of Chernobyl.
  Mr. Speaker, I wish to express my heartfelt appreciation to Ms. 
Carter, an extremely accomplished and dedicated professional 
journalist, for testifying on this very important and unpublicized 
issue. Ms. Carter serves as an example of a concerned citizen who has 
labored to help some of the most horrible injured and neglected victims 
in the world today. Ms. Carter is also author of ``Children of 
Chernobyl,'' an authoritative book that tells the stories of survivors. 
``Children of Chernobyl'' has been distributed to all members of the 
Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
  Mr. Speaker, I am placing in the Record her message on this issue, 
and I urge my colleagues to consider her report as we continue to 
assess the lessons of Chernobyl.

       Testimony Before the Human Rights Caucus of the House of 
                   Representatives by Michelle Carter

       I want to thank the members of the Caucus for shining the 
     spotlight of the United States Congress on the 1986 nuclear 
     catastrophe at Chernobyl. The worlds worst technological 
     accident, and its youngest victims, and for allowing me the 
     opportunity to do some of the storytelling.
       My involvement with the Children of Chernobyl began in 1990 
     when I met Olga Aleinikova, the director of the Children's 
     Hematological Hospital in Minsk. The Capital of the then-
     Soviet republic of Byelorussia. This remarkably spirited and 
     dedicated woman led me by the hand among the beds of the 
     young leukemia patients in her hospital and introduced me to 
     each child and each mother. Then she took my arm with both 
     her hands, so forcefully that the marks from her fingers 
     remained for days, and said, ``You must tell our story; you 
     must tell our story.''
       That story is one of a Third World health system with none 
     of the chemotherapy drugs needed for aggressive and 
     successful treatment of leukemia, with no synthetic insulin, 
     with no disposable syringes and with a blood supply that is 
     unprotected from Hepatitis B or HIV. The book that most of 
     you have in your hand is that story that Michael and I 
     together have sought to tell.
       It is through Dr. Aleinikova, the Belarusian Charitable 
     Fund for the Children of Chernobyl in Minsk and a network of 
     friends throughout Belarus and in Moscow that I learned of 
     the ever-expanding list of the medical problems among the 
     800,000 children living in the shadow of Chernobyl in the 
     now-independent republic of Belarus.
       Just after midnight on April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at 
     Chernobyl exploded. Over the next 10 days, the graphite core 
     of the reactor burned continuously and melted down twice, 
     spewing chunks of radioactive iodine, caesium, strontium and 
     plutonium into the atmosphere and onto the soil of the 
     surrounding cities, villages and countryside. Seventy percent 
     of it--which amounted to 90 times the radioactive release of 
     the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima--fell on Belarus.
       While the Soviet government struggled to keep its dirty 
     secret from the rest of the world, it sacrificed a generation 
     of its children to that cause. Despite the fact that the 
     reactor was still burning, releasing extraordinary amounts of 
     radiation daily, the government chose not to tell parents to 
     keep their children inside and seal the doors and windows. 
     Instead, it held its annual May 1 celebration in every city 
     and village, and children marched outside in the radioactive 
     rain. It was the warmest Spring on record, and children 
     reveled in the end of another cruel winter.
       So, today, eight years later, we are counting the toll. 
     Despite the contrary assurances of the International Atomic 
     Energy Association in 1991, the doctors and parents of 
     Belarus and Ukraine tell a bitter tale of leukemia, solid 
     tumors, birth defects, immune deficiency syndrome, failure to 
     thrive and colds and coughs that never get better.
       Last summer, the World Health Organization acknowledged 
     that an epidemic of thyroid cancer exists among the children 
     of Belarus, and the Minister of Health in Belarus has stated 
     that virtually every child in that republic has thyroid 
     abnormalities. This is the legacy of the decision of party 
     chiefs--with their own children safely packed off to Moscow--
     to put off issuing iodine-replacement tablets until two weeks 
     after the initial explosion.
       In November 1990, the Children's Hematological Hospital had 
     51 leukemia patients in its beds; when I was there in 
     January, the staff of that hospital was treating more than 
     200 children there or in two other clinics in the 
     contaminated region. Those doctors, one of whom who's now 
     studying bone marrow transplantation at Packard Children's 
     Hospital at Stanford University in California, now see 
     children with leukemia at ages two and three, much earlier 
     than in the West, and in siblings, a virtually unknown 
     occurrence elsewhere.
       Experience with other nuclear releases--at Bikini Atoll, 
     Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Hanford Reservation in Washington and 
     the Nevada test sites--tells us that what we see now is just 
     the very front edge of a huge and broad bell curve of medical 
     problems to come. The first to suffer are the children, the 
     throwaway generation of the last Soviet regime. Chernobyl has 
     taught is that us that our world is small and undeniably 
     connected. The Children of Chernobyl are our children and we 
     cannot look away.

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