[BITList] Maralinga and evil Civil Serpents

[John Feltham]

Atomic fallout and the corruption of science 
Fallout: Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia 
By Roger Cross 
Wakefield Press, 2001 
187pp, $24.95 (pb) 

Review by Jim Green 

Fallout recounts the story of the cabal of British and Australian politicians, bureaucrats and scientists who conspired to prevent an informed public debate on the merits of nuclear weapons testing in Australia in the 1950s. 

It is also the story of Hedley Marston - a celebrated biochemist working for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) - and his fight against those he described as "ruthless liars in high places". 

In 1955, British authorities sought the CSIRO’s assistance with biological experiments on the effects of radiation on animals during and after the weapons tests planned for the Monte Bello Islands, off the coast of Western Australia, and at Maralinga, South Australia. 

Enter Marston, using British monitoring equipment to obtain potentially scandalous data on radioactive fallout over vast tracts of Australia, including Adelaide. Worse still for the authorities, Marston was not clearly bound by secrecy provisions. 

Read on http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/britbombs/atomic-fallout-and-the-corruption-of-science 

********************************** 



Silent Storm (Documentary) - 1 of 5 


Did fallout from nuclear testing contaminate Australia's milk supply? From 1957 to 1978, scientists secretly removed bone samples from over 21,000 dead Australians as they searched for evidence of the deadly poison, Strontium 90 - a by-product of nuclear testing. Silent Storm reveals the story behind this astonishing case of officially sanctioned 'body-snatching'. Set against a backdrop of the Cold War, the saga follows celebrated scientist, Hedley Marston, as he attempts to blow the whistle on radioactive contamination and challenge official claims that British atomic tests posed no threat to the Australian people. Marston's findings are not only disputed, he is targeted as 'a scientist of counter-espionage interest'. Now, questions are being raised about the health repercussions for generations of Australians 


This is interesting viewing. 



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbbSEkyPtkY


ooroo


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com/pipermail/bitlist/attachments/20110817/ced43c37/attachment-0001.shtml