PART THREE: The ‘free radical’ legacy of radioactive metal contamination – DNA damage and deformed proteins.

[Guest guest]

http://www.redflagsweekly.com/conferences/mad_cow/2004_jan13_3.html

 

 

AN ECODETECTIVE’S JOURNEY INTO THE CENTER OF NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE

 

By RFD Columnist, Mark Purdey

 

High Barn Farm, Elworthy, Taunton, TA43PX, UK.

Tel; 00 44 1984 656832.

MadCowPurdey

 

 

 

BACK TO TWO

 

PAGE THREE

 

The ‘free radical’ legacy of radioactive metal contamination – DNA damage and

deformed proteins.

 

During my last evening on Guam, I attended the sad and moving funeral ceremony

of a young leukaemia sufferer – one of many such cases amongst the Chamorro

population in Umatac, I was told.

 

Whilst it is widely recognized that the toxic mechanism of radioactive

contamination is based upon the radionuclide’s ability to initiate free radical

chain reactions that damage DNA, causing a bizarre array of cancers, it is not

so widely recognized that these free radicals can also deform the molecular

shape of proteins (20)(11). Once a protein gets malformed, it can no longer

perform its proper function in the body metabolism. Nor can it be degraded by

enzymes at the end of its working life. The resulting ‘rogue’ proteins

accumulate and clump together to form abnormal tombstone features that choke up

the neuronal networks, thereby initiating the progressive, self perpetuating

sequence of neurodegeneration that is common to all of these diseases (21). Each

condition is hallmarked by its own distinctive ‘tombstone’ feature (22); so much

so that neuropathologists actually seek out the type of tombstone – eg;

neurofibrillary tangle, lewy body, bunina body, prion fibril – in order to

diagnose the specific type of neurodegeneration responsible for the death -

eg. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Motor Neurone disease, and transmissible

spongiform encephalopathy (TSE).

 

I have written previously about the involvement of rogue metals binding to the

prion protein (23)(24) in place of its normal copper co-partners (43), and how

this aberrant substitution of metals induces the malformation of the prion

protein (23)(24), which, in turn, causes the infamous TSE group of ‘rapid

attack’ neurodegenerative disorders – scrapie, CJD, BSE, and CWD. But my most

recent observations in the TSE cluster ecosystems indicate that these rogue

replacement metals could also carry a radioactive facet to their atomic armory;

thereby offering a plausible explanation for the virulent, resistant properties

of the deformed prion protein and the causal enigma of BSE.

 

In this respect, the malformed prion protein becomes much like a trojan horse

that trucks around the circadian mediated circuits of the brain carrying its

lethal radioactive cargo of metallic missiles on board – a fire power capacity

that is potentially capable of detonating a chain reaction of free radical

mediated neurodegeneration.

“The Atomic Fawns”

Whilst browsing through the vaults of PhD theses stored in the basement of the

Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I stumbled upon a raft of chilling

studies that provided the initial clue (25-34). A series of carefully designed

experiments had been carried out back in the 1960s/ 1970s, when the US atomic

energy agency and US government had funded the Colorado department of wildlife

and Colorado State Uni’s (CSU) Department of radiology and radiation biology at

Fort Collins to monitor the exposure of deer to plutonium, strontium 90 and

cesium 134 at every level (25-34).

 

One of the trials involved transporting deer fawns back and forth between the

deer pens at the Department’s Foothills wildlife facility at Fort Collins and

the plutonium contaminated pastures of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Factory

at Boulder 60 kilometres away (30). The objective was to monitor the health

effects and eco-dynamics of leaked plutonium (and its daughter radionuclides )

through the biosystem of the deer and within the general ecosystem.

 

A series of radioactive leaks from rusting barrels that stored plutonium

contaminated oil at the Rocky Flats Plant (combined with a fire ) had enabled

plutonium and its daughter radionuclides to become airborn, contaminating a wide

area of the Colorado section of the Front Range (30)(31)(33) – a copper

deficient area (35) that has become the CWD endemic area today (36). The peak of

contamination was during the 1967-1969 seasons when the air sampler detected Plu

as high as .35 pCi /M3 (31). A program of environmental monitoring had picked up

significant levels of plutonium as far a field as the Pawnee Butt plains NE of

Fort Collins and Roxy Ann mountain (31). Disturbingly, the levels of plutonium

were higher in the livers of the wild deer that roamed the Cache le Poudre

canyon at .042 dpm/gm than in the deer that roamed near to Rocky Flats itself

(.033 dpm/gm ) (33).

 

Environmental contamination due to The Rocky Flats radioactive leak was probably

exacerbated by the emissions from the kiln chimneys of the local cement factory

at nearby Lyons; where, according to a 16/12/92 report in the South West Sage by

John Dougherty, the EPA’s Division of Solid Waste made an emergency response on

cement kiln dust, stating that they had found radioactive plutonium and cesium

in the kiln dust at Lyons, and at two other plants near to weapons factories in

the USA. The Lyons contamination was presumed to be the result of utilizing low

level nuclear waste material from the nearby Rocky Flats weapons plant as fuel

for the cement kiln (37).

 

During the 60s/ 70s, it seems that the entire operation of the Fort Collins

wildlife facility was geared towards a raft of radiation experiments - including

the direct injection of strontium 90 and cesium 134 into the deer - in order to

monitor the biological effects of these potentially lethal ‘cold war’ compounds

(25)(26).

 

But it seems that one of the major biological repercussions of these unique

experiments was not revealed until 13 years later, when a 1980 paper by Williams

and Young (38) reported on the first ever recorded case of chronic wasting

disease (CWD) in a deer in 1967- the BSE equivalent in deer. The delay before

publication is mysterious, since most scientists would normally be tripping over

themselves to achieve the ‘prestige’ of getting important novel discoveries into

the academic press. Whilst the authors made no mention of possible causal

factors, they merely stated that the TSE affected deer were resident at the Fort

Collins facility – eg; in the very same deer pens that had been involved in

these radioactive experiments at that time. Putting two and two together, it is

unlikely that the space/time correlation between these novel radioactive

experiments and the emergence of a novel neurodegenerative disease is a mere

coincidence.

 

And later I stumbled upon a study by Dr Randolph Crom on a small cluster of CJD

amongst the workforce engaged in the assembly of missiles at the former Hughes

Missile Plant at Tucson in Arizona (39). The workers had no doubt been working

with these same radioactive metals. In this respect, It is also relevant that

CWD has erupted in deer grazing across the copper deficient White Sands missile

range in the New Mexico desert, the tundra terrain of NATO’s Cold Lake air

weapons range and the tank shelling range at Camp Wainwright in the Sandhills on

the Alberta / Saskatchewan borders – environments that are chronically bombarded

by the test firing of similar types of missile and munitions, as well as playing

host to the fast expanding oil and gas drilling industry – another major source

of natural radioactive metal contamination (40).

 

In fact, exposure to high intensities of both naturally occurring and man made

radioactive metals seems to explain the emergence of every cluster of TSE that

has reared its ugly head around the world – like the tiny Aspromonte mountain

village in Calabria that was abruptly evacuated for no ‘apparent’ reason during

the 1980s. Since 1995, twenty five cases of CJD have subsequently erupted

amongst the former inhabitants of this village (41). When I trekked up that

rocky road to their former village, I got to hear of an illegal dumping of

radioactive waste on the mountainous slopes immediately above the old houses –

an area that represented the main catchment area for the spring waters that

supplied the village.

 

NEXT PAGE Chernobyl and BSE?

 

See References On Final Page

 

 

 

 

 

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