Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Congressional Hearings Transcript

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tumor registries together. There are people coming to the United
States. This is a process that is going to go on for a long time.
Our project, as I say, looked at anemia. I don't think there's any
reason to go back and look at anemia again. That's clear. One
needs to focus now down on the issues of leukemia and thyroid
cancer and spend the money on issues that in fact make sense
where we were not able to deal with issues. One of the things he
pointed out was cytogenetics. We found some semi-unusual things
both in clean and controlled villages, and we said, "Look, this is
unusual, and it needs further study." So I think one needs to
progress and not go back and repeat everjrthing we did.
Senator Lieberman. But although there is some disagreement between
you and most of the rest of the panel on the report, I take it
that you would agree that there ought to be continuing monitoring
of the high-risk groups and efforts to improve the medical infrastructure?
Dr. Mettler. Sure. This was in our recommendations. Absolutely,
yes. And particularly with regard to leukemia and thyroid,
which is in fact now what most people are focusing on, and I think
that's reasonable.
Senator Lieberman. Dr. Matkiwsky, Dr. Werteleckyj and you
mentioned a series of steps—I could call them humanitarian medical—that
we might take. What's your counsel to Senator Graham
and me about what we as two concerned U.S. Senators should put
as their priorities here? Acknowledging obviously the limited resources,
but nonetheless, the severity of the problem calls for some
reaction.
Dr. Matkiwsky. I would like to just speak to the more medical
problems rather than scientific problems or concerns. Primarily we
are interested in obviously the immediate help in situations, such
desperate need for antibiotics and medications in general, but also
to preserve the very young children, especially in the cardiac defects,
which appears to be much larger than it was before, and you
have 8,000 or 9,000 small infants dying every year from cardiac defects
whereas in the United States or other western world you can
save 90 percent of these by surgery. The Ukraine does not have
such facility to take care of that, especially now when you have a
negative birth and death ratio.
Another area is in neonatology/ paranatology, where a lot of children
also die in those areas, and they have absolutely no facility
whatsoever to preserve those infants immediately after birth and
to save them.
These centers we are trying to develop from a foundation point
of view, and we would like to obtain some help from the United
States and other Russian countries to develop these centers to preserve
those infants and children in general, and also develop a
good, sound di£ignostic hospital within these facilities that we are
talking about so that you have an adequate type of procedure to do
studies and diagnostic procedures.
Dr. Mettler. Can I make one point here? That is that I don't
think anybody disagrees that the quality of medicine is a real problem
in many areas, but let's just take this cardiac defect issue. You
take children and you start looking at children, you're going to see
defects that are sort of subclinical. There is no study in the scientif-