Deadly denial: Udall, Perlmutter urge probe in N-arms workers aid program
By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published July 30, 2008 at 4:14 p.m.
Updated July 30, 2008 at 4:27 p.m.
Two Colorado congressmen want the investigative arm of Congress to scrutinize the way the U.S. Department of Labor is handling claims of sick nuclear weapons workers.
Rep. Mark Udall, D-Eldorado Springs, and Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, say they will call tomorrow for an investigation by the Government Accountability Office. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan agency that investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.
The announcement comes one week after the Rocky Mountain News published a series of stories that detailed how the Labor Department, which administers the program, had derailed aid to the workers by keeping reports secret, constantly changing rules and delaying cases until sick workers died.
The Rocky's investigation, called "Deadly denial," found that the Labor Department and the Department of Health and Human Services had delayed the cases of sick nuclear arms workers or their survivors across the nation by giving misleading information, withholding records essential to their cases, failing to inform them of alternative paths to aid, repeatedly claiming to have lost evidence sent by ill workers and making requirements for compensation impossibly high.
Both agencies have said they are following the law and point to nearly $4 billion in payments to sick workers or survivors nationwide as evidence of their success.
Udall and Perlmutter also plan to announce tomorrow that they are submitting legislation to reform the nuclear workers compensation program and make it easier for former Rocky Flats employees sick with certain cancers to prove they qualify for compensation. The bill will be companion legislation to the Compensation and Respect for Energy Workers Act, or CARE Act, introduced last week by Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat.
For nearly half a century, the now-demolished Rocky Flats site 14 miles northwest of Denver manufactured the miniature plutonium bombs that triggered the larger explosion in the nation's nuclear weapons. More than 10,000 former Rocky Flats workers or their survivors have applied for the compensation.
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July 30, 2008
6:12 p.m.
Suggest removal
windskull writes:
Don`t stop there! HCA Health has been stealing tax dollars and killing people under the guise of "Government Immune Entity" for decades too!
July 30, 2008
6:57 p.m.
Suggest removal
BikerChick writes:
..
Horrific, unconscionable collusion and conspiracy here.
Think reckless use of BERRYLIUM.
There are INDEPENDENT experts worldwide who can cut the U S Government (DoL, etc) idiots into mincemeat.
The families MUST file criminal prosecution suits. John Suthers and Troy Eid must either stand up for Justice, or step aside while a SPECIAL PROSECUTOR seeks and obtains just settlements.
This is one of the worst cases of official criminal malfeasance, conspiracy and collusion ever in the annals of this otherwise great Democratic Republic. POTUS must step in and put a stop to this travesty.
Enough already.
..
July 30, 2008
8:19 p.m.
Suggest removal
PaducahWorker writes:
One of the greatest sins of the DOE is its support of, or rather manipulation through the Food and Drug Administration to prevent the use of Intravenous Chelation Therapy to treat sick workers and plant neighbors in states that have Nuclear Facilities. Intravenous (IV) Chelation Therapy could have saved and could be saving lives by the droves.
I am a 12 year victim of multiple heavy metals poisoning, living in Western Kentucky. About 8 years ago, following almost 4 years of being sick with no solid diagnosis from any doctor, I presented with a 98 percentile deadly combination dose of Arsenic, Lead, Silver, Nickel and a cocktail of lesser amounts of a few other metals/elements as a result of chronic uptakes of toxic dust in the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. I had worked on two special crews in the plant which caused us to handle large amounts of Depleted Uranium in very old, dusty parts of the plant.
My diagnosis was by a doctor in the Nashville TN area, formerly from Oak Ridge TN. It took a Hair Elements Test to determine my illness, following more than 3 years of consulting with 6 other doctors in three states who only chose to diagnose using info from blood tests and urinalysis, of which NONE showed excess levels of toxins. This doctor, who out of respect shall remain un-named here, saved my life. However, he had been a plant doctor for the U.S. Dept. of Energy previously, appeared on Dateline TV show to expose a health (metals poisoning) cover-up in Oak Ridge TN and was being threatened and black-balled at the time by the D.O.E. As a former employee of a D.O.E. plant, I confirmed this action and witnessed a fine man being pressured by our Government's agency to stop treating sick workers and plant neighbors.
July 30, 2008
8:20 p.m.
Suggest removal
PaducahWorker writes:
Continued:
He treated me with Chemette and Disulferum orally for 30 days, then I went into a Tennessee County Hospital for three days, having shots of Chemette and Disulferum in my hips every 12 hours. I was on an IV medium drip of saline solution and drank liquids constantly, urinating into a red bio-hazard container about every 20 minutes, from which my doctor took samples and tested. He stayed with me almost the entire time, 24/7 for three days straight. The first test indicated the exact elements in the exact proportions as the Hair Elements Test from Doctors Data Inc. in Chicago IL. Upon returning home, I continued the oral Chemette and Disulferum for another 30 days, at which time I was to undergo my second IV Chelation Therapy treatment. This kind and wonderful doctor called us and apologized, saying that he was forced to stop treating patients with Chelation Therapy.
Having lost a terrible battle with the D.O.E. in Oak Ridge that cost him his practice, home and hospital privileges (black-balled by doctors practicing "traditional" medicine), he had accepted a position in his field of oncology in a Vanderbilt clinic in the Nashville TN area. Vanderbilt receives huge grants annually from the U.S. Government channeled through a Government agency who has volunteered to be the "Willing Provider" to administer these funds, in this case, the U.S. Dept. of Energy. (Go figure.) When the D.O.E. found out that he was treating sick workers and plant neighbors via a Vanderbilt facility, D.O.E. used its power to threaten his job with Vanderbilt.
My research in those first two years revealed that Vanderbilt was receiving huge amounts of money to research in the area of ... Chelation Therapy. Then I found letters, annual progress reports which Vanderbilt had submitted annually to verify that the research was continuing, guaranteeing the continued flow of money, lots of money. Each of the three reports were identical, word for word, unchanged except for the dates submitted. They were so arrogant, that they did not even try to cover up the fact that nothing was being done, just drawing taxpayers' money from the Government.
This is the kind of Hell that sick workers face, continually. To the DOE and DOL, it is a game.