N-test vets told to see doctors

Nuclear bomb test veterans found to have high levels of genetic damage are being sent letters advising them to see a doctor.

Massey University researchers and overseas colleagues are testing blood samples from 50 test veterans and a control group of 50 former servicemen not exposed to elevated levels of radiation.

The test veterans were among the 551 New Zealand navalmen who witnessed nine nuclear detonations during Operation Grapple at Christmas Island and in the Malden Islands in Kiribati in 1957 and 1958.

Results have so far been obtained for 18 of the test veterans and two members of the age-matched control group, which is mainly former Army men.

Lead researcher Dr Al Rowland, of Massey's Institute of Molecular BioSciences, said most of the veterans for whom results had been obtained had high levels of genetic damage.

He speculated that the findings could change by the end of the research next year. But on the interim results he had concluded that the genetic damage resulted from taking part in Grapple.

The participants' cells are tested for genetic re-arrangements - translocations of parts of chromosomes. The background rate, which varies throughout the world, is usually 10 or 11 translocations for every 1000 cells. Four times that rate is considered high.

"Most of the veterans are showing well above [that]," Dr Rowland said.

"As we come across a veteran with a very high translocation frequency rate we have to let them know that they should go to their doctor. We write to them.

"Nearly all cancers come about through some sort of a rearrangement of the genetic material - bits of chromosomes going somewhere else where they are not supposed to be. If the frequency of translocations increases too much there is a strong correlation between [that] increase and the onset of ill health, especially cancers, especially with respect to radiation.

"Ionising radiation is known to cause all sorts of damage to DNA."

The Nuclear Test Veterans Association hopes the findings will help in its bid for a resumption of legal aid funding in Britain for a class action for compensation from the British Government.