Three of his best friends, two doctors and a pharmacist, have sons with leukemia. Doctors at Saddam Central Teaching Hospital in Baghdad, where many young leukemia victims go for treatment, used to get only a few cases a year. Now two or three children are diagnosed every week. To some outside experts, though, the link between depleted uranium and cancer or birth defects is not at all clear. After the Gulf War, pollution was aggravated by the many oil-field fires set by Iraqi troops as they fled Kuwait.
Scientists say mustard gas can cause genetic damage.
Years of war-related food shortages have left many Iraqis seriously malnourished. Pregnant women who do not get enough folic acid, an essential vitamin, have a greater chance of delivering babies with birth defects. It is human nature to try to find reasons why the situation is bad, but the only way you're going to get the answer is by having a careful evaluation done by a group that is authoritative and balanced in its viewpoint. Workers at a market near the Kuwait-Iraq border sort tomatoes that will be sold throughout Iraq. Most of the country's tomatoes are grown in an area that was heavily bombed during the war.