Gone with the Wind

The quality of Israeli sperm has declined alarmingly in the last decade, according to recent research conducted at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital, Mount Scopus.
The cause for the decline is not known, but it's believed by some researchers to be connected to the exposure of children and pregnant women to hormones and other contaminants in food and water.
Conducted by Dr. Ronit Haimov-Kokhman, the study showed a 40-percent decline in the concentration of sperm cells among the country's sperm donors from 2004 to 2008, compared to those of donors from 1995 to 1999.
Hadassah's sperm bank is now turning away two-thirds of potential donors because of low-quality sperm, as opposed to one-third in the past.
Haimov-Kokhman's research is to be presented today at a conference of the Israeli Society of Fertility Investigation in Tel Aviv.
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Haaretz

Could anyone imagine as a result of your own actions you are killing your own troops and your own population?
This is now the case in Israel.
Many weapons used by the IDF in Gaza contained uranium components and upon impact set off huge volumes of aerosol particles that then drifted back over the border into Israel with devastating results.
It has been some time since the Israelis bombed Lebanon and the Gaza Strip and in both cases the weapons used left behind a trial of misery for all those that lived downwind.
We can now start to see the results of those actions and I must say the term 'What goes around comes around' rings true in the ears of the residents of Israel.
Some interesting health statements have been released that prove when you play with dirty weapons it can all come back to you. It would now appear that we have a situation whereby Israelis are killing Israelis.
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This month started to see some more statistics appear out of Israel which again indicates that contamination by DU may well be the cause. The next headline was even more alarming: 'More women diagnosed with cancer in Israel than in Europe' Israel's health ranking is dropping compared to those of developed European nations, the Israel Medical Association said yesterday. Israel lags behind the European average in disease prevention.
The report gave a clear message that something in the environment may be causing these dramatic increases.
The comparison gave the number of new female cancer patients as follows: 290 per 100,000 compared to an average of 179 in Europe.
The report went of the say that for men the average was much the same but again was showing a steady rise since 2005.
When you think you have heard the last of the bad news you are then confronted with another shocking headline from the IMA: Hodgkin's lymphoma is a distinct primary solid tumour of the immune system that shows wide variation in incidence among different geographic regions and among various races.
It was previously suggested that susceptible people living in certain parts of Israel had a higher risk of HL because of exposure to unidentified environmental factors in these regions.
Compared with other parts of Israel, these regions were characterized by a higher proportion of Israeli-born Jews.
A total of 4812 Jewish cases of HL were reported to the Israel Cancer Registry during the study period 1960-2005.
There has been a persistent increase in the age-standardized incidence rate of HL, all subtypes pooled, in Israeli-born Jews in both men and women.
The age distribution pattern in both genders was bimodal in all periods.
The highest incidence was observed in the 20-24 year age group: for women (9.13 per 100,000 per year) during the period 1988-1996, and for men (6.60 per 100,000 per year) during the period 1997-2005.
Conclusions: The reported incidence level of HL in Israeli-born young adult Jews in Israel has increased in recent years to high levels compared with other western countries. Our findings suggest a cohort effect to unidentified factors affecting Israeli-born young adult Jews in Israel.
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The Palestine Telegraph

Bueno, es un hecho que la modernidad trae aparejada algunas complicaciones, muchas de ellas vinculadas con el tema de la contaminación, y esas cosas.
Los efectos biológicos de estos eventos son impredecibles, pero son detectados y analizados solamente en muy pocos países que son los que se ocupan seriamente del tema, permaneciendo ignorados por la mayoría de las comunidades, que carecen de estadísticas confiables.
Pero la prensa palestina no tardó mucho en asociar algunos datos dispersos -y que aún no han sido evaluados completamente- con su ideologismo infame, y en difundir alegremente la teoría que la culpa de todo -como siempre- la tiene Israel, afirmando que en las guerras contra el Líbano y Gaza se produjeron enormes cantidades de partículas de aerosol por el -supuesto- uranio empobrecido de las bombas israelíes, y que debido a los vientos estos contaminantes retrocedieron hasta la frontera.
El artículo de la prensa palestina está plagado de argumentaciones seudo-científicas insustentables, pero sus afirmaciones son tomadas por todo el mundo como absolutamente ciertas.
Es absolutamente irrelevante que Israel salga a desmentir categóricamente esas acusaciones, ya que ellas una vez publicadas automáticamente son incorporadas al imaginario colectivo antisemita universal que no es precisamente riguroso a la hora de culpar a Israel de cualquier cosa que suceda en el mundo, incluso en la galaxia.
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Bueno, Israel no puso uranio en sus proyectiles o en sus bombas, pero igual es acusada de haberlo hecho, y todo el mundo así lo cree.
Si así viene la mano, entonces, pienso que para la próxima debería ponerlo, y listo.
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De Chernobyl, por supuesto, nadie habla.
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