Global Avoidable Mortality

AVOIDABLE MORTALITY - or EXCESS MORTALITY - is the difference between the ACTUAL mortality in a country and the mortality EXPECTED in a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. AVOIDABLE MORTALITY and INFANT MORTALITY are KEY INDICATORS of the HUMAN CONSEQUENCES of national and global policies.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Soviet rule, Cold War, radiation & excess deaths of Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Czechs, Bulgarians, Latvians, Estonians and Ukrainians

For millions of former subjects of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, the Cold War is still killing but is killing them silently - killing them softly. Because of an entrenched mainstream media culture of lying by omission, essentially nobody knows about this catastrophe - except for specialist scholars such as medical epidemiologists.

The silence is deafening. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are obliged to inform everyone about mass mortality and egregious inhumanity.

On 26 January 2006 a letter (reproduced below) was variously sent (with slight changes as appropriate) to governments and mainstream media of particular formerly Soviet-occupied Central and Eastern European countries, namely Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia and the Ukraine; the letter alerted them to huge excess mortality in their populations since the late 1960s.

IN SHORT, since the late 1960s avoidable mortality (excess mortality) has been extremely high in HUNGARY as compared to all other European countries (e.g. see: http://jech.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/58/4/290 ) and has also been abnormally high in other "front-line" Central and Eastern European countries partially or completely occupied by the Soviet Union within the period of about 1945 until about 1990, namely AUSTRIA, BULGARIA, THE CZECH REPUBLIC, ESTONIA, GERMANY, LATVIA & THE UKRAINE.

POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTING CAUSES of this Central and Eastern European disaster could be speculated to be: excessive drinking, smoking, depression, social laxity, industrial pollution and un-reported radioactive contamination events e.g. HIGH LEVEL RADIOACTIVE TAGGING OF DISSIDENTS as practised by the secret police (the Stasi) in Soviet-occupied East Germany (and who knows where else – and what else - in the Soviet Empire) (e.g. see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/04/wstas04.xml).

THE LETTER IS REPRODUCED BELOW:

Dear Sir/Madam,

WHAT IS KILLING HUNGARIANS?

I am an Australian scientist and writer of Hungarian origins and am presently editing the third draft of a huge book on global avoidable mortality.

The post-1950 avoidable mortality has been abnormally high in Hungary (and in some other formerly Soviet-occupied Eastern European countries) since the 1960s.

Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is the difference between the ACTUAL deaths in a country and the deaths EXPECTED for a peaceful, well-administered country with the same demographics.

Using United Nations data, avoidable mortality (technically, excess mortality) has been calculated for every country in the world since 1950.

In order to make comparisons, it is useful to calculate the post-1950 avoidable mortality/2005 population ratio for different countries and regions of the world.

The post-1950 avoidable mortality/2005 population ratio for Hungary is 1.363 million/9.784 million = 13.9%, the highest value for any Eastern European country and the highest for any European country in the world – thus the value for this parameter is 2.7% (for Overseas Europe i.e. the US, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Canada), 5.0% (Western Europe), 7.5 % (Eastern Europe), 9.4% (Latin America and the Caribbean), 10.9% (East Asia), 20.7% (Turkey, Iran and Central Asia), 23.0% (Arab North Africa and Middle East), 25.1% (South East Asia), 27.3% (the Pacific), 31.9% (South Asia) and 43.2% (non-Arab Africa).

The serious post-1950 avoidable mortality outcome for Hungary is NOT reflected in infant mortality statistics – Hungary has one of the better infant mortality outcomes in Eastern Europe and indeed in the world.

Thus the post-1950 under-5 infant mortality/2005 population ratio is 2.9% for Hungary as compared to a value of 1.5% (Overseas Europe), 1.7% (Western Europe), 3.8 % (Eastern Europe), 9.7% (Latin America and the Caribbean), 10.7% (East Asia), 17.0% (Turkey, Iran and Central Asia), 15.4% (Arab North Africa and Middle East), 12.8% (South East Asia), 13.0% (the Pacific), 19.5% (South Asia) and 27.3% (non-Arab Africa).

The dynamics of this process can be assessed by considering Hungarian avoidable mortality (in millions, m) in successive 5-year periods (pentades) since 1950: 1950-1955 (0.062m), 1955-1960 (0.010m), 1960-1965 (0.005m), 1965-1970 (0.046m), 1970-1975 (0.094m), 1975-1980 (0.149m), 1980-1985 (0.197m), 1985-1990 (0.199m), 1990-1995 (0.221m), 1995-2000 (0.207m), 2000-2005 (0.173m).

The Hungarian avoidable mortality catastrophe took off in the 1960s and has averaged about 30,000-40,000 avoidable deaths EACH year since about 1975.

This abnormally high Hungarian avoidable mortality has been picked up in other epidemiological studies (e.g. see Treurniet et al., Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, vol. 58, pp290-295, 2004:
http://jech.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/58/4/290
).

Other formerly Russian-occupied countries in Eastern Europe with abnormally high post-1950 avoidable mortality/2005 population ratios include Bulgaria (9.9%), the Czech Republic (10.6%), Estonia (12.8%), Latvia (12.7%) and the Ukraine (11.0%).

Significantly, the major Continental Western European countries with the highest average post-1950 avoidable mortality/2005 population ratios are Austria (9.0%) and Germany (8.6%), countries that were subject to partial Soviet occupation.

One could speculate about excessive smoking, excessive drinking, depression, social laxity, industrial pollution and un-reported radiological contamination events as contributing factors for this Hungarian and indeed European catastrophe. The dynamics suggest that if one major cause was imposed from about 1945 onwards, then the effects took about 20 years to manifest.

An unpleasant possibility derives from revelations of Soviet-era secret police use of radioactive tagging as a means of tracking dissidents. Such dangerous radioactive tagging employed by the East German secret police (the Stasi) is discussed in Ann Funder’s book “Stasiland” (Chapter 19; Text, Melbourne, 2002).

East German scientist Dr Klaus Becker has revealed documentary evidence from Stasi files of the deliberate contamination of victims, their documents or money with dangerous amounts of the beta- and gamma-emitter scandium-46 (half-life 83.83 days) to enable the tracking of dissidents (reported in New Scientist and other mainstream media; see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/01/04/wstas04.xml).

Consistent with this possibility is long-term expression of cancers in irradiated people, secret police surveillance of very large numbers of Eastern Europeans and the pro-independence and “front-line” nature of all the affected countries. Was radiological contamination of dissidents more widely applied by the secret police in front-line Eastern European countries of the Soviet Empire?

Similar careful analysis of United Nations mortality data has revealed that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan now totals 2.1 million through non-provision of life-sustaining requisites by the US-led Coalition in violation of the Geneva Conventions. Indeed this ongoing crime is now the subject of a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya211205.htm). The continuing avoidable mortality of some 35,000 Hungarians each year demands urgent investigation and public discussion.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Gideon Polya

Melbourne, Australia

e-mail: gpolya@optusnet.com.au

website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html

Credentials: Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently editing a completed book on global avoidable mortality (numerous articles on this matter can be found by a simple Google search for "Gideon Polya" and on his website: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html).

Hungarian connection: Gideon Polya’s paternal lineage dates back to the early 19th century in Békésszentandrás, Hungary. His great-grandfather Jakab Pólya (née Pollak) was a lawyer-economist academician (who wrote many books and translated Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations into Hungarian), his grandfather was the surgeon Jenö Pólya (the Pólya gastrectomy) and his great-uncle was the mathematician George (György) Pólya (author of How to Solve It).

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