Talk:Depleted uranium

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Banned user's version much better than existing article

I like the "banned user" version better: 50 more references, 12 more kilobytes, and more honest. James, Black Omega, or whoever you are, don't let them get you down. WP:IAR applies here if it applies anywhere. --Chaim in Tel Aviv 212.199.91.98 21:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Do ya now James? You know what I love most about this? Every sockpuppet you use never forgets to mention that they are most definitely not you!. What a hoot! Torturous Devastating Cudgel 22:25, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

TDC, is there anyone who has edited the article in the past week that you are not accusing of being James? Those kind of accusations are one of the reason that so many people edit this article anonymously or under seperate accounts--we don't want our reputations sullied by baseless accusations. I agree too much stuff has been cut since he's been banned. Lots of people take things out, but he was the only one who consistently added material which doesn't show DU in a purely positive light. I'm adding a POV tag. -Alex- 01:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

And I'm blocking your account indefinitely as a sockpuppet used to evade an arbcom ban, James. Nandesuka 02:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you and TDC have such a grudge about this article that you see James in anyone whoever tries to add some truth? You just banned an "unrelated" user. Are you going to go and ban Al Marshall too because he admits he did not consider and reproductive or nonradiological toxicity even though the sorry excuse for this current article implies that his study "concluded that the reports of serious health risks from DU exposure are not supported by veteran medical statistics" -- how easy is that if you only look at radiation, which is a tiny fraction of the chemical risk?!? Look at the Black Omega version; look at its references; please compare them to the current version! Whoever did it has far more respect for both the truth *and* the style guidelines than the legions of censors who chop the facts out of this article and then accuse whoever dares to put them back in as being someone who they are not.

Where is the line between following the rules like a good little soldier in lockstep and supporting the obvious truth? Is this pattern not the ultimate justification of WP:IAR? If the censors want to delete the bulk of this article then make them say why.

Responsible admins need to step in here and replace the Black Omega version. And if others don't like it, then let them justify their deletions with science instead of personal attack accusation. --Chaim, glad he did not make -Alex-'s mistake of using an account to post here instead of logging out! 212.199.91.98 14:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I am Black Omega

I am not the person who was banned from contributing to this article. I simply went in and corrected some strange punctuation after reading through it.

I suffer from a genetic disease that causes damage to my metabolism. This disease came as a result of my parents being too close to Hiroshima during the time of the blast and their exposure to the area while participating in the subsequent medical relief efforts.

Something that didn't hit the news in the United States is the amount of genetic illnesses that have resulted from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are real and some of them indeed have resulted from exposure to depleted uranium.

I invite the scholars here who frequent wikipedia to take a look at the unpopular reality presented by those two events. And the persistant consequences still at play from them.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Black Omega (talk • contribs) 15:40, November 18, 2006 (UTC)

I am not any of these people

I have not edited Depleted uranium, and certainly not to the extent that User:71.252.225.61 recently did. Nor did I edit as Peter Cheung when he was accused and convicted--by a single administrator--of being me while editing through an open proxy (which certainly looks to me like it was part of a DSL DHCP pool and thus would be very unlikely to host a proxy) some months ago. I note that IP address is in Dallas, Texas, which is very near Plano, where Dr. Cheung claimed to be from.

At the time I thought someone was going to absurd lengths to set me up, but now I think I had better talk to whoever did the checkuser on Peter Chung's IP address, calling it an open proxy.

TDC, you said you had an email address for Dr. Peter Cheung. What is it? LossIsNotMore 22:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Comparison of the two versions

I hadn't realized just how much had been removed over the past several months. Here's a comparison:

Section	Current version	71.252.225.61/Black Omega version
Health considerations	starts out with an italicized discussion of the radiological hazard, which is known to be much less than the chemical hazard, then refers to a lengthy article with only a few paragraphs on uranium; 10 paragraphs and 1 sub-section total	17 paragraphs total, introduced by a much more general paragraph, with 5 sub-sections
Chemical and radiological hazards	no such section -- the pertinent discussion is disjointed in several paragraphs spread throughout "Health considerations"	2 paragraphs, one for chemical and the other for radiological
Birth defects and other affects	no such section -- 1 paragraph mentions the problem in passing with a single reference	7 paragraphs and a graph, including a quotation proving that the number of observed birth defects in children of Gulf War veterans is sharply increasing over time; 15 references, almost all from the peer-reviewed medical literature. ("Affects" should be "effects")
Patterns of exposure	no such section	3 paragraphs, a map, and 8 references, mostly from the peer-reviewed medical and scientific literature
Gulf War syndrome	2 paragraphs and 1 reference (note that Al Marshall admits that he did not consider reproductive and chemical toxicity)	3 paragraphs and 6 mostly peer-reviewed medical references
Soldier complaints	3 sentences as a top-level section, 1 link to a news report	2 paragraphs including 6 sources in the peer-reviewed medical literature, under "Health considerations"
Footnotes	12 in inconsistent formats, mixed in with 22 bare URL links	62, almost all with named links

Survey

Which version is the best article? Please vote below in this format: #...optional text...~~~~

The current version

The 71.252.225.61/Black Omega version

1. See table above. LossIsNotMore 10:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• 62 footnotes is overdoing it. Why exactly are we voting on article content? It would seem that a more productive approach would be to edit the page to use the best of both versions. (Radiant) 15:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

During FAC they want at least one footnote per paragraph, so it's seems about right to me. Wikipedia is not paper, and the footnotes are small. I found most of those which were replaced, and they are almost all from the peer-reviewed literature.

This is a survey because those who have been removing the content from the article hauled me in front of the arbcom and got me prohibited from editing this because I told a military doctor that his denial of uranium's teratogenic properties bordered on malpractice. Since then, those who have been removing things from the article have accused at least ten people of being me, and have in at least two cases succeded in blocking people who are not me because they were adding things -- most recently as small as an {{POV}} tag, to this article. Because, according to one editor who is running for Arb Com, the guy who added the POV tag is an "obvious sockpuppet" even though checkuser says we are "unrelated." LossIsNotMore 00:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Another comment from Black Omega

I did not add one word to the article I edited. I simply corrected some of the punctuation. Nothing more, nothing less. So anyone calling that version "the Black Omega version" is 100% incorrect. Because it simply was not my article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Black Omega (talk • contribs)

Interwiki

We have begun the writing an article on the same subject in the Turkish Wikipedia. As I can't edit this page without an account, can you please add it to the links availible: Zayıflatılmış uranyum Thank you. --85.101.166.106 07:25, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Health effects

I added a brief intro section from an Argonne lab study for context, and a link to a summary of that report
KonaScout 15:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Another discussion of the small amount of radioactivity and how harmless it is, without any mention at all of the very much more significant chemical toxicity or its implications. Doesn't the current version of the article already have enough of that? I'm sure Al Marshall and the rest of the military industrial complex are thrilled to have an Encyclopedia-of-Earth link spammer (who, ironically, doesn't disclose his or her identity or credentials) following in their footsteps. LossIsNotMore 22:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I filed my qui tam action in federal district court last Monday. I urge replacement of the article by the clearly superior 71.252.225.61/Black Omega version, per the table above. I would do it myself if I were allowed to edit this article. LossIsNotMore 22:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

"Soldier Complaints"

This section isn't acceptable, even by its own admission. If there are no objections, it will be removed. Haizum 02:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean by "even by its own admission"? I prefer expansion, e.g.,

Current version

71.252.225.61/Black Omega version

American soldiers are complaining of injuries that they attribute to depleted uranium. The correlation has not been confirmed and the hypothesis ignores the multitide of other exposures that soldiers in a war situation are likely to receive. Visit this article for more info http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,71585-0.html

American soldiers are complaining of injuries that they attribute to depleted uranium. In early 2004, the UK Pensions Appeal Tribunal Service attributed birth defect claims from a February 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to depleted uranium poisoning. The US and UK governments have been attempting to monitor Gulf War veteran uranium exposure using urine tests. Urine assay for uranium inhalation exposure can be useful, provided that measurements are made soon after a known acute intake. The urinary excretion rate falls substantially after exposure, particularly during the first few days. If urine analysis is carried out on a routine basis not related to the pattern of intake, then the errors in the assessment of intake can be considerable. Exposure to teratogens may be measured by karyotype tests such as those most often provided for biopsy and amniocentesis. Soluble and most partially-soluble uranyl compounds affect gonadal chromosomes in proportion to the extent that they affect white blood cell chromosomes. Uranyl poisoning causes immune system disorders and may cause cancer.

LossIsNotMore 14:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Intro problems: "high strength", "radioactive"

Uranium is not particularly strong, and it spalls when milled or bent (which has also been removed, even though I distinctly remember adding that fact before I was banned, from a uranium metallurgy reference source in Stanford Libraries' archives.) The only properties upon which its widespread applications depend are its density and pyrophoricity. Strength should not be mentioned in the intro because it doesn't correspond to anything in the article. (See WP:LEAD)

Secondly, as has been pointed out repeatedly, the fact that depleted uranium is weakly radioactive is of little consequence unless it is inhaled or ingested, and even then, the hazard from its chemical toxicity is several orders of magnitude worse than its radioactivity. So the intro shouldn't say that the controversy is because of the radioactivity. A little bit of it is, but the primary controversy is the toxicity, which generally includes the radiological hazards of absorbed radioisotopes, anyway. The intro should say instead that the controversy is because DU is toxic.

Finally, until the other content disputes above pertaining to the "Health considerations" section are resolved, I think article should have a {{totallydisputed}} tag at the top. Even if the changes to the intro are made, the article remains factually incorrect in several respects (the current version of "soldier complaints" being just one obvious example) and biased in the manufacturer's favor. LossIsNotMore 22:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The properties of pure depleted uranium are like you describe them, but addition of titanium and niob change the situation drastical. [1] There are other metals with poor properties like iron and titanium and they are claiemed to have a high strength.--Stone 18:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Do any of the alloys not burn? LossIsNotMore 05:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Strength and burnig are no opposit properies. Most of the magnesium alloys burn the same way pure magnesium burns, so with good luck Uranium alloy burns the same way like uranium, but is less likely to fragment or fall apart. --Stone 14:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)