By: Clif Sanderson First published 1996

[More than seventeen years after the Number Four reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in the early morning hours of 26th April 1986 controversy still dominates research into the long-term effects of low level radiation. In 1998, children's cardiologist, Prof. Leonid Makarov from LENC Research group in Moscow personally told me, "The second generation babies are being born mutant."]

The data released by the International Chernobyl Project set up by the United Nations suggested that no increase in cataracts resulted from the Chernobyl accident but Richard Day a professor of bio-statistics reported the Pittsburgh (USA) Post, July 1991 went to Washington to read the original data and discovered the findings were based on examinations of just nine people. Newspaper reports seem undecided as to the real death toll while two English researchers, Dr Alice Stewart and Dr George W.Kneale 'present a more sinister picture of the risks of small doses of radiation' according to the New York Times (Dec 8th 1992).

Professor Larissa Evets, who heads a team of doctors and physicians in the city of Grodno, Belarus, expresses no such ambivalence. After testing more than 30,000 children of all ages up to late teens she reports that not one, even in such declared 'clean' areas as the Capital city of Minsk, could be declared healthy. Her continuing research in areas of contamination ranging up to 100 Cu/km2 show 70% of the children have abnormal blood pressure, 66% dysfunctional thyroids, 39% have abnormal eye function - all 30,000 children have up to 100 times the normal amount of radiation in the urine.

Leukaemia appears to be one of the radiation related illnesses most frequently occurring and in the Minsk Children's Haematological Hospital Dr Alenikova sees up to 20% of her young patients die every week despite the availability of chemotherapy and the regular assistance of foreign teams of doctors.

That is no surprise to Professor Evets who forthrightly says, 'There is no presently accessible literature nor medical system for treating people permanently living in areas where the level of radioactive contamination is between 1 and 5 Cu/km2 and among our programs for developing suitable methods we have attempted to evaluate the efficacy of psychoneuroimmunology(DFR). We could say the results are extremely promising.'

I heard of Professor Evets' team of dedicated doctors through a Russian filmmaker, Galina Lascova whose son Dimitri was 4 years old at the time of Chernobyl and who, watching his health deteriorate and seeing several of her friend's children die founded the first Children of Chernobyl Committee in Minsk to take some action.

She got right to the heart of the matter with a pilot film she made largely focusing on the psychological condition known as radio-phobia - the fear of radiation which permeates the daily life of more than 14 million people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Watching this brief film you come to realise that it isn't the rising incidence of mutant births nor the alarming 80 times increase of cancer among children that is so disturbing but the permanently affected lives of people forever under the fearful shadow of a threat which neither scientists nor doctors seem able to alleviate or explain. To talk to mothers who lost their son last week and are now watching their daughter follow, to see children in school suddenly erupt as an explosive nose-bleed covers their desk and splatters their neighbours, or watch as they suffer almost permanent devastating headaches is to question the findings of itinerant international observers.

In summer 1989 I was lecturing and working clinically in Moscow at the Central Oncological Clinic, the Moscow State University and various medical colleges such as that for Cardiology students and was often asked to work with children suffering apparently radiation related illnesses. Through our research we began to define and accurately measure a new system based on the impact of contagious proximity [now known as Deep Field Relaxation] between patient and therapist, we saw the wisdom of including the conscious state of the therapist as an important factor in the healing equation and along with research doctors such as Leonid Makarov and Alexander Kapustin of the LENC Medical Research Institute in Moscow established an integrated, patient oriented, holistic approach to health care.

This was the basis for Ms Lascova's invitation to work with 'her' children in Minsk and with the team of doctors investigating the residents of low level radiation areas, it has been the basis for research with Professor Evets and the motivation behind the establishment of a Natural Medicine Hospital and eco-village at Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia [yet to be a realisation].

In the summer of 1992, one hundred and twenty eight children were tested before, and up to eight weeks after, spending one month at ecologically clean Lake Baikal where they were treated by eight natural medicine practitioners in a complex of therapies including herbs, acupuncture, qi gong and psycho-rhythm healing. Results showed that where previously 4.17% had immune system deficit, after treatment none had this problem. There was an essential improvement in several parameters of humeral immunity, phagocytosis (from 43.64% down to 1.09%), changes to the structure of red blood and endocrine system. Altogether 43 parameters of health were tested and demonstrated the usefulness of what the Russian doctors term climate-therapy.

Later in the summer, working alone with 190 children in a boarding school in Belarus I applied my methods of psycho-rhythm healing to a test group of 32 children. Extensive tests (69 parameters) were undergone by all of the children before and up to one month after the course of healing including evaluation of peripheral blood by common clinical methods which included amount and morphological peculiarities of formal elements; mononuclears extracted from whole blood in gradient of density; levels of progesterone, cortisol, corticosterone, estradiol, estriol, testosterone, thyroxine bound globulin. Tyreotropic hormone and insulin were identified by the radio-immune method and the level of general radiation of the urine was identified by liquid scintillation Wallak-1500 meter. The methods of Wilkenson, Mann, Whitney and Hill were used to evaluate the authenticity of differences between the groups.

Of the results perhaps the most confirming was the change from 38.89% to 9.09% (P<0.05) of children with high level (more than 1510-9Cu/ltr) radiation in the urine.

There was an essential reduction in the percentage of children with systolic blood pressure from 22.58% to 4.17% (P<0.05) and an authentic reduction in the percentage of children with leucocytosis, with reduced level of T lymphocytes (94.44% - 66.67%), eosinophylia (16.67% - 11.11% (P<0.05)), with a simultaneous increase in the percentage of children with reduced level of B lymphocytes (P<0.05).

There is a tendency towards increase in the number of children with normocytosis and a reduction in the percentage of children having lymphocytosis and basophylia. There is authentic reduction in the percentage with a low level of thyroxin binding globulin while the amount of insulin and testosterone in blood serum after treatment essentially increased and there is a tendency towards increase of thyroxin level.

At the same time there was a reduction in the percentage of children with enlarged thyroid gland of second and third degree and fewer children with eyesight deficiencies.

Psychological parameters were also tested but the obvious changes needed no clinical tests. Vasya Kurbako is eight years old, retarded from birth and incapable of minding himself; he became continent, self aware and responsible with a happy disposition and such changes as dream recall after the healing. Now he is determined to become a successful artist.

More than 5% of the children are bald or losing their hair and it takes no clinical trial to observe their almost readiness to take off the ugly, ill-made wigs following our counselling work. Perhaps tears and sentiment are not the substance of science but one is surely excused such weakness when holding child after child as they die, unheralded, unhelped and unrecognised as lepers of society, taunted by their peer groups as the 'radiated ones' and separated by a chasm of ignorance not bridged by any known wisdom.

After twenty years of satisfying work as a healer in many countries I can only commit these findings to you and allow others to judge their soundness. My wife Galina, lately a Russian filmmaker from Minsk, and I are devoted to helping these suffering people and are presently lecturing and speaking with the hope of raising sponsorship for our internationally registered 501(3)c tax exempt charity, FOCUS International and the Natural Medicine and Teaching Hospital and eco-village we have government approval to create on the shores of the world's oldest and most fascinating lake, Baikal. We are also co-founders of the Baikal Ecological Medicine Association and intend to invite holistic practitioners from all over the world to lecture and work with the children and other patients and to promulgate the entirely new medical system which is well established now in the Soviet Republics, supported as it already is by Ministries of Health and consumer demand and which will spread by virtue of it's proven success, usefulness and availability into other countries which already see the breakdown of present medical systems from their own weight and lack of relevancy to the prevailing culture.