Chernobyl's legacy, fifteen years later, is much more than an irrelevant academic debate on the effects of low level radiation to the more than 14 million people living in contaminated areas of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

They are seeing their children die and are unimpressed by reports such as that released by the International Chernobyl Project of the United Nations which, according to Professor Richard Day, a bio-statistician of Pittsburgh, was partly based on examining just nine children (Pittsburgh Post, 1st July 1991).

Media reports seem unsure of the death toll, erring it appears on the lower side while the New York Times (Dec. 8th, 1992) enters the argument with an article on two British researchers, Dr Alice Stewart and Dr George W.Kneale who "present a more sinister picture of the risks of small doses of radiation."

Professor Larissa Evets, after examining more than 30,000 children living in areas with contamination up to 100 Cu/km2 bluntly declares "not one is healthy". Her research team from the Medical Institute of Grodno finds that 70% of these children have abnormal blood pressure, 66% dysfunctional thyroids, 39% abnormal eye function, 44% increased lymphatic nodes, 35% of boys 16-17 have no puberty development and all 30,000 have up to 100 times normal radiation in the urine.

In the Minsk Hematological Hospital more than 85% of leukemia victims die despite the availability of chemotherapy and regular assistance from foreign teams of doctors.

This is no surprise to Professor Evets who forthrightly says, "There is presently no accessible literature nor is there a medical system for treating people permanently living in areas of radioactive contamination between 1 and 5 Cu/km2. We have attempted to evaluate the efficacy of psycho-rhythm therapy. The results are extremely promising."

I first heard of Professor Evet's team of dedicated doctors through the work of a Russian film maker. At the time I was working with senior oncologist Professor Stranadko at the Moscow Central Oncological Hospital, while lecturing at the Moscow State University and various Medical Colleges on historically proven natural medical systems.

Galina Lascova, distressed by the deteriorating health of her son and the death of several of her friend's children, had made a film on the effects of radio-phobia - the fear of radiation - making it clear that it is not just the rising incidence of mutant births, nor the alarming 80 times increase in cancer [recent reports from the Californian Chernobyl Committee are quoting up to 8000 times increase] among children that is so disturbing but the deep uneasiness of living under the fearful shadow of a threat which neither scientists nor doctors seem able to alleviate or explain sensibly. Mothers watching sons and daughters die, children suffering explosive nose bleeds, bald kids wearing wigs don't pay much heed to the discussions of itinerant international observers. They want help.

It doesn't help them to be taken to strange countries and shown all the bountiful world they will be denied when they return home; they don't have need of a brief holiday which gives them little time to acclimatize, and renders their chronic illnesses acute; nor to experience something their peer group does not understand and which forever separates them from their friends - taunted as 'the radiated ones'; they don't need food parcels which introduce them to Swiss chocolate or Hawaiian pineapples for two days, or are eaten by some but not by others, or toys, or clothes, or philosophies, religions, seminars, mind/body workshops. They need a system which works for them in their pain and suffering. A system which acknowledges this feeling of impotence and pervading fear of radiation. Something which includes caring, loving, holding, understanding and tangible, measurable results.

The application of my own practice, Intentional Healing [Deep Field Relaxation (DFR)], within the children's own country, culture, diet and language, addresses many of the difficulties. Chris Magarey professor of surgery at Sydney University suggested in an article in the Australian Medical Journal (1981) that medical practitioners need to become aware of the effect of their conscious state on the patient. We could say that DFR translates this as the contagiousness of proximity between patient and therapist easily recognized and simply expressed in the desire we have to yawn when a nearby person does so, the tendency towards laughter if another is laughing, and, in this context, the tendency away from fear, contraction and pain if another is open and assured. The conscious therapist, comfortable and unafraid within him-herself exudes a subtle force more powerful than educated mind, an expression of the natural desire of nature towards health manifested as actions of loving kindness which are overridingly comforting to another when ignorance gives rise to fear and which ultimately breaks through the crippling restraint - the bondage - of logic.

In the summer of 1992 at Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia six natural medicine practitioners worked with one hundred and twenty eight children for one month. Five were Buryat doctors who had progressed from their classical training in medicine to the use of much of their historical knowledge from the area - herbs, acupuncture, moxibustion and of course Shamanism (which originated here - the very word being Buryat). I joined them with my technique of DFR - the conscious intrusion of one's mental, 'spiritual' and physiological state into another's field of influence.

All of the children had been examined by research doctors before and then more than eight weeks after they returned to their contaminated villages. Among the 60 parameters of health tested results showed that immune system deficit had fallen from 4.17% to none (0.00%) of the children with this problem. There was an essential improvement in several parameters of humeral immunity, phagocytosis (from 43.64% of the children down to 1.09%) and beneficial changes to blood structure. Full results prompted Prof. Evets to exclaim: "The evidence leads us to suspect that further research would give conclusive evidence of the efficacy of this method." What was most interesting is that different groups of children had either only treatment from me or from me and one of the other doctors. Other groups had nothing from me but were seen by two of the others, etc. The ‘control group’ was the same number of children who went to Italy for a similar period of time and received no therapy at all. In the final analysis it was found that the children who were seen only by DFR and had no other therapy showed significantly greater change than any other group or combination. This has lead to detailed research not covered in this article.

There is no medical system available to help people living in areas of low-level radioactive contamination and doctors are turning to natural medicine practices for answers.

Later, the same team of physicians and research doctors from the Physicians For Children Research Group of Grodno, Belarus undertook to examine 190 children from highly contaminated areas who were attending a special boarding school in Verieki created by the Belarus Government for just such cases. Working in the school clinic I saw 32 children each day for two weeks while at the same time providing for the requests of the villagers which meant seeing more than 300 adults each day.

Data from the more than 69 parameters of health taken before and more than one month after the course has been analyzed by the research doctors in percentages and shows there was a reduction from 38.89% to 9.09% of children with high level (more than 1510-9Cu/ltr) radiation in the urine measured by the scintillation Wallak-1500 meter.

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 was 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.

The percentage of children with enlarged thyroid gland of second and third degree reduced while fewer children had eyesight deficiencies.

Psychological parameters were also tested but in some cases there were such obvious changes that clinical tests were superfluous. One of our favorite children, Vasya Kurbako (9) an orphan, was retarded (and lacked bonding) from birth and incapable of minding himself; after three days of treatment, he became continent and self aware with a happy disposition and became a beacon for other less settled children. [update here: We were able, after a long struggle, to get Vasya to Scotland where he was adopted and underwent several operations for his cleft palate and he is now well on the way to becoming a successful artist.]

Without exception the children were relieved of the blinding twenty-four hour headaches associated with radiation sickness, many gained relief from the dramatic nose bleeds but regrettably there were those who seemed unreachable. Perhaps tears and sentiment are not the substance of science but one is surely excused such human-ness when holding these many children as they die, unheralded, unhelped and unrecognized as true lepers of science, separated by a chasm of ignorance not bridged by any known wisdom.

After twenty years of intensively studying the natural medicine systems of many cultures and watching their application and successes where other methods are non-existent or too costly for everyman's use it is profoundly satisfying to be involved in research towards a new medical system which is based in recognition of the patient's needs and to be able to report such clear findings analyzed by a team of dedicated physicians who see the dreadful, urgent need for a new approach in the treatment of low-level radiation sickness and it's implied application in general use elsewhere.

Seven years ago when I married Galina Lascova, her son's health, after eating contaminated food for five years, was delicate to say the least. Today his fourteen-year-old exuberance is living testimony to the efficacy of the work. We have been given government and Ministry of Health approvals to establish a Natural Healing and Teaching Center coupled with an eco-village at Lake Baikal where students will learn and people suffering from ecological damage will come from many countries to be treated by a wealth of therapists practicing DFR, Tibetan medicine and so on; including of course the direct descendants of the original Shamans, the Buryat doctors.

Presently between 10 and 12 children die each week in the Minsk Children's Hematological Hospital from radiation related illnesses - no-one has the figures for all the hospitals throughout Belarus, Ukraine and Russia but it is safe to speculate, based on the findings of Professors Evet's research, that the lives of more than 5,000,000 children are at risk. Whether they will all die depends on discovering new ways to help them - what is clear is that they are already irreversibly scarred by the psychological trauma generated by the oppressive fear in their lives, by seeing their friends die, and by the hopelessness created by ill-informed scientific discussion. Today we are seeing the children die, no-one is daring to imagine what will happen when their parents begin to show the same symptoms.