We can ignore Chornobyl only at our own peril... (02/11/96)

We can ignore Chornobyl only at our own peril...

Following are excerpts of the address by Jack Palance, national spokesperson for the Children of Chornobyl Foundation, delivered on February 4.

Tonight is a very special evening. Tonight is just the beginning of a yearlong campaign to commemorate Chornobyl and to bring this accident back into the consciouseness of the American public. I decided to become a spokesperson for the Children of Chornobyl because this is something I had to do.

To those of you who have been working to combat Chornobyl's consequences, Chornobyl must seem like an endless battle. Where do you begin tackling the consequences of a disaster like this - a massive radiation release equivalent to 270 atomic bombs of the sort dropped on Hiroshima? ...

Chornobyl is not the sort of thing you can capture in a sound bite or a 30-second commercial. The victims are not all neatly gathered in one location where you can count the bodies and calculate damage. This disaster reached Norway, Alaska, Ireland, Greece, Turkey. Trace amounts of radiation even reached northern California. ...

But we know Chornobyl is already beginning to take its toll. As we sit here enjoying this wonderful meal, children in Ukraine are being stricken with thyroid cancer at rates 80 times higher than normal. Infants are being born with birth defects and complications that make their survival or any kind of normalcy impossible. To add to all the economic burdens and frustrations and indignities that Ukrainians have to face every single day, they have to worry about this ghost - this specter that haunts their lives and threatens the future of generations they will never live to see. ...

When I visited the Children of Chornobyl office here in New Jersey, I was struck by the photographs of children on the walls. These were kids from Kharkiv, and Chernihiv, and Lviv, and Kyiv. Many of them are probably not alive today. These were kids with sarcomas, Hodgkins disease, leukemias, thyroid tumors, neuroblastomas. They're very, very sick, but the beauty in their faces shines through, their smiles, their humor, their determination to live . ...

Now I know there are cynics and skinflints out there who say that Ukraine is independent now, and that it needs to fend for itself. This is nonsense. No nation in the world could go through what Ukraine has gone through in the last 70 years - the famine, the purges, the world wars - and the previous 200 years of tsarist rule before that, and be expected to make it on its own. On top of three centuries of unbelievable oppression, Ukraine now has to cope with the world's worst environmental disaster - Chornobyl, which saps about 12 percent of its entire federal budget. ...

I want the story of Ukraine to be told. I want its voices to be heard - not 100 years from now, when it will be too late. I want them to be heard now when there is still time to save the next generation or two. ...

Under the guidance of a perverse Soviet regime, which cherished industrial production and military prowess over all else, over human life, nuclear reactors were constructed on the very headwaters of the Dnipro River like an ecological sword of Damocles, threatening the drinking water for 34 million people downstream. That threat still exists, and it is growing. Eventually it will threaten the Black Sea, from there the Mediterranean, and from there, who knows? Some of these radionucleides remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.

Sure, we can ignore Chornobyl. But we can ignore it only at our own peril.

I am excited about becoming a spokesperson for the Children of Chornobyl Foundation. On a shoestring budget, this organization has brought more than $38 million worth of medical aid to Ukraine - 16 planeloads. ...

There are thousands of children out there who can be saved if only we can look beyond ourselves and do our best to make a difference. The Children of Chornobyl Foundation has already made a big difference. For the cost of a very lowbudget movie, they have worked miracles - installed an MRI, delivered mountains of boxes filled with medicine, trained physicians, set up the finest blood testing laboratory in all of the former Soviet Union ...

So I'm proud to be part of this lifesaving campaign. I look forward to traveling to Kyiv and meeting some of these doctors and children who are on the front lines in the fight against Chornobyl's aftermath. This is something we should all be part of - not just tonight, but for a long, long time to come.

I thank you. I applaud you. God give us strength to do what has to be done.

| Home Page |