http://www.pixelpress.org/chernobyl/index.html

A recent photo-essay in Slate claimed that mutations have affected a significant portion of an ethnic group living in the vincinity; a truly horrific photo essay of kids in a Sanitarium. Really upsetting.

Oddly, even though I just went looking for it to drop a link, and I only watched it this week (was front page), I can't find it. WTF?

BTW - there were at least 20 kids in the essay with terrible mutations, so this 50 number is suspect. Though, was Slate's essay BS, or the article you linked? I dunno.

Looks like living people to me. The 50-something number is dead people. That's from the Chernobyl Forum, "comprising a number of UN agencies including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), other UN bodies and the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine"

I'd assumed there were a ton. I can believe them or believe Greenpeace.

Interesting link. Thanks.

Ah, found it -

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/

Melodramatic, but effectively heartbreaking. Of course, this is almost a separate issue than the size of statistics, though some claims are made that an ethnic group is almost wiped out. (unvalidated by any other source that I have)

That was a terrific presentation. Yes, it is a separate issue.
I'd thought that Chernobyl was like Bhopal, where 15,000 got wiped out that day. I was surprised that the actual number was so low, and was sharing the information.

Hey dude, no need defend, I honestly have no idea. I'm just up in the air about it. One guy says a busload, and "Their 600-page report last September concluded that the only long-term health effect of Chernobyl was thyroid cancer in children, easily cured in almost every case," the other guy says the doctors claim that "this could be the end of the whatsiswhat people" with photos of terrible DNA.

Honestly, I'd always thought - absorbed somewhere - that very few people had actually died. I was actually surprised by that photo essay, that apparently a bunch were mutated. Dunno.

The thing with the presentation though, couldn't you take those pics in any country, really? When you start getting old, and you have memories of hyped-up things that turned out to be not so truthful, you start to wonder.
My brother begged me to get on the Gulf War Syndrome gravy train. One out of every 7 soldiers who served in GW1 is receiving disability. All for something completely unproven. What a deal.