The inconvenient secrets of Chernobyl

Today we can confidently say that Chernobyl keeps a lot of declassified information. Many feel uncomfortable because of some facts, confirmed by eyewitnesses. Such a story is not only relevant to events related to the conduct of the experiment itself, which led to the disaster. Who is not blamed for what happened? Dyatlov, unskilled staff, design bureau, confluence of circumstances, otherworldly forces are responsible, psychics whispered and “the reactor itself was snake-bitten”.

But there are facts upon learning of which you become as if deaf and dumb. From misunderstanding, from anger, from injustice, from despair, from our own powerlessness and the irreversibility of what has already happened. This allegory is not connected with the physical manifestation of the disease, it is like a parallel between 1986, when the deaf-mute were those on whom it depended – to live a person or die slowly, mind you – a painful death.

It will be about doctors, about those for whom the Hippocratic Oath is holy. And about the circumstances, rather, even about uncomfortable circumstances that did not allow some doctors to make responsible decisions solely in order to save human lives. About circumstances that probably scattered radioactive dust on the commandment of the famous ancient Greek healer – the “father of medicine”, without giving the opportunity to understand the true essence.

Tears choke from the realization of what happened. Firefighters, and not only them, although they, of course, in the first place, could be saved. Those who were sent for treatment to Moscow, those who were the first to experience the hell of internal radioactive burnout, could be saved, it was difficult, but possible.

There is already enough evidence for this, but the main one is the recollections of Anna Gubareva, a Kiev oncologist who participated in the elimination. Her memoirs were not included in the commercials circulated by untwisted television channels, they were not included in the historical chronicles of Chernobyl, and they did not even enter the fashionable HBO Chernobyl.

They live only in her memory, and also in what Hippocrates called the principle of no harm: “I will direct the sick regime to their benefit, in accordance with my strength and understanding, refraining from doing any harm or injustice.” Of course, no one wanted to cause harm to the victims who arrived from the Chernobyl accident in the clinical hospital № 6 in Moscow. And the clinic is not rubber: they refused to accept all the victims.

Only the fireguard of Lieutenant Vladimir Pravik, especially the heavily irradiated firefighters, was posted. 13 people whose life began to depend on the progressive methodology of the American doctor Gale, an innovative medical doctor without a medical education. It was believed that they were more fortunate, it turned out, on the contrary — 11 out of 13 firemen of the Pravik shift had already died by May 16.

Kinzelsky vs Gale

Firefighters, according to Gale’s method, transplanted the bone marrow by selecting a suitable donor, and killed their own bone marrow in the Moscow Clinic. Will the donor take root – the question is akin to fortune-telling on coffee grounds? Moscow colleagues strongly recommended the implementation of the same practice to Kiev doctors. But all these recommendations remained only “useful tips” for the person who, taking the oath of the doctor, said – I will do everything in my power.

Those who were taken to the Kiev Institute of Radiology and Oncology, to the chief radiologist of Ukraine, Leonid Kindzelsky, were treated differently. He clearly defined the characteristic signs of acute radiation sickness in patients.

The prospect for each patient became obvious – a slow, painful death, accompanied by the death of blood cells and internal organs, which, in essence, is the decomposition of the body in a living patient. Wild and painful death – so, in a narcotic sleep, decaying alive, one by one, 11 patients died in clinical hospital № 6 in Moscow.

Dr. Kinzelsky was a man with a severe character. He acted differently and openly refused to use the method of his Moscow colleagues. The first suspicion was that the treatment of acute radiation sickness was similar to the treatment of acute leukemia after radiation therapy.

It was difficult to counterbalance the capital’s doctors in 1986, they were by default considered more qualified, more experienced, more progressive. Leonid Petrovich Kindzelsky understood that, in any scenario, the advantage was for doctors from Moscow, but, nevertheless, he persistently continued to diagnose patients from Chernobyl, in addition to gamma radiation, also alpha and beta radiation.

He decided to practice a structurally different method of treatment: the essence was that he did not allow the complete destruction of the patient’s own bone marrow by implanting the donor bone marrow intravenously. Therefore, while the process of engraftment or rejection of the donor material continued, the person’s own resources gave a respite to the circulatory system and it, “having rested”, started itself to work.

There was another diametrical difference in treatment approach. The patients were “washed” in Kiev. No, not in the bathhouse and not in the shower, but intravenously – their blood was monotonously cleaned to a “mirror shine”. The whole complex of treatment of Professor Kinzelsky gave its results – no one of the eleven firefighters of the same heroic night shift, Lieutenant Pravik, undergoing treatment at Kinzelsky, died. In Moscow, as an excuse, they immediately started talking about the fact that the irradiation of Kiev patients was much less than those treated in Moscow, but this was not confirmed.

Years later, the methodology of the American pseudo-doctor Robert Gale was recognized as a scandalously erroneous practice with the goal of experimenting with humans. It is terrible to realize that the doctors of the sixth Moscow Clinical Hospital, in pursuit of innovative methods of treatment, have forgotten a little about one important commandment – do no harm! The experiment and its results were again at the forefront, only now not over the “reactor body”, but over living people.

And Leonid Petrovich Kindzelsky, through whose clinic thousands of patients passed in 1986, became a quiet hero. He died in 1999.

Those whom he saved, despite persistent, demanded “heal like Dr. Gale”, gather every year on his grave on the day of his death, April 19. The surviving Chernobyl liquidators to this day tell him – THANKS.

