2023-02-04

UNA INFORMACION DEL WASHINGTON POST SOBRE LAS ARMAS ATOMICAS SU MANIPULACION DA CANCER

They handled nuclear missiles. Now they’re getting cancer.

February 3, 2023 at 8:52 p.m. EST

Jenny Holmes poses with a photo of her husband, Mark Holmes, at her home in Colorado Springs on Thursday. Mark Holmes, a former missileer, died in 2020 from non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. (Rachel Woolf for The Washington Post)

Mark Holmes spent his last 16 months battling Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, undergoing chemotherapy, committing his life story to home video for his kids to one day watch and wondering how he had gone from picture-perfect health to bedbound. When the former Air Force major died at 37 in 2020, he had no idea others from his base had developed the same cancer.

Three years later, a growing number of “missileers” — service members tasked with manning the nation’s nuclear missile launch control centers — have shared that they were diagnosed with cancer, and many have lymphoma. An unofficial, crowdsourced document created by a Space Force officer and obtained by The Washington Post totaled 30 cancer cases tied to people who worked at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana over 50 years. Fourteen had lymphoma, and four, including Holmes, died, according to numbers tallied up last month. Most were men in their 30s and 40s, well below the median age of 67 for a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis.

An Air Force lieutenant colonel who commanded Holmes argued in a Jan. 11 letter that Holmes’s cancer was caused by the thousands of hours he spent in the subterranean missile bunkers at Malmstrom. The letter, written to help Holmes’s wife prove his death was service-related so she could obtain survivor’s benefits, pointed to radon exposure and a slew of other chemicals in the 1960s-era silos as potential causes of the cancer. The letter warned of “a growing list” of missileers with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and other cancers, “exceeding normal rates for a population.”

“He was so healthy,” Jenny Holmes said of her husband. “He was fit. He exercised, ate healthily. He never had any concerns at all.”

Jenny Holmes poses with her children, from left, Maddie Holmes, 11, Anna Holmes, 5, and Will Holmes, 9, at their home in Colorado Springs on Thursday. (Rachel Woolf for The Washington Post)

The letter noted that the cancer cluster was being investigated by the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General after a complaint by another missileer who suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The IG declined to confirm an ongoing probe, but Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, who leads Air Force Global Strike Command, said the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine has started a formal investigation into the cases. A congressional inquiry has also begun and there is mounting panic among the community of missileers. The discovery of the first nine cancer cases was first reported by the Associated Press.

Other missileers, who worked at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming with near identical missile facilities, are now raising questions about their health. One former officer paid over $100 out-of-pocket for a blood test at a private clinic while he waits for Veterans Affairs to provide a full cancer screening. Meanwhile, the Holmes family is learning more about the carcinogens Mark was exposed to during more than 300 24-hour shifts deep underground where missileers await orders from the president in case the need arises to turn the launch key.

Holmes’s family wants more answers about what caused his cancer, and they worry about other service members who are exposed.

“It’s a waste of a good person,” Mark’s mother, Bev Holmes, said of her son. “For everybody who died or are in remission or still battling it, it’s a waste of their life. Their life is over or turned upside down, and it didn’t have to be.”

A note written by Mark Holmes to his wife, Jenny Holmes, and a note from Will Holmes, 9, to his father when he was in hospice care, on a wall at the family’s home in Colorado Springs on Thursday. (Rachel Woolf for The Washington Post)

A military briefing outlining missileers’ concerns was shared with the Air Force surgeon general and other medical professionals in the branch to gather more information, said Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek.