Background
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was born on September 22 1932 (or 1930 according to other accounts) , in the Karada district of Baghdad, Iraq. He is the son of Alwan, a temporary farmhand and Fatima, a homemaker. He is one of 7 siblings that survived. His parents lost other children through infant and early childhood mortality which was prevalent at the time.
His family changed their name from Al-Imian to the more aspirational Al-Abbasi. They are not related the to Abbasid caliphate.
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi grew up on various farms, helping his father, and knew the nature and habits of the Iraqi farming community
Career
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was supported throughout his schooling by philanthropic landowners from the Babylonian Jewry, and sponsored by the Royal Iraqi Army to study medicine in Baghdad.
He completed his medical studies in 1955, and continued his tenure in the Iraqi Army until the early 1960s. After leaving the army, he practiced medicine in Baghdad with interludes in tutoring at medical schools in Mosul and Baghdad. Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi's attachments at research facilities in Europe and the USA were funded by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
In 1961, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi assisted in a study leading to a significant and impactful publication on poisoning by ethylmercury, a fungicide used to preserve seed grain, and how it affected a large number of farmers and their families who used the mercury-laced seed in the preparation of home-made bread. The primary author of the publication was Professor Mahmoud Jalili. The paper was written in the aftermath of mercury-poisoning episodes which occurred in Iraq in 1956 and 1960. In 1956 many cases of mercury poisoning were observed in the North of Iraq, and more than 100 cases were admitted to Mosul Hospital with 14 deaths. In 1960, patients were admitted from different parts of Iraq with 1000 cases reported, and an estimated 200 deaths. Both episodes were due to ethylmercury (rather than methylmercury) compounds.
In 1963, he travelled to Sweden via the UK, reportedly to observe the application of ultrasound in cardiac investigations. Upon his return from Europe, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was seconded to the Northern city of Mosul, where tutored at the medical school.
In 1967, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi travelled to the USA reportedly to spend time at a research facility, studying the effects of Mercury Poisoning and its potential management, although in other accounts, he stated that he went there for cardiology training. There appears to be no publications or research documents pertaining to his time there, nor did he obtain a formal academic qualification such as a diploma, masters or PhD.
While Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was in the USA, on 7 June1967, Iraq severed diplomatic relations with the United States, in the wake of the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War. Inexplicably, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi remained in the USA until the end of 1967 before returning to Iraq.
The 1961 publication on mercury poisoning, that Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi assisted in, stated: "when organic mercury compounds are used as fungicides against seed-borne diseases of cereals and are handled by a large number of farmers who are not used to such toxic materials, mercury poisoning is likely to occur"
The above statement, written a decade earlier, is of great significance and poignancy with reference to events that took place in Iraq between 1970 and 1972.
The safety of mercury was the topic du jour in 1970 after Dr Bruce McDuffie, a New York chemistry professor, tested a can of tuna and found unsafe levels of mercury. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ran its own tests and found exactly the same. That year, the U.S. government agency recalled almost 1 million cans of tuna. Mercuric contamination was also discussed in the UK parliament at the time. Methylmercury was banned in the UK in 1971. Minamata disease, caused by the release of methylmercury into the sea around the city of Minamata in Japan from 1932 to 1968, was already known.
Mercury is also recognized as a toxic, persistent, and mobile environmental pollutant; it does not degrade and becomes mobile because of the volatility of mercury and several of its compounds. Atmospheric contamination by mercury continues to be one of the most important environmental problems in the modern world.
In 1970, following a severe drought that affected crops and harvests, Saddam Hussein, who was the Iraqi Government’s no. 2 at the time, decided to order seed grain, from the USA, for planting, a year later, in the 1971 season, but insisted on the pre-emptive treatment of the full grain cargo, and the chemical agent selected for that purpose was methyl mercury. It is unclear why Saddam Hussein made that decision. Moreover, the use of methylmercury as seed-dressing was already banned in several countries (Sweden in 1966), and both the USA and Europe declared this composition as dangerous for food. Nevertheless, the United States, which was a major producer of mercury, did not prohibit its export.
Despite the apparent forward planning by the Iraqi government and U.S. seed suppliers, the grain cargo was shipped in American containers in September 1971, arriving too late for the planting season in Iraq. The three northern governorates of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Erbil together received more than half the shipments. Government officials entrusted with distributing the cargo did not issue warnings about the toxic nature of the treated grain. By the time the cargo was distributed, the farmers had already planted their own grains, and would use the imported mercury-laced grain to feed their families and animals.
Therefore, in late 1971, farmers and their families, in a repeat of what happened in 1960, unsuspectingly and unknowingly, used the poisonous seed in the preparation of home-made bread, and to feed their livestock.
The effects of mercury took some time to manifest. The latent period between ingestion and first symptoms (typically paraesthesia and numbness in the extremities) was between 16 and 38 days. Paraesthesia was the predominant symptom in less serious cases. Worse cases included ataxia (typically loss of balance), blindness or reduced vision, and death resulting from central nervous system failure.
The hospital in Kirkuk received large numbers of patients with symptoms that doctors recognized from the previous outbreaks. The first case of mercury poisoning was admitted to hospital on 21 December 1971. By 26 December, the hospital had issued a specific warning to the government
During that time, Abdul-Hamid Al-Abbasi was made a member of the newly formed Clinical Committee on Mercury Poisoning at the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
The Iraqi government did not act quickly or efficiently and took its time issuing adequate restrictions. Although the first poisoning cases took place in December 1971, the warning alert was not issued until mid-January 1972. Ba’ath operatives also took control of law enforcement and banned media coverage. The military was deployed and at gunpoint, the authorities enforced the cessation of use of the contaminated wheat, prompting frightened farmers to throw any residual poisoned grain into canals and streams, contaminating rivers, and further spreading poison to the rest of the population.
The Iraqi health system was overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with the deluge of patients presenting with symptoms. Professor Salem Damluji, Head of the Department of Medicine at Baghdad University's College of Medicine and Chairman of the Committee, wrote to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in March 1972, asking doctors from other countries with experience in this field to reach out to him, citing the article Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi co-authored in 1961 for background and reference. It appears that Professor Damluji thought the poisonous culprit was ethylmercury, as it was in 1960, rather than the methylmercury seed-dressing that Saddam Hussein ordered.
In February 1972, by specific invitation from Baghdad, Thomas Clarkson, a heavy metals toxicologist, from the Center for Environmental Medicine at Rochester University in New York, arrived in Iraq with a grant for both aid and research though the U.S. government. Clarkson’s specific invitation may have predated Damluji’s SOS call to the international medical community in March 1972. Thomas Clarkson was an experimental research scientist, not a medical doctor.
In an article for the Voice of Iraq on 19/02/2018, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi wrote "I asked for external help and an expert delegation from Rochester University came to help us" and "Note that the delegation of experts came at my invitation and did not have with him other than my message to him". Moreover, he wrote "Professor Clarkson, the senior expert of the U.S. delegation, begged me and the delegation to conduct a separate research".
Following the mercury poisoning outbreak, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi, whilst remaining a physician in Baghdad, went on to publish joint research papers with Thomas Clarkson and his colleague Paul Kostyniac, another toxicology scientist from New York who visited Baghdad in the 1970s. Al-Abbasi maintained a distant friendship with Kostyniac in years to come, and subsequently secured a Permanent Resident Card in the USA, otherwise known as a Green Card and US citizenship. He was reportedly awarded an honorary fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians in the UK for his involvement in what happened.
Shortly before the outbreak of the poisoning epidemic, in late 1971, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi's young son was shot dead at his kindergarten in inexplicable circumstances. The kindergarten was attended previously by Saddam Hussein's own sons, in addition to the children of high ranking government officials and diplomats. No other children were harmed during the shooting. Soon after the killing of his son, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi went to Beirut for a while before returning to Baghdad in the wake of the outbreak to take up his position in the committee. He did not disclose or discuss the circumstances surrounding these events (both personal and national) with his family or those who knew him thereafter, although, in 2017, On his Facebook page, he used the child's demise to promote a book he wrote in 2008.
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was a general physician with an interest in cardiology, yet he became involved in agricultural toxicology from the beginning of the1960s, until the 1970s. On the rare occasions this topic was mentioned, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi displayed marked displeasure at not having more prominence or recognition, ridiculed his then colleagues and claimed to have been the first person to spot symptoms of mercury poisoning and discover a treatment for it. His claims, however, are discordant with documented historical events and timelines.
The main victims of the poisoning were poor rural farmers. The grain sacks (packaged in Mexico) were marked in Spanish, and the farmers, who were mostly illiterate, could not read or write in this or in any other language. Most farmers lived far away from cities and had no access to hospitals or treatment. The poisoning incident was kept quiet by the Iraqi government and it wasn't until March 1972, that an American reporter uncovered evidence of cases of mercury poisoning treated in the local hospitals. Iraqi officials eventually admitted 6,530 cases and 459 deaths, but it is thought that there may have been significantly more. it is believed that both the number of cases and fatalities are at least ten times fold with perhaps 100,000 cases of brain damage, including children who were left severely physically and mentally incapacitated. It is estimated that a third of those affected by methyl mercury poisonings in Iraq were children.
In early March, 1972, the Iraqi government lifted an initial ban on the slaughter of cattle and the sale of locally produced poultry and fish . However, Iraqis stopped buying national products and would line up daily in front of grocery stores to buy imported frozen or canned meat. The rush produced a shortage of imported foods. Foreigners living in Baghdad were provided with their own supermarket stocked with safe imported food, where access was only possible by showing a foreign passport. Airline sources reported that the government‐owned Iraqi Airways had been buying food for its passengers and other personnel from Beirut, Lebanon.
Dr. Arne Jernelöv, a Swedish biologist and environmental scientist, who visited Iraq as a World Health Organization staff member, wrote "I ate only dates and American corned beef canned in 1941 and 1942 for the US Army".
There were also reports of a number of pregnant women, especially foreign spouses, who underwent abortions for fear they may have been exposed to the poison, which can severely damage unborn babies.
Prior to this incident, there were only a few scattered reports in the literature on the management of this condition since around 200–300 cases of methylmercury poisoning had been reported worldwide. Therefore, this outbreak constituted the largest methylmercury poisoning epidemic ever recorded.
Subsequently, an International Conference on Intoxication due to Alkylmercury Treated Seed was held in Baghdad, Iraq on 9-13 November 1974 and guidance was issued by the WHO (World Health Organization) and the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) on the use of mercury as seed dressing, following a meeting in Geneva, supported by a grant from the Swedish International Development Authority.
In 1975, Iraq and Rochester, New York appeared to be cooperating again in order to set up a plant of organic fertilizers, purportedly for agricultural use. The Pfaulder plant in Rochester, NY, USA, was approached but the deal did not materialize and eventually Iraq set up a manufacturing plant on its own
The Methylmercury Poisoning Epidemic was also named the Pink Death of Iraq because the contaminated grain had a pink hue, which washed out with water, lulling rural farmers and their families into believing it was safe to consume.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, it was found that much of the data was false, and not reflective of the real findings, causing major embarrassment for the scientific community, as the incorrect data was already used to set standards for the WHO (World Health Organization), the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
With the impending war between Iraq and Iran, in 1980, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi left for the UK where he became an honorary research fellow at Charing Cross Hospital, London UK, under the patronage of Dr Peter Nixon, consultant cardiologist. Dr Nixon later admitted research misconduct and errors in scientific papers co-authored by him, with particular reference to disputed theories about hyperventilation.
In January 1986, while the war with Iran was still raging, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi unexpectedly returned to Iraq. Upon his return, he resumed his clinical posts in the Baghdad hospitals and continued teaching at the medical school. Many of his students found him audacious and impudent in his overt criticism of the Ba'athist regime and its politics, which earned their admiration, candour and trust. His openly combative behaviour was highly unusual, and very much dangerous, considering the ferocity and oppression of Saddam Hussein's reign, yet he prospered and lived in relative comfort and safety. Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi remained in Iraq until the first Gulf War, after which he left for Jordan, eventually returning to the UK in the mid1990s, where he settled.
Politics
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was a fervent supporter of General Abd al-Karim Qasim. He harboured hatred towards what he considered the privileged elite, such as landowners, and was ideologically inspired by Pan-Arab nationalism and Nasser of Egypt’s 1952 overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. As a rabid Arab nationalist, he was contemptuous and derogatory of other ethnicities in the region, particularly the Kurds.
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi was a serving officer in the Iraqi army when the military coup took place on 14 July 1958 in Iraq, which resulted in the toppling of King Faisal II and the overthrow of the Hashemite-led Kingdom of Iraq.
During the coup, troops were sent to assassinate King Faisal II and Crown Prince ‘Abd al-llah as well as other members of the Royal Family, including women and household staff.
In the aftermath of the 1958 revolution, Iraq's ruling establishment created a state devoid of political compromise. Its leaders liquidated those holding opposing views, confiscated property without notice, trumped up charges against its enemies, and fought battles with imaginary domestic foes. This state of affairs reinforced an absolute leader and a militarized Iraqi society.
Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi and his birth family were part of this new order.
On 8 February 1963, Abd al-Karim Qasim was overthrown and executed by the Ba'athists in the Ramadan Revolution. The Ba'ath Party took power under the leadership of General Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr (prime minister) and Colonel Abdul Salam Arif (president).
Following the overthrow and execution Abd al-Karim Qasim, Abdul Hamid Al-Abbasi fled the army. His Ba'athists affiliations and his family's strong ties with the Ba'athist Regime protected him from the fallout of the overthrow of Abd al-Karim Qasim's government, shielded his departure from the Iraqi Army and enabled him in years to come
