Bush's EPA nominee uses poor Florida kids as pesticide guinea pigs: CHEERS and radioactive oatmeal
The Greatest Genius of All Time
near the end of this post):
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Nominee Is Grilled Over Program on Pesticides
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
Published: April 7, 2005
WASHINGTON, April 6 - Stephen L. Johnson, President Bush's nominee to
lead the Environmental Protection Agency, encountered unexpected
turbulence at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday as Senator
Barbara Boxer of California threatened to hold up his nomination over a
small but controversial pesticide program in Florida.
Appearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Mr.
Johnson, a 24-year veteran of the agency who has been acting
administrator since his predecessor, Michael O. Leavitt, became
secretary of health and human services, was greeted warmly by
Republicans and faced predictably pointed questions from Democrats over
recent agency initiatives, including emission control rules put into
place last month.
Ms. Boxer's objections were based on a little-known research program
near Jacksonville, Fla., sponsored by the agency and the American
Chemistry Council, that offered money to low-income families willing to
allow the agency to measure the effects of pesticides on their children
under one year of age. The project, called Children's Environmental
Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, was suspended last year after
negative public reaction that prompted the agency to call in outside
experts to assess its feasibility.
The program was limited to families in Duval County that routinely used
pesticides inside their homes. It offered parents $970 over two years if
they made sure their young children went about their usual activities as
the use of pesticides continued. Researchers would then visit the home
every three to six months to collect data.
In a letter that reached Ms. Boxer several hours after she raised her
concerns, Mr. Johnson said, "No additional work will be conducted on
this study subject to the outcome of external scientific and ethical
review."
But that was well short of her demands. Calling the program "appalling,
unethical and immoral," Ms. Boxer implored Mr. Johnson "to pull the plug
on this program tomorrow." In an interview later, she said she would do
whatever she could to hold up Mr. Johnson's confirmation so long as the
program had any chance of being revived.
"Until it's canceled, I will do anything I can to stop this nomination,"
she said. "This program is the worst kind of thing; it's environmental
injustice where children are the victims."
Mr. Johnson, 54, is the first career employee at the agency with a
formal scientific background to be nominated to lead it. Trained as a
biologist and pathologist, he led the agency's pesticide and toxic
substances office before rising to several senior positions under Mr.
Leavitt and his predecessor, Christie Whitman.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Johnson assured committee members that under
his leadership, decisions would be made on "the best available
scientific information" and that they would be made through a process
"as open and transparent" as possible.
But fielding questions from other Democrats and Senator James M.
Jeffords, Independent of Vermont, who warned Mr. Johnson against
becoming "a rubber stamp for White House policies," Mr. Johnson made it
clear that he would strongly support preferences of the administration.
That became especially evident in an exchange with Senator Thomas R.
Carper, Democrat of Delaware, who pressed Mr. Johnson to explain why the
agency provided the committee with detailed analyses of the
administration's pollution-reduction bill, known as Clear Skies, but not
two competing bills. The measure has stalled in the last two sessions of
Congress.
Mr. Johnson said the agency had more pressing matters to address, but he
vowed to do whatever he could to help the committee pass effective
antipollution legislation so long as it was built on Clear Skies.
"I appreciate the work the committee has already done on this issue," he
said, "and I look forward to working with you to advance this important
legislative initiative."
Responding to friendly questions from Senator George V. Voinovich,
Republican of Ohio, Mr. Johnson returned to the theme of sound science
as the overarching imperative for all agency decisions. But Mr. Jeffords
threw the concept back to him, asking Mr. Johnson why the agency chose a
cap-and-trade program for its recently announced mercury rules for power
plant emissions, rather than a program that demanded the use of best
available technologies.
Mr. Johnson's answer reflected his willingness to balance economic
considerations with new environmental regulations. He said that new
guidelines for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions were also
helping to reduce mercury emissions and that forcing plant operators to
do more would prove too expensive.
"It's a much more cost-effective approach," he said of the cap-and-trade
program.
As he left the hearing room, Mr. Johnson smiled when asked about Ms.
Boxer's concerns and said, "Today was a pleasure being before the
senators, and I'm looking forward to swift confirmation so I can run the
E.P.A. on a full-time basis."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/politics/07enviro.html?oref=login
And, you even get a t-shirt:
"Photo showing the items
that participant's will receive."
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What will my family receive for its participation in the study?
* You will receive both monetary and non-monetary compensation
* A Study t-shirt
* An official, framed Certificate of Appreciation
* A Study bib for your baby
* A calendar
* A Study Newsletter
* A video camcorder, if you complete all of the study activities
over the two-year study period
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http://www.epa.gov/cheers/basic.htm
EPA poster "Children's Pesticide Exposure"
http://www.epa.gov/nerl/news/forum2003/science/tulve_poster.pdf
And, proof that the EPA ought to be discouraging pesticide exposure
rather than encouraging continued pesticide exposure in poor and
minority Florida children:
10 Tips to Protect Children from Pesticide and Lead Poisonings:
http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/10_tips/
Radioactive oatmeal:
"1946-1974:
The Atomic Energy Commission authorizes a series of experiments in which
radioactive materials are given to individuals in many cases without
being informed they were the subject of an experiment, and in some cases
without any expectation of a positive benefit to the subjects, who were
selected from vulnerable populations such as the poor, elderly, and
mentally retarded children (who were fed radioactive oatmeal without the
consent of their parents). "
start of quotation
I won't tell you now about the severe physical and mental abuse," said
Fred Boyce, leaning into the microphone, his back to a wall of press and
spectators, "but I can assure you, it was no Boys' Town." It was 1994,
and Boyce, a handsome man in his 50s, sat at a lone witness table facing
an arc of stone-faced members of the Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments.
By his eighth birthday, Boyce had seen the death of his father, the
removal of himself and 12 siblings from his mother's care, five foster
homes, and eventually, the Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham,
Massachusetts. They labeled him feeble-minded and institutionalized him
for the remainder of his youth. It was at Fernald, where brutality was a
fact of life, that Boyce joined the "Science Club"--a group of boys who
ate oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes each morning in exchange for
special treats. A quart of milk when they donated blood. A baseball
game. A trip to the beach on their birthdays.
"They bribed us by offering us special privileges," Boyce told the
committee, "knowing that we had so little that we would do practically
anything for attention; and to say, 'This is their debt to society,' as
if we were worth no more than laboratory mice, is unforgivable."
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the federal government, in
collaboration with the Quaker Oats Company, funded studies in which the
Science Club boys were fed radioactively labeled nutrients--like iron
and calcium--to see how these nutrients were metabolized. The boys
didn't know they were guinea pigs. But the Fernald boys weren't alone in
their unwitting radiation exposure. Terminal cancer patients were
subjected to "total-body irradiation" at toxic levels to help scientists
learn, among other things, the biological effects of exposure to atomic
weapons. Elsewhere, more than 200,000 military personnel were used in
disturbing ways--like flying through atomic clouds--to study the atomic
bomb. Just prior to the hearing at which Boyce told his story, hints of
these and many other secret radiation experiments began to surface--many
thought to be related to the Cold War.
end of quotation
http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0600web/faden.html
"The State Boy's Rebellion"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743245121/102-1427536-2491345?v=glance
"War Against the Weak"
****
Genius
chainsaw
> This will take you back to the days of radioactive oatmeal
Might explain your deformities...
Mi...@juniper.net
It is clear that his answers reflect support for Big Buisness causes.
That is how he made is way up through the ranks. Big Buisness will
always make trouble for any regulator seeking to protect the Public.
That is why few genuine objective scientists make to lead such agencies.