SYNOPSIS: Most Americans first became familiar with E. coil several years ago when four children died from eating hamburgers at Jack In the Box restaurants. What millions of people don’t know is that there have been dozens of outbreaks since then and many hundreds of people have died. The problem has not been resolved, but rather has worsened.

E. coil 0157H7 has now become so widespread it is being called an epidemic. Official estimates reveal that E. coli is killing as many as 500 people a year and causing another 20,000 people to become sick.

The deadly E. coil, first discovered in hamburger in 1982, has increased significantly over the past decade. It’s found in the intestines and feces of some cattle and is sometimes accidentally transferred onto the meat during the slaughtering process. With steaks and roasts, E. coil isn’t considered much of a problem because it lies on the surface and is easily killed during cooking. But when the meat is ground up, the bacteria on the surface can get mixed into the middle of the hamburger where it’s much harder to cook out.

E. coil is not in every hamburger, but it could be in any hamburger. With an estimated one out of every 1,000 hamburgers containing this organism, this should be a matter of concern for most Americans. Americans eat more than 20 billion hamburgers a year, so millions of raw hamburgers may be contaminated. Consumers can protect themselves from deadly situations by making certain that their hamburgers are always cooked welldone. Experts say that if the middle of a hamburger reaches 155 degrees Fahrenheit, the E. coli will be killed. The government and the meat industry are trying to get the word out on some ways individuals can protect themselves, but given the continuing growth of the epidemic, they haven’t been too successful so far.

According to American Meat Institute scientist Janet Collins Williams, the industry has tried to reach the public through brochures they’ve sent to grocery stores and by applying safe handling labels now required on all meat packages. However, others believe that more attention-grabbing labels and detailed information should be used and that the United States Department of Agriculture inspection practices should be tightened.

Meanwhile, since the prevalence of E. coli is increasing, the media should make the public aware that there is an epidemic underway and that one of America’s favorite foods-hamburgers-can kill them.

While the source of this story is a television news magazine, researchers found little follow-up in the print media.

SSU Censored Researcher: Marcie Goyer

COMMENTS: Despite the alarming “20/20” report on September 22 that E. coli kills as many as 500 people a year and that the prevalence of the virulent bacterium is increasing, a news database search revealed no press reports of such an epidemic by the end of the year. Among the E. coli stories cited, two reported an E. coli epidemic in Russia; one was a general overview on infectious diseases, including E. coli; a Los Angeles Times article featured a viral epidemiologist who tracked diseases, including E. coli, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); a USA Today item in a news round-up noted a warning to boil water in a Wilmington, Delaware, neighborhood, where E. coli had been found; and a series of Kansas City Star articles reporting nine persons had been stricken by E. coli bacteria in Kansas.

During the same period of time, the Federal News Service reported statements by two medical scientists warning of the dangers of virulent bacterium including E. coli. And a trade magazine, Food Chemical News, reported on September 25, that Dr. Anne Schuchat, a medical epidemiologist at CDC, said, “it looks like there’s an epidemic” of E. coli 0157H7 infections because reporting has been mandated in most states and health departments recognize the importance of alerting public officials to an outbreak. Finally, on January 7, 1996, USA Weekend noted there were 1,420 cases of E. coli bacteria infections reported by the Centers for Disease Control in 1994.

There were no news reports that either supported the “20/20” report or challenged it. If 500 Americans were dying annually from E. coli and the disease is spreading, this surely would seem to warrant more press attention. “20/20” representatives declined to respond to our questionnaire attempting to followup on this story.

The post 25. E. Coli – Now A National Epidemic – Kills 500 Americans Annually appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: An estimated 1.3 million women die worldwide every year from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, according to a report from Population Action International, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

The problem results from a deadly confluence of economic and social factors related to pregnancy and childbirth, most associated with a lack of prenatal care and medical personnel, according to the researchers.

The study reviewed data in ten categories of maternal health and gave each of the 118 countries surveyed a score based on its performance in those categories. Areas rated included the number of women who die during childbirth, teenage pregnancy, contraceptive use, prenatal care, and availability of safe abortions.

The countries with the best overall rankings were, in order, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Belgium. Ranked the worst were Mali, Congo, Somalia, Angola, and Zaire. In the latter three countries, the average woman has more than six babies in her lifetime, and maternal death rates range from 600 to 1,000 per 100,000 births.

The study shows that the chance of dying from pregnancy or childbirth varies dramatically in different parts of the world, from 1 in 7 in Mali to about 1 in 17,000 in Italy.

The rate in the United States is 1 in 5,669 and the U.S. was ranked 18th. The U.S. did not rank higher among the developed nations largely because of teenage pregnancies-its rate is about six times that of European nations-and a relatively low rate of contraceptive use.

Although it still fell in the study’s “very low risk” group of countries, the United States ranked behind such emerging countries as Taiwan and Singapore.

Dr. Shanti R. Conly, Director of Policy Research for Population Action International, warned that the U.S. “is likely to drop even farther if this Congress continues as it has started.” A proposal to end public contraceptive services in the U.S. has been approved in committee, she said.

Although an important factor affecting the ranking is a country’s relative wealth, according to Dr. Conly, some quite poor countries have worked on women’s health issues and ranked well, while other nations of great wealth scored relatively poorly.

SSU Censored Researcher: Doug Huston

COMMENTS: Ramon G. McLeod, author of the San Francisco Chronicle article, said the subject of “prenatal care of women in the Third World, and even in industrial states, is hardly one that gets much attention in the media. It just isn’t the kind of subject matter that grabs a lot of journalists, male or female. The reason, I think, is that most U.S. editors and writers don’t see it as an issue that affects Americans much. The reality is that it affects us both directly and indirectly.

“High maternal death rates are almost always found in countries with unstable populations. When women are healthier they have healthier, and fewer babies. So while the average American reader may not care about whether a mother in Kenya survives childbirth, she may care a great deal about the impact of high population growth on the environment and immigration pressures. And if she cares about these issues she may be more willing to support the funding increases needed to help other women survive their childbirths.”

McLeod feels the only ones who benefit from the lack of coverage are those that “don’t want to spend any money on overseas development or who may somehow believe that improving maternal health equals abortion, which it doesn’t.”

The post 24. U.S. Trails Most Developed Nations in Maternal Health Ranking appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: When the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) long awaited “reassessment” of the health effects of dioxin was finally released in draft form in September 1994, it indicated that dioxin’s health impacts were worse than previously reported. The preliminary EPA study confirmed what grassroots activists have feared: dioxin, a by-product of chemical processes that use chlorine, does irreparable damage to the human body.

Yet, for a full year, these findings have gone almost unnoticed by the mass media. These are the same media that widely publicized a 1991 report by The Centers for Disease Control that found dioxin was less harmful than previously suspected and subsequently led the EPA to consider a “reassessment.”

These were upbeat dioxin stories on how we’ve been confused once again by experts who can’t seem to agree on anything. There was even an “NBC Nightly News” mention (8/15/91) of how folks from the contaminated, condemned, and evacuated Times Beach area along the Mississippi River, were wondering if it might be okay to go home again.

But the recent unpublicized EPA report found that dioxin levels 100 times lower than those associated with developing cancer may cause severe reproductive and developmental effects, and disrupt regulatory hormones in industrial workers and laboratory animals.

Ninety percent of dioxin enters the human body through the food chain. Dioxin particles produced by industrial processes and waste lodge in soil, settle on plants, and contaminate water systems. People then eat fish, meat, and produce that contain low but hazardous dioxin levels. The report details how dioxin and dioxin-like chemicals damage the body by “attaching” to specific receptor sites in cell tissues. When hormones and enzymes are displaced, certain normal cell functions cannot be carried out. The report clearly suggests that, despite earlier reports, no amount of exposure to dioxin is safe.

Dioxin is created as a byproduct of the manufacturing process by chemical companies; plastics producers; makers of rubber, dyes and pesticides; pulp and paper mills that use chlorine bleaches; and incinerator plants.

The report does not mention corporate producers of dioxin, such as Dow or Monsanto, who stand to lose if the EPA clamps down on dioxin releases. For years, these companies have orchestrated a political and scientific campaign to confuse the public and create a bureaucratic stalemate.

Corporations could face billion-dollar lawsuits for health and environmental damage caused by dioxin exposures. But they stand to save millions of dollars if they can settle pending lawsuits before the EPA reassessment is finalized, because the final report would give complainants greater evidence that dioxin is hazardous.

The Virginia-based Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste has called for an immediate halt to the incineration of hazardous waste and a phaseout of chlorinated organic compounds in all industrial production. Greenpeace’s Zero Dioxin campaign argues that processes that create dioxin must either be altered so that no dioxin is produced, or banned.

SSU Censored Researcher: Mary Jo Thayer

COMMENTS: The significance of the recent findings of the health dangers of dioxin received very little attention from the mainstream press, according to investigative author Stephen Lester. “To my knowledge, there was no TV coverage, no coverage by the news weeklies and only minor coverage by several major newspapers. Given that dioxin is the most potent carcinogen for the general population ever tested; that we know that dioxin is coming from incinerators, paper mills and chemical processing plants; and that it is getting into dairy products, meat, fish and breast milk, you’d think that the issue would have received more than the cursory attention of the chemical trade press and one day of “here’s EPA’s newest report’ in the Washington Post and New York Times.”

Lester warned that dioxin is the DDT of the ‘90s. “It is persistent, pervasive and showing up in the bodies of people all over the world. It differs from DDT in that the main concern with DDT was its carcinogenicity. With dioxin, not only is it a potent carcinogen, but its non-cancer causing effects (infertility, depressed immune response, endometriosis, loss of sex drive, diabetes) occur at very low levels, levels already found in the general population. These and other non-cancer effects may prove to be more important than dioxin’s ability to cause cancer. We have to know what dioxin is, where it is coming from, and how it’s hurting us before we can do anything about it. And, we need to know that we can do something about it. Not lifestyle changes, but saving our lives.”

Lester charges corporate America is benefiting from the limited media coverage given dioxin. “More specifically, the chemical and paper industry that does not want to alter its production practices to eliminate the chemicals (largely chlorine) that generate dioxin as a by-product of production. Industry says that we need more studies and they hire high powered public relations firms to argue their points and deluge the mainstream media with issues designed to confuse and defuse the press’s interest. Government is reluctant to act and finds it easiest to do nothing but study and study and study and study …”

The organization Lester works for, the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste, has begun a campaign to educate the American public about the dangers of dioxin. “We have written several additional articles for our newsletter, prepared “campaign kits,’ sent copies to grassroots environmental organizations and to the mainstream press. We have written and published a book—Dying from Dioxin (South End Press, 1995)—and have begun efforts to create alliances with organizations across the country to educate people and begin to eliminate dioxin exposures. Still, there has been very little media interest and coverage of this story.”

The post 23. Dioxin: Still Deadly After All These Years (and All That Hype) appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: Scientists in the United States are exhilarated because, after years of scavenging the Asian rain forests for magic bullets, they are now beginning to turn up promising leads in the search for medical treatments from trees and plants.

Environmentalists are excited by the prospect that important pharmaceutical discoveries could provide a financial incentive to preserve rain forests that one day may provide a cure for AIDS, various cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, or diabetes. If any of these new “discoveries” of rain-forest plants for Western medicine are to ever come to fruition, the world’s major pharmaceutical companies will have to cooperate.

However, with tropical forests vanishing at an alarming rate, scientists fear that with every tree that disappears, so might the cure for AIDS or cancer.

In fact, if the current rate of logging in rain forests continues, all but a few samples of the world’s forests will be gone by the year 2040. However, the devastation continues; on 8/28/95, wire services reported that negotiations were underway to log 3.7 million acres of Cambodia’s dwindling forest cover.

In the search for natural cures, rain forests are considered the most promising natural environments for research because of the vast diversity of life that they shelter. More than half of the world’s estimated 250,000 species of plants live in tropical forests, yet less than ten percent have ever been tested for their ability to cure disease. Many of the species remain unknown to science, and few have been diagnosed for their full medicinal potential. However, Amazonian Indians use hundreds of local plants to treat everything from herpes sores to lung diseases. Many of these medical conditions are still not sufficiently treated and cured by modern drugs.

In the past 30 years, many pharmaceutical researchers have shied away from the natural laboratory of the rain forest and have instead concentrated on synthetic chemistry as a source of medicines. While we should not underestimate the success of synthetic drugs, we must realize that not everything can be made in a chemistry laboratory. There is a great potential for natural products to be the source of new drugs. Even now, 25 percent of all pharmaceutical drugs in the United States come from plant-derived compounds. The National Cancer Institute, one of the largest plant-research facilities in the world, screens more than 40,000 natural substances each year for cancer, anti-tumor or AIDS use.

With the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples, it is a race against the clock to preserve the biological and cultural diversity that remains in the rain forests. The mass media need to spread the word that clear-cutting rain forests no longer is just about the trees, it’s about people, culture, ethics, and perhaps even life-saving medical discoveries.

SSU Censored Researcher: Tami Ward

COMMENTS: Other than the primary source cited above, there were few news stories concerning the impact of clear-cutting on possible pharmaceutical discoveries in the rain forests in 1995.

Most notably, among newspapers, the San Diego Union Tribune (7/5/95) reported on the efforts of a local resident who created Project Green Genes, a business venture designed to collect plant materials for DNA preservation, and a Los Angeles Times report (9/24/95) on environmentalists protesting Suriname’s plan to allow loggers at its rain forest.

However, the international edition of Time Magazine (10/30/95) featured an in-depth article on worldwide environ-mental issues focusing on the issue. The cover article, by Edward O. Wilson, a leading advocate of global conservation and the Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard, revealed that “more than 40 percent of all prescriptions dispensed by pharmacies in the U.S. are substances originally extracted from plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms.” He pointed out that less than one percent of all species and organisms have been examined for natural products that might lead to new medicines. The article also mentioned that the United States is one of the few nations that did not sign the Convention on Biological Diversity, signed by 156 nations and the European Union at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Ironically, one of the most informative articles published in 1995 about the potential cures to be found in the world’s rain forests was published in a trade publication, Chemical Marketing Reporter, on September 18.

The post 22. There May Be A Cure—Up There in the Rain Forest appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: If all goes as expected, by 1999 more than 26 million students will have been exposed to a marketing program that will entice them to buy guns and persuade them to argue against gun control.

The marketing program, a partnership between the government and the gun industry, is designed by the industry’s leading trade association-the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

The program is paid for in large part by federal tax dollars.

In 1993, the NSSF received nearly $230,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to update and expand three videos on hunting and wildlife management. The videos, for grades 4 through 12, are free to public and private schools with enrollments of at least 300 students.

The NSSF made the link between schools and increased firearm sales crystal clear in a 1993 issue of S.H.O.T Business, its industry publication. A columnist tells dealers and manufacturers, “There’s a way to help ensure that new faces and pocketbooks will continue to patronize your business: Use the schools …. Every decade there is a whole new crop of shining new faces taking their place in society as adults …. Will [they] be for or against a local ordinance proposal to ban those bad semiautos? Will they vote for or against even allowing a “gun store” in town? ….How else would you get these potential customers and future leaders together? …. Schools are an opportunity. Grasp it.”

The NSSF proposal, submitted and approved under the Bush Administration, noted it would “make the initial offering to the largest schools …. This strategy reaches students in large cities and suburban areas where approval of hunting is lowest”—and support for gun control strongest.

Among the more than 1,100 NSSF members which include America’s leading gun manufacturers, many of whom actively target youth, are Remington Arms, Colt’s Manufacturing, Smith & Wesson, Feather Industries, and Taurus.

The issue is not hunting, but whether any industry should, with federal funds, use public schools to increase the sale of its product and to build a political base.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges the program’s benefits to the gun industry. USFWS spokesperson Craig Rieben said, “They’ve got a product. They’re looking for a market.”

Rieben says the USFWS sees no need to review the grant guidelines. And as it targets other niche markets, the firearms industry is banking on USFWS’ “see no evil” attitude. Potential new USFWS grantees include an NSSF-linked program designed to increase gun sales to women.

SSU Censored Researcher: Stephanie Prather

COMMENTS: The authors, Susan Glick and Josh Sugarmann, reported, “While some notable print media and columnists took interest in the story, the story did not receive broader media coverage, especially television, for two reasons. The first was that most television reporters wanted the story to be simpler than it was. The Violence Policy Center obtained publications issued by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry’s trade association, which clearly stated that the organization was working to use the schools to increase firearms sales to children and youth and that these videos were a key tool. The videos themselves, however, did not come right out and say “go buy guns, kids’ but worked to soften up youth attitudes towards hunting and firearms as a means to this end. The insidious nature of the videos was too complex for many broadcast outlets who couldn’t put the two pieces (the videos and the print statements) together but focused solely on the videos. The most notable practitioner of this superficial thinking was NBC’s ‘Dateline,’ which pulled a story on the study at the last minute (a fact they neglected to tell us, but did tell the NSSF). Although we explained the story to a myriad of ‘Dateline’ producers in painful, repetitive detail, none of them ever quite got it. Of course, after the story was pulled, ‘Datelines’ inability to grasp it was cited as ‘proof’ by the NSSF to other media outlets that the story was not worth reporting. The second factor was that even though the NSSF said that they had nothing to hide regarding the program, the organization refused to make the list of schools that had received it readily available. This dramatically limited the opportunity for local and regional coverage.

“Most Americans would probably agree that the firearms industry should not be allowed to try and increase the sale of their products through America’s school systems—especially with federal tax dollars. Greater publicity about the program would allow parents and educators to identify where the program is being used and make schools aware of the video’s true intent. It would also focus attention on the firearms industry’s marketing program to children and youth and raise the question of whether in tight budgetary times the federal government should be subsidizing America’s gun industry.”

The authors say that the obvious beneficiary of the lack of coverage given this issue is America’s firearms industry. They note that the industry, “in the wake of slumping handgun sales among the primary market of men, has focused its attention on women and children. One of the gun industry’s greatest triumphs has been its ability to shield itself from public scrutiny and to have people think of it as something other than an “industry’ possessing the same profit motive and marketing needs as any other.”

The post 21. The New 3R’S: Reading, Writing, and Reloading appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: In 1993, ABC’s “Turning Point” hired Frank and Martin Koughan, an Emmy Award-winning documentary team, to do a broad survey of the tobacco merchants’ annus horribilis that followed the Environmental Protection Agency’s classification of secondhand smoke as a carcinogen, and the Clinton Administration’s proposal to support health care reform by heavily taxing cigarettes.

The final cut, reported by ABC’s Meredith Vieira, was a tough, well-narrated takeout on the business responsible for the nation’s largest health problem. It focused on the marketing and manufacturing of tobacco products here and abroad, and broke some new ground.

Martin Koughan said the film was passed on and approved by ABC’s editorial and law departments,” and was scheduled to run in late March or early April 1994.

It didn’t. On March 24, Koughan said he got a call from “Turning Point” senior (now executive) producer Betsy West, who told him that he was going to have to “rework” the film.

Coincidentally, March 24 also was the day that Phillip Morris filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC for two “Day One” reports on tobacco-doctoring (which prompted the network to cough up an abject apology in August 1995).

What happened next is in dispute. Koughan says there was a dispute about meeting schedules and that ABC never showed up for a planned session to discuss revisions. West says that Koughan “was absolutely uncooperative in making the story better” adding that ABC executives had never signed off on the show. West also swears, “I know this suit is not the reason it didn’t air.” Paul Friedman, ABC’s executive vice president, also said the lawsuit “didn’t even enter my mind” when he killed the segment.

Eventually, Koughan was told that the film would not be used. In a settlement agreement, his production company was paid for its work, but ABC owns all rights to the film. Thus, although ABC has spent some $500,000 on the project, the network has no plans to air it, nor can it be broadcast anywhere else.

There are at least two segments of “Tobacco Under Fire” that would have been network scoops. One details how the American tobacco industry is moving production overseas. The documentary claims that American tobacco companies are developing and distributing seeds to be grown in Brazil, Malawi, Guatemala, and Argentina, where tobacco farming costs about half of what it costs here, and where, unlike Kentucky or the Carolinas, there are no regulations about acreage, volume, or pricing. The film predicts that this shift will ultimately undermine American tobacco farmers, who are some of the industry’s most powerful lobbyists.

Second, the film claims that during the Reagan and Bush Administrations, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office spent an inordinate amount of time threatening trade sanctions against Asian countries that had stalled at letting American tobacco companies advertise. This extraordinary charge came from Reagan’s own surgeon general C. Everett Koop, who said “If these trade policies were known right now, they’d be condemned by the American people.”

Unfortunately, most Americans will not hear about the trade policies or the other tobacco company transgressions because ABC censored the documentary.

SSU Censored Researcher: Stephanie Horner

COMMENTS: Investigative author James Ledbetter said the “subject received precious little attentionit was covered in the New York Daily News in 1994 and the Washington Post in passing. I believe, however, I am the only one who wrote about the actual content of “The Turning Point’ segment.”

Ledbetter feels the public would benefit from greater exposure of this issue since “It would gain insight into the realities of tobacco’s aggressive overseas marketing; and it points out how difficult it is for network television to criticize tobacco companies.”

Those who benefit from the lack of media coverage given this issue, according to Ledbetter, include, “tobacco companies, ABC executives, and the Bush Administration.”

Ledbetter concluded, “Obviously, in light of the canned ‘60 Minutes’ story, it is one more chapter in the sorry recent history of networks caving in to powerful interests.”

The post 20. ABC Spikes New Tobacco Expose’ When Sued for Libel appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: After years of effort and millions of dollars spent on campaign contributions and highly paid lobbyists, the nuclear power industry expects Congress to pass legislation that will free the industry of its responsibility for storing commercial spent nuclear waste. The proposed legislation, H.R. 1020—also known as the “industry bill”—will require that all accumulated wastes—estimated to be about 36,000 metric tons by the end of 1997—be moved to Nevada, beginning in 1998.

The problem is that for the past three administrations, the Department of Energy (DOE) has consistently maintained that a nuclear waste repository cannot be opened until at least 2010. That is the projected date to open Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the only site being investigated. In 1995, DOE issued a formal decision that there is no legal requirement that the federal government begin accepting spent fuel in 1998 because a repository will not be available and because the federal government does not currently have authority to provide an interim storage facility.

This has not deterred the nuclear power industry from pushing H.R. 1020. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), would require the federal government to open a spent fuel storage facility in Nevada by the 1998 date. And it would impose fines and penalties for missing that deadline. More than 15 utilities filed a lawsuit in 1994, asking the court to require DOE to begin taking their wastes in 1998. The fines and penalties would be a new federal government cost, never included in any previous budget and would, in essence, be a new tax.

The utilities do not seem to be concerned that such a storage facility could not be sited and constructed by the 1998 date if it were to meet existing health, safety, and environmental protection laws and probably not even if all environmental laws were waived.

But the impossible deadline is not the only onerous aspect of H.R. 1020: Provisions of H.R. 1020 would also require Congress—rather than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—to establish radiation protection requirements for a potential site at about 25 times higher than that allowed by current EPA disposal standards.

It would require DOE to develop—without full public participation and judicial review—a “multi-purpose cask” to be used for storage, transport, and disposal of radioactive spent fuel. It would force construction of a new railroad line from throughout the country to the Nevada Site at a cost of more than $1 billion and would eliminate existing environmental restrictions on such a railroad.

The bill would also guarantee that the fee for spent fuel generation would not be raised without an act of Congress, no matter how much the waste program would cost.

The nuclear industry insists that whatever form the final legislation takes, it must require the opening of a storage facility in Nevada by 1998; the development of a transportation system; continuing work on the Yucca Mountain repository; and protection against any large fee increases.

Not mentioned anywhere are the risks to millions of people along highways and railroads in 43 states carrying the highly radioactive spent fuel. Possibly most important, beyond the unknown financial costs of the project, fundamental principles of constitutional rights will be compromised if the rush to meet the 1998 date proceeds.

SSU Censored Researcher: Kristi Hogue

COMMENTS: Investigative author Don Hancock reported there was very little coverage of this issue, in part because it’s a seemingly never-ending story. “Also, the nuclear power industry, which is promoting a quick-fix bailout, has no interest in the mainstream media covering its plans because they would not be well-received by much of the public. The story is complicated and includes governments, corporations, as well as affected citizens.

The nuclear waste will be with us for literally thousands of generations, so there is not an apparent solution.”

Nonetheless, Hancock feels it is important for people to know about the issue since, “They would gain a better understanding of the importance of nuclear waste to present and future generations. They would gain a better understanding of the current congressional discussion about the issue and how any decisions can have a significant effect on taxpayers and the general public, not just on citizens of the currently targeted states—Nevada and New Mexico. As a result, they could become more involved in decisions, whether they live close to nuclear power plants, along transportation routes to waste sites, or in the targeted states.”

Benefiting from the lack of coverage of the issue, Hancock said, are “the nuclear industry executives and the public officials who support them, since their plans are not exposed to public scrutiny.”

Hancock added, “Citizen activists in various states have banded together in the Nuclear Waste Citizens Coalition to become a more effective force in Washington, D.C. and to educate and involve citizens nationally regarding the important issues being decided, including the risks of transportation of spent fuel throughout the nation.”

The post 19. Solving the Nuclear Waste Problem With Taxpayers’ Dollars appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: After reviewing a massive study on the effectiveness of intravenous needle-exchange programs to curtail the spread of disease, including AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that a ban on federal funding for such programs be lifted. But no action has been taken and the review itself has been suppressed.

The 700-page California study, originally released in October 1993, found it was “likely” that needle-exchange programs (NEPs) decrease the rate of new HIV infections, while finding “no evidence” that the programs increase changed nothing, at least on the federal level. “The problem is that one story or one editorial in a particular paper isn’t going to do it,” Neidorf explained. “To make a difference—to be “sufficient’—extensive coverage has to do several things: “First, it has to remind the post-Watergate, post-Iran-Contra public that it’s wrong—unacceptable—for the government to keep this information secret. Second, it has to make it clear to readers why needle exchange should matter to them. They need to know that they can contract HIV from injection drug use, even if they’re not using. All members of the “general population” have to do is have unprotected sex with a user or someone who has had unprotected sex with a user. Third and this is essential-reporters need to demand specifics from the public health officials and hold them accountable for their statements. Just what type of evidence do they need before they’ll acknowledge the efficacy of needle exchange?

“The general public is going to pay for AIDS, in one way or another. Drug users who share needles, their sex partners and the future sex partners of their sex partners, and all of their children are at risk for contracting HIV Those who don’t contract it will pay for it financially. A few years ago, Dr. Fred Hellinger estimated that it costs about $119,000 to care for drug use in the communities they serve.

CDC scientists were asked by their parent agency, the Public Health Service, to review the California study’s methodology, findings, and conclusions. That review, which has yet to be made public, determined that the federal funding ban (in effect since 1988) “should be lifted to allow communities and states to use federal funds to support NEPs as components of comprehensive HIV prevention programs.”

A second review of the California study was ordered by the Department of Health and Human Services in 1994. While making no specific recommendations, this second analysis also concluded that the study demonstrates more clearly than any previous research that use of NEPs is associated with decreases in bloodborne infections.

Nonetheless, the Clinton administration has taken no action on the issue. Dr. Peter Lurie, the lead researcher for the California study, suggests that the potential political consequences of advocating a controversial program account for the inaction. The release of the review would be significant, Lurie contends, because it would be the first document in which a government health agency publicly endorsed needle-exchange programs to prevent transmission of AIDS.

Regarding the legal and philosophical obstacles which apparently block federal involvement in the activation of NEPs, Lurie said the failure of the government to release the report is inexcusable. “The federal government is playing politics with the lives of drug users, their sex partners and their children,” he said, adding, “Delay, delay, delay, delay-people are dying.”

Meanwhile, the Administration hesitates to ruffle conservative feathers, and scientific credibility for NEPs remains under wraps while grim statistics keep piling up.

A quarter of all adult AIDS cases reported to the CDC through June 1994 were traced to the sharing of needles. Either sharing a needle or having sex with someone who did accounted for nearly 75 percent of all cases in women.

Since the original study, others, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have confirmed that NEPs greatly reduce the spread of the virus that causes AIDS while not encouraging more illicit drug use.

SSU Censored Researcher: Mike Thomas

COMMENTS: Shawn Neidorf, author of the In These Times article, said that while several of the largest U.S. dailies have covered needle exchange and the suppression of the study, the coverage has one person with HIV until he or she dies. He estimated that the cost could jump by as much as 48 percent by 1995. Injection drug users don’t have the health insurance that many gay men did. Their bills are going to be the public’s. Personally, I’d rather pay for a needle exchange program. The median cost to run one is about $169,000 a year, according to Dr. Peter Lurie’s study-a great deal if each program prevents only two HIV infections a year. I think most taxpayers would appreciate that efficiency, even if they hate drug users on principle.”

Neidorf identified three groups that benefit from the lack of coverage given the subject: “Politicians with an uncompromising allegiance to the War on Drugs; politicians who would back needle exchange if they weren’t afraid of the “you-coddled-drug-users” backlash at reelection time; and public health officials who know the data, but are afraid for their careers to act on it.”

John Schwartz, author of the needle exchange article in the Washington Post, said, “Needle exchange programs get a great deal of attention—not only because they are part of the broad spectrum of AIDS programs, but also because such programs tend to generate controversy wherever they are started. What wasn’t covered was the government’s own conclusions that the programs are effective—because the government wasn’t releasing those reports.”

“There are a number of obstacles to getting effective needle programs implemented,” Schwartz said. “Even if the Administration decided to take a hard stand in favor of such programs, a tangle of conflicting legal restrictions on the programs would make it very difficult to pass and implement them. If people had enough information to see this as a public health issue and not a political issue, lives could be saved.”

Schwartz noted that he was neither an AIDS activist nor a full-time AIDS reporter, and added, “This was simply a story about common sense needlessly tangled up in politics—the kind of story that no reporter could screw up. I’m glad to have gotten a chance to work on it.”

The post 18. Scientific Support for Needle Exchange Suppressed appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: Rwanda is just one example of what can happen when small arms and light weapons are sold to a country plagued by ethnic, religious, or nationalist strife. In today’s wars, such weapons are responsible for most of the killings of civilians and combatants. They are used more often in human rights abuses and other violations of international law than major weapons systems.

In the post-Cold War era, in which the profit motive has replaced East-West concerns as the main stimulus behind weapons sales, ex-Warsaw Pact and NATO nations are dumping their arsenals on the open market. Prices for some weapons, such as Soviet-designed Kalashnikov AKM automatic rifles (commonly known as AK-47s), have fallen below cost. Many Third World countries, such as China, Egypt, and South Africa, also have stepped up sales of light weapons and small arms. More than a dozen nations that were importers of small arms 15 years ago now manufacture and export them. But most of this trade remains unknown. Unlike major conventional weapons systems, governments rarely disclose the details of transfers of light weapons and small arms.

The resulting impact of such transfers are apparent. Small arms and light weapons have flooded nations like Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, not only fanning warfare, but also undermining international efforts to embargo arms and to compel parties to respect human rights. They have helped to undermine peace-keeping efforts and allowed heavily armed militias to challenge U.N. and U.S. troops. They raise the cost of relief assistance paid by countries like the United States. Yet the international community has no viable mechanism to monitor the transfer of light and small weapons, and neither the United Nations nor the Clinton administration has demonstrated the leadership required to control that trade.

It is increasingly clear that the proliferation of light weapons endangers not only internal, but also regional and international stability.

The largest conventional arms exporter in the world is the United States. The Clinton administration has trumpeted the increased threat of the spread of weapons of mass destruction as the foremost danger facing the U.S. Yet it has issued hardly a word on conventional arms except to assert their importance to U.S. defense manufacturers. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee of Foreign Operations reports, “Regrettably, the evidence clearly indicates that the Administration has sought to promote arms sales, rather than to reduce them.”

While the vast majority of the U.S. major weapons transfers are public, most of its transfers of light weapons and small arms are not. No regular reporting is made to Congress in either classified or unclassified form. Many sales are private commercial transactions, and attempts to get detailed data on them through the Freedom of Information Act are routinely denied on proprietary grounds.

The United States, as the world’s number one arms merchant (the #4 Censored story of 1992), should take the lead in proposing new ways to control the flow of light weapons and small arms. An administration that is struggling to deal with crises in Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia, and elsewhere should recognize its own need to check this type of proliferation and stop shooting itself in the foot.

SSU Censored Researcher: Tina Duccini

COMMENTS: Jonathan S. Landay, author of the Christian Science Monitor article, said the subject did not receive mainstream media attention, although it is a subject that is of increasing concern on Capitol Hill. “I believe the public would be horrified if it was aware of the way U.S. tax dollars are spent to promote sales of light arms. Also, President Clinton campaigned on a promise to reduce U.S. arms exports. In fact, he has done the opposite, formally authorizing U.S. embassies to promote arms deals.” Landay said the government benefits from higher arms sales abroad since “the earnings from foreign sales allow U.S. weapons manufacturers to reduce their prices to the Pentagon.” He also added, “Obviously, U.S. arms makers also benefit.”

Frank Smyth, co-author of the article in Foreign Affairs, felt that the issue of arming Rwanda did receive considerable newspaper exposure in the United States, Europe, and Africa, but received little attention in U.S. newsweeklies or on network television. “One explanation for this,” Smyth said, “is that there was no American angle, as France, Egypt and South Africa were the main suppliers of arms. Another is that the issue of small arms transfers is simply too complex to fit into a superficial outlet.

“The U.S. public would benefit from wider exposure of this issue by understanding that outside powers like France helped fan the flames of Rwanda’s civil war,” Smyth said. “On a wider scale, the international public would benefit by understanding that there is now a world glut in small arms—fueled by countries as diverse as Russia, South Africa, and the United States—and they are gravitating to some of the world’s worst conflicts such as Sudan.

“In the United States, no specific interests have worked to limit the coverage of arming Rwanda,” Smyth said. “On the contrary, perhaps because France and not the United States was the main target of our criticism, establishment outlets including The New York Times and Foreign Affairs welcomed this story. One question which remains is why didn’t this story receive more attention in France. Most of the major papers there reported our charges, but few gave it as much space or attention, for example, as The International Herald Tribune, a U.S.-controlled publication. I personally see parallels—in both the stories and the way they were covered—between the U.S. role in El Salvador in the 1980s and France’s role in Rwanda in the 1990s.”

The post 17. Small Arms Wreak Major Worldwide Havoc appeared first on Project Censored.

SYNOPSIS: A World War I era shortage of asbestos, once valued for its thermal insulation and fire resistant properties, spurred the first full-scale production of fiberglass in the United States. Unfortunately, man-made glass fibers have been found to share another characteristic with naturally-occurring asbestos fibers: they can cause lung cancer when inhaled.

According to the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, asbestos will have killed 300,000 Americans by the end of this century. As it was phased out, fiberglass production has steadily increased. More than 30,000 commercial products now contain fiberglass. Uses include thermal insulation, acoustic insulation, fireproofing and various applications in automotive components. Fiberglass insulation is present in 90 percent of American homes.

In the early 1970s, a body of evidence linking these ubiquitous fibers to lung disease began to accumulate. In a series of papers published from 1969 to 1977, the National Cancer Institute determined that tiny glass fibers were “potent carcinogens” in laboratory rats and that “it is unlikely that different mechanisms are operative in man.” Specifically noted was the cancerous potential of fibrous glass in the pleura of lab animals. The pleura is the outer casing of the lungs; in humans, cancer of the pleura is called mesothelioma and it is caused by asbestos fibers.

The finding that fiberglass causes diseases similar to asbestos was chilling news in the early 1970s and an additional 25 years of research has only confirmed the earlier warnings. In 1990, members of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), who represent ten federal health agencies, stated unanimously: “Fiberglass may reasonably be anticipated to be a carcinogen” in humans. NTP was preparing to include fiberglass in its 1992 Seventh Annual Report on Carcinogens when politics intervened. Although fiberglass industry lobbying delayed publication of NTP’s conclusions for two years, the report was sent to Congress in June 1994.

Following the report, Health and Human Services finally determined that fiberglass should be listed as a substance “for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and/or sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.” Yet the news made scarcely a ripple in the national media. In These Times learned from a source who asked to remain anonymous that ABC news executives bowed to industry pressure not to air a “20/20” investigation on the dangers of fiberglass. What coverage there was played down any threat to public health. Frank Swoboda and Maryann Haggerty in the Washington Post reported as fact the assertion of Public Health Service spokesman Bill Grigg that there is no data “that would indicate there’s any problem that would involve any consumer or worker.” Grigg ignored six epidemiological studies that showed otherwise.

Robert Horowitz, chairman of Victims of Fiberglass, said, “The arguments from industry are the same arguments that we’ve seen time and time again. It doesn’t matter what the substance is. Whether it is DDT or cigarettes or asbestos, industry says, “You can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are killing you.’ But do we have to wait for that absolute scientific proof before we do something? Breathing in microscopic shards of glass could not possibly be good for you.”

SSU Censored Researcher: Mike Thomas

COMMENTS: Author Peter Montague, of the Environmental Research Foundation, said the subject received almost no media attention, “even after the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) declared in June 1994 that fiberglass is ‘reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen.’ This story should have been on every television set and in every newspaper. Unfortunately it was hardly covered at all. Part of the responsibility lies with government officials because they chose to minimize the importance of their own announcement. It seems to me, their purpose was most likely to protect the interest of the $2 billion-per-year fiberglass industry.

“Fiberglass is pervasive in our society—90 percent of all homes are now insulated with it—and it will cause many cancers in the coming decades. It should be banned for the same reasons that asbestos has been banned. Of particular importance is the finding that fiberglass is now found everywhere in the environment. Forty years ago one could not measure fiberglass in the ambient air. Today fiberglass can be measured in the air on remote mountain tops in California. Since fiberglass is ‘reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen,’ the public needs to know the facts about fiberglass, so that public health policy can evolve through informed debate.”

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) first proposed to list fiberglass as a probable carcinogen in its Seventh Annual (1993) Report on Carcinogens. “In response,” Montague said, “the North American Insulation Manu-facturers Association (NAIMA) hired a former member of President Clinton’s transition team to lobby Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services. After receiving a letter from NAIMA’s lobbyist, Secretary Shalala postponed the publication of the NTP report and called for an unprecedented review of NTP’s decision on fiberglass. Furthermore, NAIMA threatened to take legal action if the NTP listed fiberglass as a probable carcinogen. NAIMA has four members: CertainTeed Corp.; Owens-Corning Fiber Glass Corp; Knauf Fiber Glass GMBH; and Schuller International, Inc. (formerly Manville Co.).

“Donna Shalala eventually accepted NTP’s classification of fiberglass as a probable carcinogen but her agency downplayed the announcement of the NTP report and particularly downplayed the importance of declaring fiberglass a probable human carcinogen. The interests of the four corporations that comprise NAIMA are uniquely served by Secretary Shalala’s spin on the issue, and by the scant news coverage.”

Montague concludes that while the debate over the hazards of fiberglass continues to rage, “five billion pounds of new fiberglass are being added each year to the world’s growing inventory of this poison. As a result, our children will be breathing a few fibers of fiberglass with every breath they take, no matter where on earth they take it. This cannot be good news.”

Joel Bleifuss, author of the In These Times article, charged that the “potential threat to human health from fiberglass has received virtually no exposure in the mass media, with the exception of some very poor reporting in the Washington Post.” While some journalists were very interested in the subject, no major coverage resulted. For example, a reporter for a major television news program explored this story and invested a lot of time researching the subject. But the story was finally rejected by the executive producer after the reporter concluded that fiberglass was more harmful than the industry admits. Bleifuss acknowledged that his concern about press freedom at a network news show is “more disturbing to me as a journalist than is the fact that a story about a public health threat was canned by a major network news executive.”

Bleifuss feels the fiberglass issue is a subject in dire need of public exposure. “Virtually every homeowner I know has at some time in their life installed fiberglass without a respirator. I have done so several times. Further, I believe that exposure of the issue would help curtail the dangerous practice of insulating houses with blown fiberglass particles.”

The politically powerful fiberglass industry is clearly benefiting from the limited coverage given this subject, according to Bleifuss who adds, “Dow Corning, which is particularly influential, is doing all it can to prevent fiberglass from becoming another asbestos-like scandal.”

In These Times published two letters concerning Bleifuss’ article in its November 13, 1995, issue. In one, Robert Horowitz, cited above in the synopsis, notes that formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, is used in manufacturing fiberglass insulation and believes it deserves further study. In the other, Catherine I. Imus, communications director for the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association, said, “…in the most recently completed review of the available scientific evidence regarding fiberglass, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that “taken together, the data indicate that among those occupationally exposed, glass fibers do not appear to increase the risk of respiratory system cancer.”

Bleifuss responded that the review failed to examine published work by scientists whose research has shown fiberglass to be carcinogenic. And he points out, “This glaring omission is perhaps explained by the fact that the Harvard study was supported by a grant from the North American Insulation Manufacturers Association.”

The post 16. Fiberglass—The Carcinogen that’s Deadly and Everywhere appeared first on Project Censored.