SSU Censored Researchers: Amber Knight, Yvonne Jolley-Crawford, and Brian Foust
Community Evaluator: Rick Williams, J.D.

Statistical evidence indicates that black elected officials have tended to be investigated by law enforcement agencies at higher rates than white elected officials. According to the Washington-based Joint Center of Political and Economic Studies, in the past 25 years, 70 members of Congress have faced criminal charges. Fifteen percent of those investigated have been minorities—four times their percentage in the legislative body.

The Washington Post reported that black elected officials were the target of investigations for corruption in 14 percent of the 465 political corruption cases launched between 1983 and 1988—a period in which blacks were just 3 percent of all office holders. Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) magazine noted that about half of the Congressional Black Caucus members were the subject of investigations or indictments between 1981 and 1993. States GQ, “For the numbers to be equal for white representatives, 204 of the 409 whites … would have been subjected to the same scrutiny during that time … Yet, according to justice Department figures, only 15 actually were.”

In an interview with author Joe Davidson, Robert Moussallem, an FBI informant charged with getting incriminating information on black officials in Atlanta, sets forth his experience with the policy of harassing of black officials. He states, “Shortly after I began working with the FBI in 1979, I was made aware of an unofficial policy of the FBI which was generally referred to by Special Agent John McAvoy as Fruhmenschen [German for early or primitive man]. The purpose of the policy was the routine investigation without probable cause of prominent elected and appointed black officials in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States. I learned from my conversations with special agents of the FBI that the basis for this policy was the assumption y the FBI that black officials were intellectually and socially incapable of governing major government organizations and institutions.” (Moussallem’s assignment, according to a 1989 affidavit, was to entice Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington and other black officials to take bribes on a phony land deal.)

Mary Sawyer, a professor at Iowa State University who has studied the treatment of black officials, says, “The magnitude of the harassment cannot be measured solely in terms of numbers of cases … the higher the level of office, or the more outspoken the official, or the greater the influence and power, the higher the incidence of harassment.”

While law enforcement agencies deny specifically targeting black elected officials, there are considerable differences in the levels of investigations and the degree of punishment between black and white elected officials in the United States.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JOE DAVIDSON: “In ‘Targets for Scrutiny,’ I explored the accusation that black elected officials are unfairly scrutinized by comparing the treatment of Mel Reynolds with other current and former members of Congress who had been accused of sex-related crimes or misconduct. The importance of the piece is that it provided real examples of disparate treatment.

“The article certainly did not say that the now-imprisoned Reynolds, former Congressman from Chicago and certain southern suburbs, was innocent, nor the white men mentioned, guilty. But the story did demonstrate, with specific detail, how somewhat similar behavior was treated so differently. It showed that the likelihood that black people will fall victim to the double standard of justice does not diminish with status.

“While complaints about the double standard by black officials have been carried by the mainstream press, the Emerge article went beyond that to show how white officials generally were treated much more leniently than Reynolds.

“Resources for this topic are less abundant than for other issues in the fields of criminal and social justice. Places to begin include the Leadership Forum, Tel: 202/789-3500; the Black Caucus, Tel: 202/222-7790; and the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Tel: 202/624-5457.”

The post 25. Black Elected Officials Targeted by Law appeared first on Project Censored.

Major media coverage: The Wall Street Journal, November 12, 1996, section B, page 1, column 3

SSU Censored Researchers: Kecia Kaiser, Deborah Udal, and Bryan Way
Community Evaluator: Mary King, M.D.

A decade after the high price of AZT caused AIDS activists to declare a war on Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company, the AIDS community is again gearing up for battle with drug giant Glaxo-Wellcome over access to what San Francisco AIDS Foundation Director of Treatment Education and Advocacy Ron Baker calls “the most important AIDS drug in the research pipeline.”

That drug, known as 1592U89, or 1592, belongs to the class of drugs called nucleoside analogs, (a.k.a. “nukes”) the same category as AZT, 3TC, ddC, ddl, and d4T. For full effectiveness, nukes must be, “cocktailed,” or combined with other protease and non-protease inhibitor drugs. Many AIDS patients have already used the older nukes and have HIV strains that have become resistant to these drugs. For them, 1592, which in earlier tests demonstrated far more anti-HIV punch and appears to be less toxic, represents the only hope for building a drug cocktail that can keep them alive.

Realizing the need for 1592, advocates began meeting with Glaxo-Wellcome last summer to persuade the company to offer the drug immediately on a “compassionate use” basis. Glaxo said they would consider it, but unveiled a plan with only three minuscule programs—one for children, one for those suffering from severe dementia, and a third for adults without dementia—which would enroll a total of 2,500 patients. Equally alarming is the fact that access will be restricted to only 30 to 50 sites worldwide. Adults will have to enroll at unspecified “geographically dispersed centers”—which is also unusual.

The company doesn’t expect to file for FDA approval until mid-1998 because of concerns that there is a serious lack of general information on its effects, and because studies have included so few people. Glaxo claims that it is a lack of knowledge around the specifics of how viral resistance works that is holding up their filing for FDA approval.

AIDS activists aren’t buying Glaxo’s assertions. The 1592 Access Coalition says Glaxo-Wellcome has been stalling development of the drug for nine years because it already manufactures most of the current AIDS medications available. Since these provide a large share of Glaxo’s profits, 1592 may make the older drugs become very unpopular, even extinct. Many believe Glaxo is stalling to maximize profits from current AIDS drugs. In other words, profits stand in the way of millions of desperate and dying people.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR BRUCE MIRKEN: “This article was written after nearly a year of glowing media stories that all but declared AIDS over as a result of new anti-HIV drugs that became widely available in 1996. Doctors, researchers, and AIDS activists knew that the drugs weren’t working for everyone and that access to promising new compounds was becoming a critical issue for thousands who were running out of options, but little of this was being reported. This story is significant because it represented the tip of a much larger iceberg: That the much-heralded protease inhibitors, though important, were not a miracle cure and that the pharmaceutical industry’s responsibilities to people with AIDS had not ended.

“I must add that Project Censored’s decision to recognize this piece is significant in another, equally important way. Project Censored has had a long and unhappy history of paying little attention to the gay and lesbian press, for which it has been taken to task repeatedly. I fervently hope this means we’re finally on the radar screen for good.

“The campaign for access to 1592 continued through the summer, with a series of protests staged by ACT UP/New York, ACT UP/Golden Gate (based in San Francisco), and others. Over a dozen organizations united to call for an international boycott on Zantac, Glaxo’s top-selling product. For months there was little progress, but in October 1997, the company agreed to make the drug available on a larger scale in early 1998, in a program with fewer restrictions, and some activists considered the company’s offer good enough to allow them to call off the boycott.

“I am not aware of any mainstream press response to my story, but the protests organized by ACT UP did attract some mainstream media attention beginning in June and July. In San Francisco both daily papers and some radio and TV stations did stories on 1592 and the boycott of Glaxo.”

For more information on this and related AIDS-treatment access and research issues, some good places to start are:

ACT UP/Golden Gate, Tel: 415/252-2900;
Web site: http://www.actupgg.org;

ACT UP/East Bay, Tel: 510/568-1680;

ACT UP/New York, Tel: 212/966-4813;
Web site: http://www.actupny.org;

Project Inform, Tel: 415/558-8669; AIDS Treatment News, Tel: 800/ TREAT12 (for subscription information).

UPDATE BY AUTHOR NINA SIEGAL: “In addition to the boycott of Glaxo-Wellcome by the San Francisco chapter of AIDS activist group ACT UP/Golden Gate, Mothers’ Voices, a group of mothers of people with AIDS or otherwise related to people who had died from AIDS, then urged the heads of two New York State public employee retirement systems to divest from Glaxo-Wellcome. The two investment funds sent letters to Glaxo threatening to pull out a million shares, worth more than $50 million, if the company did not expand its compassionate use program.

“As a result of the pressure exerted by a four-month boycott, on October 13, the company met with ACT UP to discuss the group’s demands, and on October 31, the company agreed to implement an expanded drug access program with no limits. The only criteria would be that the patient be unable to put together a triple combination therapy program.

“The announcement of the boycott was covered in San Francisco by the local gay newspapers and was later picked up by the Associated Press. But according to John Iversen, co-founder of ACT UP/East Bay, the AP story only ran in the San Francisco Examiner. The threat of divestment was covered by The New York Post on August 8, but that story received no other press attention, according to Iverson. To publicize the boycott, ACT UP brought advertisements in The Nation and In These Times, but neither of those publications ran a story on the boycott.”

The post 24. Profits-Before-People Delays Release New AIDS Drug appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers Susan Allen
SSU Staff Evaluator: Charles Fox

A consortium of energy contractors plotted to gain control of the Fast Flux Facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, convert it to tritium production for H-bombs, and profit to the tune of billions. The Hanford Fast Flux, sitting at the heart of a radioactive wasteland in eastern Washington State, was scheduled for decommissioning. But the government’s emphasis on privatizing public facilities—promoted under Vice President Gore’s program for “reinventing government”—made it a tempting target for profit.

Contemplating the shutdown and the potential for profit, the consortium of about a dozen large corporate contractors at Hanford (including Westinghouse, Lockheed, Batelle, Bechtel, TRW Environmental, Fluor, and Informatics) actively lobbied to have the Fast Flux transferred to the consortium and retooled for tritium production at taxpayer expense. Tritium—the substance needed to put the “oomph” into an H-bomb—could earn profits of $4 to $5 billion a year for the consortium.

Sales to the U.S. government were to be the major source of profit, since tritium has a half-life of only 12.3 years and must be regularly replaced. But the consortium recognized that approval would be hard to obtain as the Department of Energy (DOE) had already selected two other facilities as the primary future providers of tritium. Approval of a “tritium-only” plan at the Hanford site was sure to fail unless a new strategy was developed.

At a November 20, 1995 meeting in Washington, DC, representatives of the consortium met with Washington congressional delegation staffers, Terry R. Lash, director of the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, and Richard Thompson, a Democratic wheeler dealer/entrepreneur who was impresario of the conclave. Thompson suggested that they should be “riding the AIDS cure bandwagon,” and outlined a plan to promote Hanford as the last American producer of medical isotopes to be used in AIDS and cancer research.

The Hanford consortium then faced the delicate task of convincing the DOE they needed to be paid for making tritium in order to finance the future production of medical isotopes. Negotiations in Washington began by labeling Hanford an “interim” tritium project. To sell this idea to the White House, the consortium launched lobbying and PR campaigns, hiring Hugh Rodham, Hillary Clinton’s brother, to lobby on their behalf, and making campaign donations to insure access to the President, who gave “thumbs up” to the proposal during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary’s last acts before leaving the DOE for a position on the board of directors of a major energy company was to approve Hanford’s role as a potential site for tritium production.

Fatefully, when the consortium moved to the next step—arranging for financing and plutonium fuel rods supplies—they turned to Randall Bonebrake, then an employee at Advanced Nuclear Medicine Systems. Bonebrake states that when placed in contact with European sources of supply, he suddenly found himself “…in the center of an international market in nuclear waste. It was bizarre and frightening.” He stated he woke up to the fact that he was involved in what appeared to be a conspiracy to breach the International Atomic Energy Treaty, which forbids trade in commercial nuclear fuel for the production of nuclear weapons.

Carrying internal documents from Thompson and the DOE, Bonebrake first approached the IRS in Seattle. He was told there was nothing they could do and they recommended he approach The Seattle Times. Instead, Bonebrake turned to Greenpeace, who counseled leaking the affair to the media and seeking some protection of his status as whistleblower by unburdening himself to the Government Accountability Project. When Bonebrake learned that Thompson was about to sign a contract with the DOE commencing privatization of the Fast Flux, he leaked the news report to the German weekly, Der Spiegel, thus raising alarm in Europe and blocking the shipments of fuel rods from Europe.

At the time of the article, the Fast Flux remained on “hot standby” and had not been decommissioned.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JEFF ST. CLAIM: “Our story shows how easy it is for a group of venture capitalists to get their hands on government nuclear reactors capable of making fuel for hydrogen bombs. Taking advantage of the wide-spread privatization of DOE sites and some slick public-relations work, a small company from Ellensberg, Washington was nearly awarded title to the Fast Flux Breeder Reactor at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State. Though the deal ultimately collapsed (after it was exposed in CounterPunch), the firm, Advanced Nuclear Medicine Systems (ANMS), successfully persuaded the DOE to keep the Fast Flux in ‘hot stand by’ as a possible source of tritium production rather than being shut down as advised by DOE staffers. The DOE is currently searching for another company to take over operations of the Fast Flux.

“One of the key sources for our story was a former employee of ANMS by the name of Randall Bonebrake. Bonebrake left ANMS when he discovered that the company’s professed intention to operate the Fast Flux in order to produce radioactive isotopes to treat AIDS and cancer patients was a ruse to hide the company’s real objective: production of tritium for hydrogen bombs. Bonebrake turned over ANMS papers to Greenpeace, the Government Accountability Project, and CounterPunch. He was later arrested for theft. After our story ran, Bonebrake’s trial ended in a hung jury and the prosecutors decided not to retry the case.

“The story was largely ignored by the mainstream press, although it received quite a bit of attention from public radio. We did interviews for stations in Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Spokane, Washington; and Moscow, Idaho. The combination of our story and the radio coverage was cited as a major factor in ANMS’s decision to withdraw its proposal, according to Bill Sykes, the company’s president, who complained that his company had been ‘tarred by bad publicity.’ The privatization of DOE sites, many of them highly toxic, remains one of the great uncovered stories in America.”

The post 23. The Scheme to Privatize the Hanford Nuke Plant appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Katie Sims and Ben Brewer
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Patrick Jackson, Ph.D.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for years was perceived as the nation’s preeminent crime-fighting agency. That image took a blow from events at Waco and Ruby Ridge, where the FBI had major confrontations with citizens, as well as from a reported mess at the FBI crime lab. Now, after examining the bureau’s own records, a law enforce-ment reporter concludes that the FBI today is a sloppy, unresponsive, badly managed, uncooperative, and out-of-touch agency that is aggressively trying to extend its control over the American people.

The bureau concentrates on drug dealers, credit-card scams, and bank robbers, all tasks that could easily be left to state and local agencies. Meanwhile, insufficient attention is given to the financial loss and the physical pain and deaths that result from the work of the nation’s army of white-collar criminals.

Records also show that the success rate of FBI cases is dismal. Justice Department prosecutors find much of the FBI’s investigative work inadequate. From 1992 to 1996, only one-fourth of all FBI cases referred to prosecutors resulted in convictions. The much-touted FBI lags behind the Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Immig-ration and Naturalization Service, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in prosecution success rates.

Given the current system in which the FBI runs with a free hand, there’s little reason to expect the bureau to improve or change. Because the FBI operates within the Justice Department, most people assume that it is accountable to the Attorney General. This is incorrect. From his appointment in 1924 to his death in 1972, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was his own boss. This was largely due to the fact that Hoover understood the importance of information and how it could be used to garner power and influence. Hoover was untouchable. After his death, Congress attempted to put some controls on the FBI. Now the director serves a 10-year term and can be removed from office only for “just cause.” Subsequently, new FBI directors have a 10-year period to be their own masters with little accountability or oversight.

The FBI is continually pushing for greater control over and access to the private domains of American citizens. Evidence of this is given in a program quietly signed into law by President Clinton in October 1994. This program required the nation’s telephone companies to install a new generation of FBI-approved equipment that will make it much easier for the bureau to tap telephones throughout the country. The implications of this mandate are made even more far-reaching by the subsequent development of computer technologies that are able to monitor these wiretaps with little or no help from human operatives—making wiretapping considerably cheaper.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime in June, Louis Freeh, the current FBI Director, said, plainly: “We are potentially the most dangerous agency in the country.”

UPDATE BY AUTHOR DAVID BURNHAM: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the most powerful and secretive agency in the United States. Decade after decade, with no consideration of alternatives, it has continuously sought to expand its reach over the American people. Despite this steadily growing authority, the ‘B,’ as special agents refer to it, has rarely been subject to informed scrutiny.

“Most news organizations are satisfied with press releases and leaks that are always carefully crafted to serve the FBI’s purposes. While FBI Director Louis Freeh frequently testifies before Congress, the information he provides is almost always anecdotal. Public interest groups, lawyers, and scholars frame their questions about the FBI around individual horror stories that are easily dismissed as exceptions to the rule.

“The FBI article in The Nation was important because for the first time ever, it used the comprehensive internal records of the Justice Department to document what the bureau does and does not do, and how well or poorly it does it. FBI investigations result in thousands of convictions for drug crimes, bank robberies, and small-time fraud against the banks, but only a handful of convictions of big time white-collar criminals, fraudulent medical providers, or brutal cops. Even by its own standards, other agencies like the DEA appear to do a better job than the FBI in the enforce-ment of the nation’s drug laws.

“The data that served as the foundation of this article were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization associated with Syracuse University. I am a founder and co-director of TRAC. At the time The Nation published the FBI article, we mounted an FBI Web site with more than 20,000 pages of maps, charts, graphs, textual material, and other information about the bureau’s operations. This information is available to every citizen, every reporter, every public interest group, and every congressperson who is concerned about the FBI, at http://trac.syr.edu/tracfbi. TRAC has created similar sites about the IRS, DEA, and BATF.

“Post Script: On August 5, 1997, just as The Nation was coming off the presses and TRAC’s Web site was going up, ABC’s Nightline ran a favorable program on TRAC and its FBI findings. For a transcript of the program, call me at 202/ 544. 8722 or e-mail me at trac@syr-edu. The Web site of TRAC is: http://www. trac.syr.edu.”

The post 22. FBI: Sloppy, 0ut of Touch and Very Powerful appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Robin Stovall and Kecia Kaiser
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Andy Merrifield, Ph.D.

Gulf War-related illnesses are rampant among American war veterans. One suggestion as to the cause of the illnesses has surfaced with new blood tests on the most seriously ill victims. A synthetic substance, squalene, banned for use in humans, has been found in blood tests of hundreds of sick Gulf War veterans, some of whom never left U.S. soil. Complicating the issue is the U.S. Department of Defense’s “loss” of over 700,000 service-related immunization records, which might provide a clue as to why squalene is showing up in Gulf War veterans’ blood samples.

Analysis of the blood samples has shown antibody levels of the experimental adjuvant compound known as squalene. This compound, not approved for internal human use other than in highly controlled experiments, has been studied on animals and humans as a promising tool that might help boost the body immune systems against influenza, herpes simplex, and HIV. Only government agencies are involved in human experimental tests using adjuvants (including squalene) yet the government has denied that experimental HIV immunization tests were ever expanded to the general population of sick people or military personnel.

The military has rejected any claim that immunizations administered to Gulf War military personnel prior to leaving for the war contained any adjuvants, but actual immunization records for the period have either been lost or destroyed. This has led to speculation in several circles that the government used military personnel to test experimental immunizations.

Military samples of blood drawn from the vets showed positive reactions for squalene antibodies. Samples of test subjects involved in federal experimental HIV studies also show positive reactions for squalene. It should be noted the medication administered to those involved in this HIV study contained the adjuvant squalene. These test subjects have never served in the military.

A military lab researcher interviewed by Insight was quoted as saying, “We have found soldiers who are not sick that do not have the antibodies, and we found soldiers who never left the United States, but who got shots (administered by the military) who are sick—and they have squalene in their systems. We found people who served overseas in various parts of the desert that are sick who have squalene. And we found people who served in the desert but were civilians who never got the shots, who are not sick and do not have squalene.”

Many people believe that there is probably no single cause for Gulf War Syndrome. Due to the disappearance of the inoculation records, even the most elementary checks cannot occur.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR PAUL M. RODRIGUEZ: “Since publication, none of the so-called mainstream press has followed up on the original story (or subsequent reports) by Insight. This may be due to the controversial nature of the issue and/or obstruction by military and politicos who alternatively have denied, rejected, or brushed aside the story.

“The Insight stories were (and are) based on preliminary and ongoing medical tests by one of the country’s most prestigious laboratories. This laboratory, which plans soon to seek ‘peer’ reviews, has initially confirmed the highly unusual discovery of antibodies to a polymer compound called squalene in the blood of sick Gulf War soldiers who served overseas as well as in the blood of those who never left the United States. In both camps, the sick soldiers received multiple inoculations and immunizations.

“At first, Defense Department and military/veterans’ officials denied they had such a substance, even experimentally. Then slowly over many months it was learned—and officials conceded—that squalene has been, in fact, tested extensively as a promising new ‘adjuvant’ compound in experimental drugs to protect troops against malaria, herpes, and potentially even HIV. However, to this day, the government denies it ever used squalene during the Gulf War period.

“This poses several intriguing questions, not the least of which is: Why does something that’s not supposed to be there show up in sick vets? Bipartisan members of Congress and the General Accounting Office are now looking into the issue. Insight will continue to report what is found, and, of course, what is not found.”

The post 21. Blood Tests Suggest Reason Behind Gulf War Syndrom appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Robin Stovall and Katie Sims
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Charles Fox

Corporate lobbyists often claim that most of the jobs lost in the U.S. over the past decade were due to overblown environmental regulations. In 1990, the U.S. Business Roundtable published a study predicting that the Clean Air Act amendments would lead to the loss of between 200,000 and 2 million jobs. Six years later the job loss figure had not reached even six thousand.

Almost all economists agree that there is no trade-off between jobs and the environment. Actual layoffs from regula-tion have been quite small, and regulations have not damaged the international competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. In 1995, in spite of spending $160 billion per year on environmental protection, the Federal Reserve decided the U.S. economy was growing too fast. Too many people employed might raise inflation rates, so the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates several times in an effort to “cool” the economy and to raise unemployment to the 6 percent level.

Environmental regulation can be expensive. But it is a mistake to confuse costs of environmental protection with job losses from environmental protection. Indeed, environmental costs translate into environmental spending, which also creates and provides jobs. Most studies find that jobs created in environmental and related sectors outweigh jobs lost due to higher regulatory costs. This leads to an actual, overall ‘net’ employment gain. Environmental spending pumps demand into the economy during recessions. Also, environmental protection is often more labor intensive than the alternative, actually leading to more jobs. Environmentally preferable means of meeting our energy needs would actually yield more jobs than our current reliance on fossil fuels and uranium.

In recent years, corporate downsizing has become a much greater threat to U.S. workers than environmental regulations ever were. A U.S. Department of Labor survey concluded that layoffs due to environmental regulation were less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all major layoffs in manufacturing. The major source of job loss has been “corporate restructuring.”

Still, aren’t we losing manufacturing jobs to countries overseas that have lax environmental standards? For decades, economists have been looking for exactly these effects; but recently most have concluded that environmental regulations have had no observable effect. This is because, for most industries, environmental costs are little more than 1 percent of total business costs. Also, most trade flow occurs between developed countries, all of which already have comparable regulations. Finally, one Harvard professor argues that regulations, while imposing short-term costs on firms, actually enhance their competitiveness over the long term.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR EBAN GOODSTEIN: “The fact that there is no significant job loss when protecting the environment is one of those surprising ‘good news’ stories. It was surprising to me when I first started to investigate the subject five years ago. The conventional wisdom (that there was significant job loss) manufactured largely by corporate PR offices, but also endorsed by significant parts of the environmental and labor movements-seemed so plausible. It is a ‘good news’ story because it means that we don’t have to worry (much) about factories shutting down or fleeing overseas as we tighten regulations to clean up our environment.

“Is the conventional wisdom changing? Possibly. Along with Hart Hodges, I wrote an article in the November/ December 1997 American Prospect (’Polluted Numbers’) which examined initial cost estimates for past environ-mental regulations, and found them to be uniformly excessive. We were pleased when President Clinton echoed those sentiments a month later in his global warming speech at the National Geographic Society. Of course, allegations of massive job loss are still being leveled against the recently-signed Kyoto agreement. But we have come a long way from 1992, when President Bush threatened to boycott the Rio Conference in order to ‘protect American jobs from environmental extremists.’

“If you’ would like more information about these issues, I can be contacted at e-mail: eban@clark.edu.”

The post 20. Environmental Regulations Create Jobs and Make American Corporations More Competitive appeared first on Project Censored.

SSU Censored Researchers: Brian Foust and Deb Udall
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Ph.D.

Over two-thirds of U.S. public drinking water is fluoridated. “Experts” have told us that fluoride helps re-mineral enamel and that it prevents tooth decay. They have asserted its beneficial effects and claimed that its negative impacts were non-existent. New studies show this to be false, however, and there is mounting evidence of serious side effects of fluoride ingestion that can result in bone decay, infant mortality, and brain damage.

Large-scale blind studies show there are no differences in tooth decay rates between fluoridated communities and unfluoridated communities, and therefore conclude that people are receiving too much fluoride. One study that compared levels of tooth decay in Los Angeles and San Francisco found no difference between the two cities, even though fluoride is added to the San Francisco water supply and not to the water supply of Los Angeles. During the ‘90s there has been a steady trickle of scientific reports on the health-related problems of fluoride. One report found a statistically significant association between water fluoridation and increased risk of hip fracture. Research at the National Toxicology Program (NTP) in 1990 and 1991 showed a possible increase in osteosarcomas, a form of cancer, in males exposed to fluoride.

Evidence shows that for reducing dental decay, fluoride acts topically (at the surface of the teeth) and that there is negligible benefit in ingesting it. In an as yet unpublished paper, Ian Packington, a toxicologist on the advisory panel for the National Pure Water Association, records that in the years 1990 to 1992, perinatal deaths in the fluoridated parts of the West Midlands were 15 percent higher than in neighboring unexposed areas. His analysis of Department of Health statistics also concludes that in the period 1983 to 1986, cases of Down’s Syndrome were 30 percent higher in fluoridated than non-fluoridated areas. In the 1970s, Dr. Albert Schatz reported that the artificial fluoridation of drinking water in Latin American countries was associated with an increased rate of infant mortality and death due to congenital malformation. As long ago as the 1950s, Dr. Lionel Rapaport published studies showing links between Down’s Syndrome and natural fluoridation.

Why has there been such an unrelenting administrative pressure to fluoridate? One theory is that aluminum manu-facturers, and petro-chemical and fertilizer industries—for whom fluoride was a waste product and a dangerous pollutant—welcomed the opportunity to both launder the image of fluoride and to sell to water companies something they would otherwise have to pay to get rid of.

The final irony is that fluoridation, packaged and marketed in part as a way to bridge the socio-economic gap by providing better dental protection for those with poor nutrition, may be most adversely affecting the poor. It is those suffering poor nutrition and vitamin and mineral deficiencies who are most vulnerable to fluoride’s toxic effects.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR MARK DIESENDORF: “The publication of our paper in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health, the subsequent media stories, and the Project Censored story reveal to the public that there is informed opposition to the fluoridation of drinking water on scientific and public-health grounds. This is a challenge to the medical and dental power structure which strongly supports fluoridation in English-speaking countries.

“Subsequent to publication of this article, attacks were made on the paper in the letters section of the journal and elsewhere by medical and dental proponents of fluoridation, but shortly after the paper was published, I was lucky to be invited as a scientific panelist at a major symposium for medical and health journalists on Medicine in the Media. I drew attention to the paper and challenged journalists to report it. As a result, the main thrust of the paper was covered in two major Australian newspapers and on national radio. Such publicity is rare for questioning fluoridation, since medical journalists normally defer to ‘expert’ spokespeople from medical and dental associations.”

For further information, see:

* Diesendorf, Mark, “Fluoridation: Breaking the Silence Barrier,” in B. Martin, ed., Confronting the Experts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.

* Diesendorf, Mark, “How Science Can Illuminate Ethical Debates: A Case Study on Water Fluoridation,” Journal of the International Society for Fluoride Research, volume 28 (1995): 87-104.

* Martin, B., Scientific Knowledge in Controversy. The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR JOHN J. MONAHAN: “The [Telegram & Gazette] story that detailed concerns about possible health risks associated with fluoridation of drinking water appeared in advance of a citywide referendum on whether to fluoridate the city water supply in Worcester, Massachusetts, at a time a new water treatment plant was being completed.

“The referendum posed a dual controversy, first whether the possible health benefits of fluoridation outweighed possible health risks, and secondly whether fluoride should be essentially forced upon those who rely on the water supply but did not want to have fluoride in their water.

“City Health officials ordered fluoridation, and that decision was endorsed by a majority vote of the City Council, but challenged by a group of concerned citizens who sought to give residents a choice by direct referendum. No doubt many readers were unaware of the relative toxicity of fluoride and possible risks associated with it, and the story gave them a chance to learn just what critics were saying about possible health effects despite the dismissal of those concerns by many public-health officials and elected officials in the city.

“In the end the binding referendum on the November city election ballot prohibited city officials from implementing their plan to begin fluoridating the water supply. Voters rejected fluoridation by nearly a 2 to 1 margin, with 28,972 opposed to fluoridation and 17,826 in favor. As a result, the city did not ever use the new equipment installed for fluoridation at the new water treatment plant, and public-health officials have said they do not expect to try to impose fluoridation on residents in the future. While the city’s public-health director later described the referendum results as a victory of ‘quackery over science,’ the grass-roots organizers of the campaign against fluoridation claimed the outcome was a victory for people’s rights to not have toxic agents imposed on them through their public water supply.”

For additional information, contact John J. Monahan, Environment Writer, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Massachusetts; E-Mail: Monahanj @aol.com; Tel: 508/793-9172.

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SSU Censored Researchers: Jacqueline Lichstein and Judith Westfall
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Paul Benko, Ph.D.

Profit-hungry pill companies are ignoring responsible medical practices and taking advantage of a growth economy to booster and advertise prescription medications directly to the public. The rush to high sales has companies promoting some medications that have not been fully tested or approved by the FDA. As doctors can prescribe any medication they choose (even unapproved ones), drug companies are using this loophole in the law to convince patients and doctors that they should be using specific drugs even before FDA approval.

In 1990, as the success of antidepressant Prozac proved that psychiatric drugs could create new mass markets, Abbott Pharmaceutical decided to re-register Depakote (originally a medication for epilepsy) as a treatment for bipolar disease, the diagnostic term for manic depression. Abbott filed the requisite forms with the FDA and began clinical trials, but did not wait for the FDA to render decisions about Depakote’s efficacy—as required by law. Instead, they began hyping away. Using a medical education program on bipolar disease for doctors, they began to promote Depakote illegally. They were eventually caught and cited by the FDA for promoting Depakote and for collecting information about how doctors prescribed certain medications.

Over the past few years, the FDA has issued dozens of warning letters to pharmaceutical giants for promoting so-called “off-line uses.” In 1996, the drug giant Pfizer received a warning letter from the FDA for promoting its antidepressant Zoloft as a treatment for “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder,” a form of depression that accompanies premenstrual syndrome (PMS) for a small percentage of women. The FDA considered the practice of “off-line” promotions so severe at Pfizer that it sent an eight-page warning letter to William Steere, the company’s chairman.

FDA Commissioner Mary Pendergast stated in 1994, “Promotion of unapproved use by company sales represent-atives is a major problem.” The FDA has a unit specifically empowered to police drug company hype, but that arm, the Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC) is increasingly understaffed and overworked, with only 29 employees nationwide.

Doctors were once the traditional gatekeepers of the public’s health. However, physician-prescribing habits are increasingly circumscribed by HMOs, who prod them to prescribe more drugs, and by pharmaceutical benefits managers, who tell doctors which drugs insurance companies will cover. Doctors are losing control of their prescription writing franchise, and are under increasing pressure from an ad-stimulated public and “off-line” drug company sales promotions. In 1996, there were over $4 billion in medical costs for treating adverse drug reactions in patients in the U.S.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR GREG CRITSER: “This story grew out of an on-going journalistic question: How do drug companies get their pills into your belly, and how do they get paid for it? One way is to market drugs to physicians for non-approved, or ‘off-line’ uses. This is accomplished by aggressively exploiting FDA loopholes and staffing weaknesses. At the time I wrote this article, all such efforts violated the Food and Drug Act.

“But this is no longer the case. In 1997, President Clinton signed new legislation which, among other things, gives pharmaceutical companies permission to market drugs to doctors for uses that they have not been approved for by the FDA. This legislation was passed under the ongoing effort to ‘reform’ the FDA. But the reform cuts only one way—in favor of drug companies and against independent government oversight. The new law permits drug companies to use private firms to evaluate new drugs instead of being evaluated by FDA staff. This means that the agency Americans believe is the last word in product safety and efficiency is increasingly unable to do that job independently. Witness the recent recall of the diet drug Redux.

“There was no mainstream response to the Washington Monthly article. To find out more, you may want to explore the Web site of the FDA, which posts all enforcement actions. All of the major pharmaceutical companies have extensive Web sites. The trade publication Medical Advertising News provides a varnished, but nevertheless revealing, look at marketing practices. Of the big three national newspapers, only The Wall Street Journal is worth reading on this subject.”

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SSU Censored Researcher: Deb Udall
SSU Faculty Evaluator: Noel Byrne, Ph.D.

It may come as no surprise that exposure to toxic pollutants—chemical substances and heavy metals—is hazardous to your health. But according to two recent studies that examined the relationship between exposure to toxins and aggressive behavior, such exposure—which is usually preventable—has been linked to violence in society.

A 1996 study conducted by Herbert Needleman, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, took into account nine variables including poverty level and minority status, as well as lead exposure, in trying to explain aggressive behavior in young boys. Needleman’s study found that boys with high amounts of lead in their bones had more reports of aggressive and delinquent behavior than boys with low levels, and that their behavior got worse over a period of time, regardless of social factors.

New research by Roger D. Masters and colleagues at Dartmouth College suggests exposure to toxic pollutants –specifically lead and manganese—may contribute to people committing violent crimes. Masters developed the “neurotoxicity hypothesis of violent crime,” which he hoped would help to explain why violent crime rates differ so widely between geographic areas. Masters also found that environmental pollution and high alcohol use have a strong effect on violent crime. U.S. counties with measures of neurotoxicity—lead, manganese, and alcohol—have violent crime three times the national average. “The presence of pollution is as big a factor as poverty,” said Masters in a May interview in New Scientist. “It’s the breakdown of the inhibition mechanism that’s the key to violent behavior.”

Despite government attempts to regulate the potential dangers of environmental exposure to toxins, such as outlawing lead in gasoline and tin cans and requiring lead paint disclosures, in 1994, an estimated 1.7 million American children ages one through five had blood lead levels of 10 micrograms per deciliter of blood (ug/dl) or more. Among African-American children in large cities, 36.7 percent have blood lead levels of above 10 ug/dl. Reduced IQ power can be measured when lead is as low as 7 ug/dl, but any amount of lead exposure seems to diminish mental power in children. Brain damage from lead exposure persists for many years, and IQ reduction is essentially permanent. An estimated 20 percent of American children now exhibit mental or behavioral problems.

The main source of toxic lead in children today is in dust and soil, with much of it coming from the lead-based paint of older buildings. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calculated that American taxpayers could realize a net profit of $28 billion in social savings and increased productivity by removing all lead-based paint from old buildings.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR PETER MONTAGUE, PH.D.: “This story reveals the failure of government to require adequate testing of new chemicals while it expands the list of serious problems thought to be caused by toxic pollutants. To my knowledge, there is little new [on this subject], except an increased appreciation for the effects of chemicals on human behavior. I believe that this new view of pollution will become more widespread in the next few years. In the past, if pollution didn’t kill us or make us sick, it was considered ‘safe’—or at least benign. Now we are coming to learn that certain pollutants can affect our behavior—in this instance, making some of us more violent than we might otherwise be. There is also a growing body of evidence suggesting that pollutants can affect our sexual behavior (enhancing or diminishing libido, for example). I believe we are seeing the tip of the iceberg here.

“To my knowledge, this story has been completely ignored by the mainstream press.”

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SSU Censored Researchers: Katie Sims and Angie Yee SSU
Faculty Evaluator: Ray Castro, Ph.D.

The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has ushered in an era of unprecedented military and corporate domination over the already beleaguered indigenous citizens of Mexico. On the day NAFTA went into effect, the Zapatistas of Chiapas in Southern Mexico rose up in rebellion against the exploitation that they feared NAFTA portended. Though the initial violence did not last long, the Zapatistas have continued to resist intrusions into their communally held lands, known as eijdos. Inhabited by the indigenous people of Mexico, the eijdos have been farmed collectively for centuries.

With the passage of NAFTA, the Mexican government is pushing for the elimination of these communally held lands. By privatizing the land, the government hopes to make lucrative deals with multinational corporations from the U.S. and elsewhere.

Under the guise of the perpetual “War on Drugs,” the U.S. has funded a massive build-up of the Mexican military over the last three years. Over 50 Huey helicopters and various other offense-capable weapons have been provided to Mexico by the U.S. government. Most of this hardware can be used to control the poor and indigenous peoples there. The U.S. State Department admits that it is unable to account for how military aid to Mexico is used.

In recent years, the Mexican military has constructed roads deep into the Zapatista-inhabited areas of Chiapas in order to expedite movement of troops into the region. Previously a pristine and relatively remote area with few roads, the military presence in Chiapas has intimidated and isolated the various Zapatista communities, interfering with planting and harvest-ing their crops. This, in turn, has led to widespread malnourishment in the communities.

The absence or lack of enforcement of environmental and health and safety regulations in Mexico makes it particularly attractive to corporations from more regulated industrialized nations. Major deals have already been brokered between the Mexican government and multinational corporations for the development of forest and petroleum resources in the country.

One company, Pulsar, has presented a project to plant (non-indigenous) eucalyptus trees over 300,000 hectares through-out Chiapas and surrounding territories, and has contracted to sell the wood to International Paper (IP). In 1995, the vice president of IP sent a letter to the president of Mexico warning: “at this time, the projections of that project are not positive [since] the political environment [in Chiapas] represents a high risk.” He went on to advise that “the development of a Mexican forest industry—strong and globally competitive, supported by commercial plantations—is a national priority.” The implication that the Mexican military ought to be making a greater effort to eliminate the “Zapatista problem”—cannot be disregarded.

To make matters worse, Chiapas sits on major petroleum reserves that are second only to Venezuela in the Western Hemisphere. Many of these are under Zapatista-controlled lands. In 1996, the Mexican government made a deal with a major Canadian corporation, Hydro-Quebec International, to develop natural gas resources throughout Chiapas.

To the indigenous communities of Mexico, many of whom have inhabited their lands for hundreds of years, the loss of their homes would have ramifications which reach beyond simply the loss of their crops and livelihoods. As has happened so often in the Americas, it would mean the loss of their autonomy, their identity, and the tragic death of yet another innocent culture.

UPDATE BY AUTHOR VIVIANA: “Much of the information regarding corporate interests and plans for development of the natural resources of Chiapas remains widely unreported. However, these factors are central to understanding the depth of U.S. involvement in the politics of the region and the fate of its natural resources.

“Historically, indigenous people have repeatedly found themselves backed into the same corner, with their culture and ability to exist threatened by the race for control over their resources. The solution to the Mexican crisis depends on our awareness that we are a significant part of the problem. With this knowledge, we are challenged to participate in real solutions that support the struggle for human rights and cultural identity of the indigenous people in Zapatista communities and throughout Mexico.

“This story went unnoticed by the mainstream press, just as the Zapatista struggle has had little coverage. Because of this lack of response, the information was primarily disseminated through independent publications of non-profit organizations such as the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, the Native Forest Network, and the Earth First! journal. The Internet has also played an important role (as it has throughout the work in support of the Zapatista movement) in accessing the relevant reports and articles from Mexico and in communicating the information to the United States.

“The Zapatista struggle continues as does the Mexican military’s low-intensity war against the indigenous communities of Chiapas. The U.S. government has not acknowledged its role in the military presence in Chiapas, and continues to contribute to the military buildup.”

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