According to a conservative World Health Organization estimate, 500,000 people, the majority of them in Third World countries, are poisoned yearly by banned pesticides and drugs. Besides poisonings, a rash of miscarriages and birth defects have been attributed to certain banned herbicides. Although these chemicals are banned for use in the United States, domestic drug manufacturing corporations continue to produce and export them to foreign countries. Drugs never approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and even some never tested, are marketed and sold in some Third World countries. Moreover, they are-shipped to countries that have minimal or no drug controls or regulations despite the fact the dangers of the products are known. What the peoples of those countries are being subjected to, and what the U.S. drug manufacturers are doing, goes virtually unnoticed and unreported in this country. The tragic impact of U.S. profit-motivated firms on the people of Third World nations qualifies this story for nomination as one of the “best censored” stories of 1976.
SOURCE: “Banned Chemicals Shipped Abroad” by David Weir. Rolling Stone Magazine, February 10, 1977, No. 232.