Conscious Choice: Human Pesticide Tests, Media Reform & Mercury

August 2005 | Editor’s Note

Human Pesticide Tests, Media Reform & Mercury

August marks my one-year anniversary as editor of Conscious Choice magazine, and it seemed like a good idea to revisit some of the issues in editor’s notes from the past year. So here are some reviews, new views and your views.

EPA Pesticide Tests on Humans

After a huge public outcry, the U.S. EPA decided to do away with its CHEERS (Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study) program in which it proposed to pay low-income parents in Florida to expose their infants to pesticides. But apparently that was only the tip of the pesticide-test iceberg. Recent congressional reports revealed about two dozen other questionable tests involving human pesticide studies. “Some of the studies involved dosing of college students with a chemical warfare agent and the swallowing of pesticides every day for 28 days,” according to press releases from California Sen. Barbara Boxer. Boxer persevered in getting the Senate to pass a measure that puts a one-year moratorium on such testing.

So, here’s what I want to know: Why only a one-year moratorium? Why not an all-out ban? A year from now is it suddenly going to look like a good idea to dose people in toxic chemicals? I bet someone somewhere wants to spend a ton of our money to study if such studies are a bad idea. Here’s a suggestion: If they conclude it’s such a great idea, they should be required to be the first ones doused on the next go-round.

Media Reform

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to uphold the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that overturned the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) action that would have allowed more media consolidation. That’s good news because more consolidation would have limited your media outlets and ways for you to learn what’s really going on in the world.

However, Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), Chairman of the Future of American Media Caucus, warned that “the media ownership issue … is far from settled.” The FCC now has to go back to the drawing board to figure out new ownership rules. He urged us to become “fully engaged in the debate … (to ensure) a diverse and independent media that is locally accountable.”
Visit: www.freepress.net.

Mercury

Finally, in response to last month’s column about local health and environmental advocates’ push to get the state to set stricter mercury standards than the federal government’s cap-and-trade program, this arrived from a reader:

I am a mother of three boys and I live in Oak Park, Ill.

My second son is autistic and I believe that mercury exposure played a causative role in his development of autism. The government issued a voluntary “phase out” of thimerosal in vaccines in 1999, but never recalled it and never made it mandatory. To this day, parents, upon requesting to see the insert in their children’s vaccinations, are finding that thimerosal is still there. Additionally, it is still in the flu shot, the Rho-gam and tetanus shots, and in many boosters our older children receive.

I was part of a group of parents who, with Evidence of Harm author David Kirby, visited Washington, D.C., and spoke with many legislators. We know that when we treat our children for mercury poisoning through chelation therapy, their symptoms improve. Yet it is becoming difficult for researchers to obtain funding for any study implicating mercury in the development of Autism Spectrum Disorders.

We have successfully lobbied in our states to push mercury-free legislation when our Federal Government has been asleep at the switch.

We have done all of this on a shoestring budget, up against the pharmaceutical lobby. However, the tide is turning. People are beginning to find that it is plausible that a known neurotoxin, injected into an infant in his/her first months of life, may actually cause neurological damage. Visit www.generationrescue.org or www.safeminds.org. — Christina Blakey

Thank you, Christina Blakey, and everyone else for your letters and support during this remarkable past year. And thanks for reading.

— Marla Donato

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