Frankenscience needs a stronger
response than "decorum"
June 29, 2005
Got an email from Barbara Boxer last night. She wants to stop the Bush administration from using dubious scientific studies that contain results gathered from using human subjects intentionally exposed to pesticides, without consent.
http://ga4.org/campaign/pesticidesonpeople/Stop Human Pesticide Testing! In violation of routine ethical standards, the Bush Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using studies that deliberately expose humans to dangerous pesticides to decide whether those pesticides should be legal. This decision flies in the face of scientific practice and the sound policies of past Republican and Democratic EPA administrators including Carol Browner and Christie Todd Whitman. A recent Congressional report commissioned by Rep. Henry Waxman and me found "serious and widespread deficiencies" in these studies. Moreover, it concluded that the "experiments appear to have inflicted harm on human subjects, failed to obtain informed consent, dismissed adverse outcomes, and lacked scientific validity."On Tuesday, I introduced a bipartisan amendment co-sponsored by Senators Clinton, Collins, and Snowe that will place a moratorium on all human pesticide testing until the EPA develops strict ethical rules consistent with the standards laid out by the National Academy of Sciences. Now, I need your help to pass this amendment when it comes up for a vote this Wednesday in the Senate. Please take a moment right now to email and call your Senators at (202) 224-3121, urging support of my bipartisan amendment to put a moratorium on human pesticide testing back in place -- before the vote at noon EDT Wednesday!
All well and good, but of course the pro-human testing Republicans will probably vote it down. And always such decorum. I am not allowed to refer to that European government of the last century that used human test subjects in medical experiments, but I can make reference to something our own government did: the Tuskeegee Experiment.
But after last night's speech, signalling that Bush is not pulling his head out of the sand, not changing course, not admitting his lies, not reaching out to all Americans, but instead, plowing ahead with the same course we've been on all along -- I've had enough. Tepid responses, hemming and hawing are not going to cut it. We live in insane times and the Bush administration will drag us all down.
So I sent her back her letter, which also goes to Diane Feinstein.
Subject: Support the Boxer-Snow-Clinton-Collins Pesticide Testing Amendment
Dear Senator Boxer,
I received your letter asking me to write my senators about Frankenscience pesticide studies. So, I'm sending you your letter. And sending it to Senator Feinstein as well.
However, since I'm supposing you'll be voting in favor of your bill, and since I doubt my other senator is opposed to this effort (although sometimes I have my doubts about her), I'm writing a different letter.
The issue you wrote me about is more than outrageous. The fact that this administration is willing to use studies with such complete and utter lack of ethical standards and which constituted criminal action against the test subjects, shows there is no limit to how far these people will go.
The war on science, on our rights, on our futures, on reality -- not to mention the illegal war we were lied into in Iraq -- requires the strongest possible objections. Democratic leadership needs to ramp up the volume and the tenor of the counterattack on these murderous thugs.
Yes, support the troops. Yes, you can debate how we go about cleaning up after the mess the president has made of things. But make the point that we cannot trust them to get anything right. Because to do something right, you have to be willing to face reality, to work for an outcome for the right reasons and with the right goals. None of those things apply to this administration. They are murderers and maimers and stripminers of our future. You cannot fight them with moderation and decorum. You must call us to the barricades to defend our country from these people who are destroying it.
Good luck on the amendment.
Sincerely,
Lane Schwark
[address removed]
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