You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Business' category.
+ 
= 
Off Shore Drilling - Don’t Buy the Lie
CAN WE DRILL OUR WAY TO LOWER FUEL PRICES?
Argument 1:
Drilling more oil and gas wells will reduce gasoline prices.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the total additional oil that could be
brought into production from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Outer
Continental Shelf, and the Rocky Mountain states is likely to be only about 1.2 million
barrels of oil a day at peak production. This only adds up to a $1.20 reduction in the price
of a barrel of oil, which is currently well over $140.(footnotes) i ii iii
If this drop were to reduce pump prices at all, the savings would be mere pennies (only about 3 cents a gallon according to Department of Energy figures) and would not be seen by Americans for at least another 10 years.
Even in the most optimistic case, drilling in those sensitive areas combined would
possibly garner a savings at the pump of only 4-5 cents a gallon in 2025. Even the
Department of Energy admits that: “Because oil prices are determined on the
international market, however, any impact on average… prices is expected to be
insignificant.” (footnote)iv Any oil pumped here would go right into that international market, where we’d have to bid for it right alongside India, China and other nations.
In fact, a record 1.6 billion barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were
exported from January-April of this year, up 33 percent over the same period in 2007.
This surge in exports seems to contradict arguments of supporters who want to increase
domestic drilling in order to help alleviate fuel shortages in the U.S. The bottom line is
profit –domestically drilled oil will not stay in the U.S. if another nation is willing to pay
more for it.
Despite the fact that drilling will not help consumers at the pump, the industry continues
to push for more drilling permits on public lands. This strategy is little more than an
attempt to control more land and reap bigger and bigger profits. Between 1999 and 2007,
the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more
than 361%, yet gasoline prices have also risen dramatically. There is no correlation
between more drilling and lower gasoline prices.
Even if increased domestic drilling could affect the price of gasoline, there is yet no
justification to open additional federal lands because oil and gas companies have shown
that they cannot keep pace with the rate of drilling permits that the federal government is
handing out. In the last four years, the Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776
permits to drill on public lands; yet, in that same time, 18,954 wells were actually drilled.
That means that companies have stockpiled nearly 10,000 extra permits to drill that they
are not using to increase domestic production.
Argument 2:
Vast quantities of oil and gas beneath public lands are closed to energy
development.
According to the Department of the Interior, only 38% of the oil and 16% of the natural
gas are excluded from leasing – largely because those resources are underneath National
Parks and wilderness areas that have significant scenic, recreational and wildlife values.
Industry already has more lands than it can drill. Of the 44.5 million leased acres, most -more than 30 million acres -have not been used by the oil and gas industry.
Industry isn’t developing most of the public lands it already has under lease. Although we
object to some of the areas under lease, we believe that the oil and gas industry should
make better use of existing leases before it attempts to lock up more public lands in
environmentally fragile areas.
Argument 3:
Opening the 19.2 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to
drilling would reduce today’s gasoline prices.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that it will require 8 to 10 years
after opening ANWR before oil is produced. According to the EIA, opening ANWR
could reduce U.S. crude oil imports, but not until 2022-2026 and only by a few
percentage points.
Oil prices are set on a global market. Historically, increases in U.S. oil production have
had little impact on those prices. If commercial quantities of oil are discovered in
ANWR, the effect would be a reduction of just a few pennies per gallon during peak
production.
During the next two decades, US oil imports as a percentage of consumption will
decrease, a dramatic shift in US energy policy. The reasons for this decrease are
improvements in energy efficiency and conservation and the use of alternative energy and new technologies that will reduce our nation’s need for oil between now and 2050 by 100 million barrels – that’s 10 times the amount of oil that ANWR could provide.
Argument 4:
We need to increase domestic drilling in order to achieve energy independence and
increase homeland security.
More drilling will not achieve “energy independence.” At current consumption levels,
U.S. resources are inadequate to achieve energy independence. The United States
contains 2.5 % of the world’s oil resources and 3% of world natural gas resources.
But we account for 24% of total world consumption of oil and 22% of natural gas
consumption. The U.S. could drill every national park, wildlife refuge, and coastline and still be importing 60 percent of the oil we use. Opening more areas to drilling in the U.S. can never make us less dependent on foreign oil or natural gas.
Additionally, because oil and petroleum products are traded globally, there is no
guarantee that oil drilled in the U.S. will stay in the U.S. In fact, a record 1.6 billion
barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported from January-April of this
year, up 33 percent over the same period in 2007. The bottom line is profit -
domestically drilled oil will not stay in the U.S. if another nation is willing to pay more for it.
The only way we will ever reduce our dependency is to reduce our consumption. Federal
legislation that promotes clean, alternative energy and cuts global warming pollution will
reduce our oil imports four times more than drilling in the pristine wildlife habitat of the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, off our beaches, and in the Rocky Mountains combined.
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that under the Climate
Security Act, U.S. petroleum consumption would drop by nearly half by 2030—saving
far in excess of the amount of oil we could ever pull from Alaska or the coasts.
Argument 5:
There are too many environmental restrictions on drilling.
Many of these environmental restrictions are what help keep our drinking water and the
air we breathe clean. They also help conserve wildlife and lands for recreation.
Even with current environmental restrictions, wildlife and clean water and air are taking a
hit from drilling. During the first four years of development on the Pinedale Anticline
natural gas field in Wyoming the overall wintering mule deer population dropped by
46%. The Greater sage-grouse may require listing under the Endangered Species Act, in
part, as a result of damage to its habitat from oil and gas drilling. This past year in
Colorado, over 1 million gallons of polluted, industrial drilling mud was accidentally spilled into the West Parachute Creek on the Roan Plateau.
Drilling also pollutes the air. The oil industry on Alaska’s North Slope annually emits approximately 70,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, an important component of smog. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this is more than twice the amount emitted by the city of Washington, D.C.
The small town of Pinedale, Wyoming (pop. 1412), which sits just 100 miles south of Grand Teton National Park, experienced its first hazardous ozone alerts this past winter as a result of emissions from nearby drilling operations.
These are just a few examples of the impacts to wildlife, water and air from drilling. We
would see many more if current environmental restrictions are loosened or relaxed.
Our facts are from credible sources –the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of
Land Management (under the U.S. Department of Interior). A lot of other “information”
is out there (mostly based on opinion)
i
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency, “Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge” May 2008
iii
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency, “State Energy Profiles”
Save Money & Save The World - 22 Simple Steps for Energy Savings!
|
Here are 22 steps you can take – each with the energy savings you can achieve each year. Pick the ones you’ll do to get your first 10% energy savings. (These energy savings assume an average US home, which uses about 11,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year and 19,000 cubic feet of natural gas per year.) 1. Turn off lights you’re not using – We even have switchplate reminders for you, downloadable on our Web site. (2% energy savings per year, assuming an average family’s energy use)
3. Don’t heat or cool empty rooms – If there is a room in your house that is rarely used, close off the vents to save on heating and cooling. (Varies by size of room.) 4. Give your dishwasher a rest – Skip the energy-intensive drying cycle on your dishwasher and choose the air-dry option, or open the door for zero-energy dish drying. (5% energy savings per year)
6. Turn off your electronics – If you’re going to be away from your computer or other appliance for more than an hour, turn it off. (5% energy savings per year) 7. Eliminate “phantom load” – Many electronics use energy even while turned off, so your best bet is to unplug them when not in use. (5% energy savings per year)
9. Wash clothes in cold water – Your clothes will get just as clean, on half the energy. (7% energy savings per year) 10. Give up your dryer – Hang your clothes to dry on a clothesline or indoor rack. (10% energy savings per year)
12. Reduce your water use – Simple ways to save water include fixing any leaks and replacing faucets and showerheads with low-flow options. (3% energy savings per year) 13. Cut waste through windows – Properly seal window edges, cover windows with curtains to prevent heat loss, or coat windows with reflective “low-e” films that reduce heat loss while still allowing light to shine through. (10% energy savings per year)
15. Install ceiling fans – Reduce your air conditioner usage with ceiling fans. Look for “Energy Star” models that use 50 percent less energy. (19% energy savings per year) 16. Get a programmable thermostat – Automate when your heating or cooling systems come on to save energy while you sleep or are away from home. (10% energy savings per year)
18. Upgrade your hot water heater – Save energy and space by upgrading to a tankless or solar hot water heater. (14% energy savings per year) 19. Green your roof – Studies have found that a green roof on a typical one-story building can result in a 25 percent reduction in summer cooling needs. (12% energy savings per year)
21. Replace your windows – In step 13, we have recommendations for working with the windows you have. Replacing your windows with more energy-efficient versions can save you even more. (14% energy savings per year) 22. Don’t waste energy on TV – With the switch to digital TV coming in 2009, many people are buying new, digital-ready TVs. If you must shop for a new television, look for an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen, which uses six times less energy than a plasma screen. (2% energy savings per year) |
 Not yet a supporting member? Join todayto begin receiving the Co-op America Quarterly (from which today’s e-mail was adapted) by mail. Membership is only $20 and includes a subscription to our bi-monthly green-living newsletter Real Money, a copy of our National Green Pages™, and a copy of our Guide to Socially Responsible Investing. Your membership provides valuable support for our economic action programs for people and the planet. |
2. Schedule an energy audit
5.
8.
11. Plug your air leaks
14.
17. Upgrade your appliances
20. Save energy through landscaping
JOIN CO-OP AMERICA | DONATE TODAY | SEND THIS TO A FRIEND
Co-op America, 1612 K St NW Suite 600, Washington DC 20006 - (800) 58 GREEN - www.coopamerica.org
70 miles per gallon!!!!
Necessity is the mother of invention and the oil industry has plunged the stake into their own heart. Clean energy and sustainability is the wave of the future because it is the only way to survive. The status quo will not give up without a fight but when they finally WAKE UP and realize there is money to be made they will all jump on board the new green economy. Until then they are blocking all legislative initiatives, tax breaks and guarding their outrageous subsidies (your government at work) like any entrenched power might do - the unenlightened ones.
Paul
Author - Journey Home
This is a repost but the cartoon is priceless set this creep straight.
Senator Larry Craig - famous for misbehaving in a different kind of stall - is using stall tactics on the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act.
His threat to hold up Senate consideration of the bill (S.311 by Sens. Landrieu and Ensign) is putting thousands of horses in danger of ruthless killer buyers who want to buy horses at auction and haul them to Mexico or Canada for a gruesome demise.
Tell your Senator to Stop the Larry Craig Stall.
Please do it today: Click HERE and send your Senator a message.
And please forward this email to 10 of your horse-loving friends, asking them to do the same.
Thanks for all you do to protect horses.
Soraya Gheissari
Executive Director
National Horse Protection League
The National Horse Protection League is an online community dedicated to making every horse a wanted horse. Our mission is simple: to protect horses and help owners who can no longer care for their animals find a humane and loving alternative to cruel death or abandonment. Visit www.horse-protection.org and find out how you can show your love of horses.
The Debate Last Night - by For Profit Media
When Corporate America (the powers that be) took the debates from the League of Women Voters - they delivered a death blow to our democracy.
Some of the issues Corporate America and their talking head hacks didn’t want you to think about last night are as follows;
Electric cars, mountain top removal, global warming, overfishing, pollution leading to cancer, pesticides and run off polluting the food chain and putting people out of work and at risk, overpopulation, desertification of the planet, the collapse of the Bee Colonies (it sounds minor but it has a huge impact on our food supply and the cost of that food supply), the mortgage crisis, the tax payer BAILOUT of Bear Sterns, the impeachable offenses of the Bush administration, the fire in Cheney’s record room. The tax cuts for the uber wealthy, becoming permanent or not, the deficit, the trade imbalance, the interest on the deficit, THE WAR, veteran benefits, Walter Reed Hospital Conditions, Health Care, Education, the root cause of violence. The erosion of Separation of Church and State. The widening divide between rich and poor, the over taxed middle class, gasoline prices, energy sources clean energy vs. dirty energy…the budget, the budget, the budget!
No one seriously considering the candidates gets their news from corporate sponsored television or newspaper. Reporters might want to ask or write about the larger issues but questions of profit and who your boss is, who you are working for, and what are their interest play a HUGE factor in the information you get from these profit driven sources.
Certainly the tabloid issues, gotchas mis steps (and lies) need to be mentioned at some point but two hours devoted to non-core issues is just diversionary. There are bigger issues at stake that will have a real impact on the actual function and performance of our government bodies.
Who are Obama’s financial contributers, who are Hilary’s. Why are they taking money from these people? Are they going to work for them or the American people?
When a major political financial contributor, player and entity owns the media - you won’t get those questions.
The only way to address this problem is to legislate that a non-profit organize and hold the debates. Take money out of the equation and we will get a return to the issues and a return to Democracy.
The powers that be do not want an informed citizenry. They can’t pull the wool over our eyes and pocket our tax dollars if we know what they are doing behind closed doors and trying to extract through hidden or unheralded legislation.
Where was Ralph Nader he would have addressed the issues? But because the powers that be control the media - you won’t see Ralph get any air time…
…and that’s the way it is and unless we the people make a huge noise and take the debates back from the profiteers and their corporations they hide behind that’s the way it will always be…good night and good luck!
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes, Everywhere!
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Perm it Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax),
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax),
Liquor Tax,
Luxury Tax,
Marriage License Tax,
Medicare Tax,
Property Tax,
Real Estate Tax,
Service charge taxes,
Social Security Tax,
Road Usage Tax (Truckers),
Sales Taxes,
Recreational Vehicle Tax,
School Tax,
State Income Tax,
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA),
Telephone Federal Excise Tax,
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax,
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax,
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax,
Telephone State and Local Tax,
Telephone Usage Charge Tax,
Utility Tax,
Vehicle License Registration Tax,
Vehicle Sales Tax,
Watercraft Registration Tax,
Well Permit Tax,
Workers Compensation Tax.
Fight Tax Abuse Links
Freedom Works
Tax Revolt
National Tax Payers Union
Elitists Republicans, Democrats and their Corporate Friends Thank You For Your Taxes Paid Today!
While the uber millionaires running for office toss around the word elitist - I thought a reality check might be in order. The people running our country, the status quo are the elitist. There has been no recessionary impact on high end condos, high end yachts and high end cars. Meanwhile there is a tax on everything and an enormous amount of money headed for Washington today. The greedy are fighting like cats and dogs for that money and something like the rule of law will not deter them in their pursuit. Meanwhile these corporations and their representatives don’t clean up after themselves, and our food chain is polluted and cancer is rampant and the mountains are being pushed into the river beds. They are destroying your planet for a quick buck and they don’t care because they have enough money to move away from the pollution, but what they don’t realize is there is no escaping the environment, a poisoned food chain and spoiled air and water. It’s in their bodies as well. They are too ignorant to realize it.
The following are quotes - reposted from Ralph Nader’s site:
I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
- Thomas Jefferson
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln
Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.
- Woodrow Wilson
The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves called into being.
- Theodore Roosevelt
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
- Dwight Eisenhower
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves - and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.
- Thomas Jefferson
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Civics Quiz
Which of the following candidates for President of the United States best reflects values expressed above?
a) John McCain
b) Hillary Clinton
c) Barack Obama
d) Ralph Nader
The answer?
d) Ralph Nader
As the Democrats bicker over the meaning of bitterness, Ralph Nader is traveling to all 50 states to challenge head-on the abusive, corrupting, corrosive corporate power that is undermining our democracy.
Ralph would definitely battle Congress and Corporate America on our behalf. It might be time to try something completely different - check out Mr. Nader’s website and take a long look at his credentials and intentions as well as his past actions. The time is now.
The Real John McCain 10 Things You Should Know
This is a repost from MoveOn.org
1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”2
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3
4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”4
5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.5
6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.6
7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”7
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”9
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10
_________________________________________
Sources:
1. “The Complicated History of John McCain and MLK Day,” ABC News, April 3, 2008
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/04/the-complicated.html
“McCain Facts,” ColorOfChange.org, April 4, 2008
http://colorofchange.org/mccain_facts/
2. “McCain More Hawkish Than Bush on Russia, China, Iraq,” Bloomberg News, March 12, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aF28rSCtk0ZM&refer=us
“Buchanan: John McCain ‘Will Make Cheney Look Like Gandhi,’” ThinkProgress, February 6, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/06/buchanan-gandhi-mccain/
3. “McCain Sides With Bush On Torture Again, Supports Veto Of Anti-Waterboarding Bill,” ThinkProgress, February 20, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/20/mccain-torture-veto/
4. “McCain says Roe v. Wade should be overturned,” MSNBC, February 18, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17222147/
5. “2007 Children’s Defense Fund Action Council® Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard,” February 2008
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_learn_scorecard2007
“McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion,” CNN, October 3, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/03/mccain.interview/
6. “Beer Executive Could Be Next First Lady,” Associated Press, April 3, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-S1sWHm0tchtdMP5LcLywg5ZtMgD8VQ86M80
“McCain Says Bank Bailout Should End `Systemic Risk,’” Bloomberg News, March 25, 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHMiDVYaXZFM&refer=home
7. “Will McCain’s Temper Be a Liability?,” Associated Press, February 16, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=4301022
“Famed McCain temper is tamed,” Boston Globe, January 27, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/01/27/famed_mccain_temper_is_tamed/
8. “Black Claims McCain’s Campaign Is Above Lobbyist Influence: ‘I Don’t Know What The Criticism Is,’” ThinkProgress, April 2, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/02/mccain-black-lobbyist/
“McCain’s Lobbyist Friends Rally ‘Round Their Man,” ABC News, January 29, 2008
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4210251
9. “McCain’s Spiritual Guide: Destroy Islam,” Mother Jones Magazine, March 12, 2008
http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html
“Will McCain Specifically ‘Repudiate’ Hagee’s Anti-Gay Comments?,” ThinkProgress, March 12, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/12/mccain-hagee-anti-gay/
“McCain ‘Very Honored’ By Support Of Pastor Preaching ‘End-Time Confrontation With Iran,’” ThinkProgress, February 28, 2008
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/28/hagee-mccain-endorsement/
10. “John McCain Gets a Zero Rating for His Environmental Record,” Sierra Club, February 28, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/environment/77913/
Bush Corporate Welfare and Parkinson Disease
Keep stickin’ it to us Georgie Boy. You figure the next guy will clean it up. Well unless it’s Ralph Nader I’m not so sure. More corporate welfare is being given away as our miner in chief, our oil well exploiter and our failed businessman in chief continues to ravage the country side and economy. Thanks for f’in the whole thing up so completely George. The dollar ain’t worth squat, and that’s on your watch. Wall Street is being bailed out by the tax payers, and that’s on your watch. The deficit is at a trillion dollar all time high, and that is on your watch. Clean air and clean water standards have been rolled back, and that is on your watch. An unnecessary war draining the economy, and that is on your watch. More corporate welfare for the screw ups on Wall Street, and that is on your watch. George heres a news flash. Your a complete idiot and a complete and utter failure at EVERYTHING you do. Hell you can’t even get being “born again” right.
George want some help? Here’s a clue. Dirty energy is killing us - literally. As you send our sons and daughters to die for oil wells and profits and a few of your close buddies get rich the rest of us breath in the cancerous fumes and try to wipe of the Parkinson disease giving pesticides off our bodies. It’s funny that such an anti-science religious right guy has so much faith in made made chemicals and exploits. It’s time to balance our lives, production and consumption and be more in tune with the world as created by god. You wouldn’t go up to god in the kitchen and say,” hey god nice Earth Soup your brewing there how about some man-made chemicals to spice things up? Here’s some mercury for the air and fish and how about more carbon we need more carbon? Oh and this nuclear waste will really add some spice to your perfectly balanced and organic recipe. The time is now big boys. We need to align ourselves with what is actually provided by the Earth and not get so enamored with our own creations. Besides most of what we create gives us cancer or kills us.
To help stop Bush’s latest forest give away click here.
To learn about Parkinson’s disease and the pesticides and herbicides in our homes click here.
To end the one sided representation of Corporate America in our political system click here.
To learn about clean energy sources click here.
This is an ad I found in E magazine and another repost - I found this so fascinating I had to re-post it - (click on the link above) I can not vouch for it actually working and would caution all to be skeptical. That being said do a little background research on the company and look before you leap. If this does work legislation should be pushed through to make this mandatory on all vehicles. Necessity is the mother of invention. Again be forewarned this was an advertisement in E magazine and this is copy of their web page. I can not vouch that it works and this is my disclaimer.
Boycott of the American Cancer Society
This is a repost from the Action Pa web site:
Cancer Prevention Coalition Calls for An Economic Boycott of the American Cancer Society.*
*This article is based on Chapter 16 and 18 of THE POLITICS OF CANCER REVISITED, 1998, East Ridge press, Fremont Center, New York 12736 (1-800-269-2921). For a more detailed text and citations, see “American Cancer Society: The World’s Wealthiest ‘Non-profit’ Institution,” International Journal of Health Services 29(3): 565-578, 1999.
The American Cancer Society (ACS), the world’s wealthiest “non-profit institution”, is fixated on damage control - screening, diagnosis and treatment, - and genetic research, with indifference or even hostility to cancer prevention. Together with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the ACS has failed to provide Congress, regulatory agencies and the public with the strong body of scientific evidence clearly relating the escalating incidence of non-smoking related cancers to involuntary and avoidable exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, the workplace, and consumer products - - food, cosmetics and toiletries - - so that appropriate corrective and legislative regulatory and action has not been taken. Nor have citizens been provided with available information to protect themselves against avoidable cancer risks. As such, the ACS bears a heavy responsibility for the current cancer epidemic, with lifetime risks now approaching one in two for men and one in three for women. These concerns are further compounded by incestuous conflicts of interest, apart from serious financial irregularities.
Track Record on Prevention
Marching in lockstep with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in its “war” on cancer is its “ministry of information,” the ACS. With powerful media control and public relations resources, the ACS is the tail that wags the dog of the policies and priorities of the NCI. In addition, the approach of the ACS to cancer prevention reflects a virtually exclusionary “blame-the-victim” philosophy. It emphasizes faulty lifestyle rather than unknowing and avoidable exposures to workplace or environmental carcinogens. Giant corporations, which profit handsomely while they pollute the air, water, and food with a wide range of carcinogens, are greatly comforted by the silence of the ACS.Indeed, despite promises to the public to do everything to “wipe out cancer in your lifetime,” the ACS fails to make its voice heard in Congress and the regulatory arena. Instead, the ACS has repeatedly rejected or ignored opportunities and requests from Congressional committees, regulatory agencies, unions, and environmental organizations to provide scientific testimony critical to legislate and regulate a wide range of occupational and environmental carcinogens. This history of ACS unresponsiveness is a long and damning one:
- In 1971, when studies unequivocally proved that diethylstilbestrol (DES) caused vaginal cancers in teenaged daughters of women administered the drug during pregnancy, the ACS refused an invitation to testify at Congressional hearings to require the FDA to ban its use as an animal feed additive.
- In 1977 and 1978, the ACS opposed proposed regulations for hair coloring products that contained dyes known to cause breast and liver cancer in rodents in spite of the clear evidence of human risk.
- In 1977, the ACS called for a Congressional moratorium on the FDA’s proposed ban on saccharin and even advocated its use by nursing mothers and babies in “moderation” despite clear-cut evidence of its carcinogenicity in rodents. This reflects the consistent rejection by the ACS of the importance of animal evidence as predictive of human cancer risk.
- In 1977 and 1978, the ACS opposed proposed regulations for hair coloring products that contained dyes suspected of causing breast cancer. In so doing, the ACS ignored virtually every tenet of responsible public health as these chemicals were clear-cut liver and breast carcinogens.
- In 1978, Tony Mazzocchi, then senior representative of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, stated at a Washington, D.C. roundtable between public interest groups and high-ranking ACS officials: “Occupational safety standards have received no support from the ACS.”
- In 1978, Congressman Paul Rogers censured the ACS for doing “too little, too late” in failing to support the Clean Air Act.
- In 1982, the ACS adopted a highly restrictive cancer policy that insisted on unequivocal human evidence of carcinogenicity before taking any position on public health hazards. Accordingly, the ACS still trivializes or rejects evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals, and has actively campaigned against laws (the 1958 Delaney Law, for instance) that ban deliberate addition to food of any amount of any additive shown to cause cancer in either animals or humans. The ACS still persists in an anti-Delaney policy, in spite of the overwhelming support for the Delaney Law by the independent scientific community.
- In 1983, the ACS refused to join a coalition of the March of Dimes, American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association to support the Clean Air Act.
- In 1992, the ACS issued a joint statement with the Chlorine Institute in support of the continued global use of organochlorine pesticides despite clear evidence that some were known to cause breast cancer. In this statement, Society Vice President Clark Heath, M.D., dismissed evidence of this risk as “preliminary and mostly based on weak and indirect association.” Heath then went on to explain away the blame for increasing breast cancer rates as due to better detection: “Speculation that such exposures account for observed geographic differences in breast cancer incidence or for recent rises in breast cancer occurrence should be received with caution; more likely, much of the recent rise in incidence in the United States . . . reflects increased utilization of mammography over the past decade.”
- In 1992, in conjunction with the NCI, the ACS aggressively launched a “chemoprevention” program aimed at recruiting 16,000 healthy women at supposedly “high risk” of breast cancer into a 5-year clinical trial with a highly profitable drug called tamoxifen. This drug is manufactured by one of the world’s most powerful cancer drug industries, Zeneca, an offshoot of the Imperial Chemical Industries. The women were told that the drug was essentially harmless, and that it could reduce their risk of breast cancer. What the women were not told was that tamoxifen had already been shown to be a highly potent liver carcinogen in rodent tests, and also that it was well-known to induce aggressive human uterine cancer.
- In 1993, just before PBS Frontline aired the special entitled, “In Our Children’s Food,” the ACS came out in support of the pesticide industry. In a damage-control memorandum sent to some forty-eight regional divisions, the ACS trivialized pesticides as a cause of childhood cancer, and reassured the public that carcinogenic pesticide residues in food are safe, even for babies. When the media and concerned citizens called local ACS chapters, they received reassurances from an ACS memorandum by its Vice President for Public Relations: “The primary health hazards of pesticides are from direct contact with the chemicals at potentially high doses, for example, farm workers who apply the chemicals and work in the fields after the pesticides have been applied, and people living near aerially sprayed fields. . . . The ACS believes that the benefits of a balanced diet rich in fruits and vegetables far outweigh the largely theoretical risks posed by occasional, very low pesticide residue levels in foods.”
- In September 1996, the ACS together with a diverse group of patient and physician organizations, filed a “citizen’s petition” to pressure FDA to ease restrictions on access to silicone gel breast implants. What the ACS did not disclose was that the gel in these implants had clearly been shown to induce cancer in several industry rodent studies, and that these implants were also contaminated with other potent carcinogens such as ethylene oxide and crystalline silica.
- In “Cancer Facts & Figures, 1998,” the latest annual ACS publication designed to provide the public and medical profession with “Basic Facts” on cancer — other than information on incidence, mortality, signs and symptoms, and treatment — there is little or no mention of prevention. Examples include: no mention of dusting the genital area with talc as a known cause of ovarian cancer; no mention of parental exposure to occupational carcinogens as a major cause of childhood cancer; and no mention of prolonged use of oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy as major causes of breast cancer. For breast cancer, ACS states: “Since women may not be able to alter their personal risk factors, the best opportunity for reducing mortality is through early detection.” In other words, breast cancer is not preventable in spite of clear evidence that its incidence has escalated over recent decades, and in spite of an overwhelming literature on avoidable causes of this cancer. In the section on “Nutrition and Diet,” no mention at all is made of the heavy contamination of animals and dairy fats and produce with a range of carcinogenic pesticide residues, and on the need to switch to safer organic foods.
This abysmal track record on prevention has been the subject of periodic protests by both independent scientists and public interest groups. A well publicized example was a New York City January 23, 1984 press conference, sponsored by Dr. Samuel S. Epstein and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The press release stated:
A group of 24 scientists charged that the ACS was doing little to protect the public from cancer-causing chemicals in the environment and workplace. The scientists urged ACS to revamp its policies and to emphasize prevention in its lobbying and educational campaigns.
The scientists, who included Matthew Meselson and Nobel laureate George Wald, both of Harvard University; former OSHA director Eula Bingham; Samuel Epstein; and Anthony Robbins, past president of the American Public Health Association, strongly criticized the ACS for insisting on unequivocal human proof that a substance is carcinogenic before it will recommend its regulation.
Bloated Operating Budgets and Misallocations:
The ACS is accumulating great wealth in its role as a “charity.” According to James Bennett, professor of economics at George Mason University and recognized authority on charitable organizations, the ACS held a fund balance of over $400 million with about $69 million of holdings in land, buildings, and equipment in 1988. Of that money, the ACS spent only $90 million –26 percent of its budget– on medical research and programs. The rest covered “operating expenses,” including about 60 percent for generous salaries, pensions, executive benefits, and overhead. By 1989, the cash reserves of the ACS were worth more than $700 million. In 1991, Americans, believing they were contributing to fighting cancer, gave nearly $350 million to the ACS, 6 percent more than the previous year. By 1992, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that the ACS was “more interested in accumulating wealth than in saving lives.” Fundraising appeals routinely stated that the ACS needed more funds to support their cancer programs, all the while holding more than $750 million in cash and real estate assets.
A 1992 article in the Wall Street Journal by Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola College and veteran investigator of nonprofit organizations, revealed that the Texas affiliate of the ACS owned more than $11 million worth of assets in land and real estate, as well as more than fifty-six vehicles, including eleven Ford Crown Victorias for senior executives and forty-five other cars assigned to staff members. Arizona’s ACS chapter spent less than 10 percent of its funds on direct community cancer services. In California, the figure was 11 percent, and under 9 percent in Missouri.
Thus for every $1 spent on direct service, approximately $6.40 is spent on compensation and overhead. In all ten states, salaries and fringe benefits are by far the largest single budget items, a surprising fact in light of the characterization of the appeals, which stress an urgent and critical need for donations to provide cancer services. Nationally, only 16 percent or less of all money raised is spent on direct services to cancer victims, like driving cancer patients from the hospital after chemotherapy, and providing pain medication.
Most of the funds raised by ACS go to pay overhead, salaries, fringe benefits, and travel expenses of its national executives in Atlanta. They also go to pay Chief Executive Officers, who earn six-figure salaries in several states, and the hundreds of other employees who work out of some 3,000 regional offices nationwide. The typical ACS affiliate, which helps raise the money for the national office, spends more than 52 percent of its budget on salaries, pensions, fringe benefits, and overhead for its own employees.
Salaries and overhead for most ACS affiliates also exceeded 50 percent, although most direct community services are handled by unpaid volunteers. DiLorenzo summed up his findings by emphasizing the hoarding of funds by the ACS.
If current needs are not being met because of insufficient funds, as fund-raising appeals suggest, why is so much cash being hoarded? Most contributors believe their donations are being used to fight cancer, not to accumulate financial reserves. More progress in the war against cancer would be made if they would divest some of their real estate holdings and use the proceeds — as well as a portion of their cash reserves — to provide more cancer services.
Aside from high salaries and overhead, most of what is left of the ACS budget goes to basic research and research into profitable patented cancer drugs.
The current budget of the ACS is $380 million and its cash reserves approach one billion dollars. Yet its aggressive fund-raising campaign continues to plead poverty and lament the lack of available money for cancer research, while ignoring efforts to prevent cancer by phasing out avoidable exposures to environmental and occupational carcinogens. Meanwhile, the ACS is silent about its intricate relationships with the wealthy cancer drug, chemical, and other industries.
A March 30, 1998 Associated Press Release has shed unexpected light on questionable ACS expenditures on lobbying. National Vice President for federal and state governmental relations Linda Hay Crawford admitted that the ACS was spending “less than $1 million a year on direct lobbying.” She also admitted that over the last year, the society used 10 of its own employees to lobby. “For legal and other help, it hired the lobbying firm of Hogan & Hartson, whose roster includes former House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-IL).” The ACS lobbying also included $30,000 donations to Democratic and Republican governor’s associations. “We wanted to look like players and be players,” explained Crawford. This practice, however, has been sharply challenged. The AP release quotes the national Charities Information Bureau as stating that it “does not know of any other charity that makes contributions to political parties.”
Tax experts have warned that these contributions may be illegal, as charities are not allowed to make political donations. Marcus Owens, director of the IRS Exempt Organization Division also warned that: “The bottom line is campaign contributions will jeopardize a charity’s exempt status.”
Conflicts of Interest
In the past most ACS funds have come from public donations, and high-profile fund raising campaigns such as the springtime daffodil sale and the May relay races. However, over the last two decades, an increasing proportion of the ACS budget comes from large corporations, including the pharmaceutical, cancer drug, telecommunications, and entertainment industries. In 1992, the American Cancer Society Foundation was created to allow the ACS to actively solicit contributions of more than $100,000. However, a close look at the heavy-hitters on the Foundation’s board will give an idea of which interests are at play and where the Foundation expects its big contributions to come from.The Foundation’s board of trustees included corporate executives from the pharmaceutical, investment, banking, and media industries. Among them:
- David R. Bethune, president of Lederle Laboratories, a multinational pharmaceutical company and a division of American Cyanamid Company. Bethune is also vice president of American Cyanamid, which makes chemical fertilizers and herbicides while transforming itself into a full-fledged pharmaceutical company. In 1988, American Cyanamid introduced Novatrone, an anti-cancer drug. And in 1992, it announced that it would buy a majority of shares of Immunex, a cancer drug maker.
- Multimillionaire Irwin Beck, whose father, William Henry Beck, founded the nation’s largest family-owned retail chain, Beck Stores, which analysts estimate brought in revenues of $1.7 billion in 1993.
- Gordon Binder, CEO of Amgen, the world’s foremost biotechnology company, with over $1 billion in product sales in 1992. Amgen’s success rests almost exclusively on one product, Neupogen, which is administered to chemotherapy patients to stimulate their production of white blood cells. As the cancer epidemic grows, sales for Neupogen continue to skyrocket.
- George Dessert, famous in media circles for his former role as censor on the subject of “family values” during the 70s and 80s as CEO of CBS, and now Chairman of the ACS board.
- Alan Gevertzen, chairman of the board of Boeing, the world’s number one commercial aircraft maker with net sales of $30 billion in 1992.
- Sumner M. Redstone, chairman of the board, Viacom Inc. and Viacom International Inc., a broadcasting, telecommunications, entertainment, and cable television corporation.
The results of this board’s efforts have been very successful. A million here, a million there –much of it coming from the very industries instrumental in shaping ACS policy, or profiting from it.
The Cancer Drug Industry
The intimate association between the ACS and cancer drug industry, with current annual sales of about $12 billion, is further illustrated by the unbridled aggression which the Society has directed at potential competitors of the industry.Just as Senator Joseph McCarthy had his “black list” of suspected communists and Richard Nixon his environmental activist “enemies list,” so too, the ACS has maintained a “Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management” which periodically “reviews” unorthodox or alternative therapies. This Committee is comprised of “volunteer health care professionals,” carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or “unproven” therapies which are generally cheap, non-patentable, and minimally toxic.
Periodically, the Committee updates its statements on “unproven methods,” which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers (such as Jane Brody, Gina Kolata, and Natalie Angier of the New York Times), and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with “unproven methods,” he or she is blackballed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused “quack” becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.
The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners is in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This in spite of the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers.
In response to pressure from People Against Cancer, a grassroots group of cancer patients disillusioned with conventional cancer therapy, in 1986 some 40 members of Congress requested the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a Congressional think tank, to evaluate available information on alternative innovative therapies. While initially resistant, OTA eventually published a September 1990 report (available online at: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9044_n.html ) that identified some 200 promising studies on alternative therapies. OTA concluded that NCI had “a mandated responsibility to pursue this information and facilitate examination of widely used ‘unconventional cancer treatments’ for therapeutic potential.”
Yet, until very recently, the ACS and NCI remained resistant, if not frankly hostile, to OTA’s recommendations. In the January 1991 issue of its Cancer Journal for Clinicians ACS referred to the Hoxsey therapy, a nontoxic combination of herb extracts developed in the 1940s by populist Harry Hoxsey, as a “worthless tonic for cancer.” However, a detailed critique of Hoxsey’s treatment by Dr. Patricia Spain Ward, a leading contributor to the OTA report, concluded just the opposite: “More recent literature leaves no doubt that Hoxsey’s formula does indeed contain many plant substances of marked therapeutic activity.”
Nor is this the first time that the Society’s claims of quackery have been called into question or discredited. A growing number of other innovative therapies originally attacked by the ACS have recently found less disfavor and even acceptance. These include hyperthemia, Tumor Necrosis Factor, (originally called Coleys’ Toxin), hydrazine sulfate, and Burzynski’s antineoplastons. Well over 100 promising alternative non-patented and nontoxic therapies have already been identified. Clearly, such treatments merit clinical testing and evaluation by the NCI using similar statistical techniques and criteria as established for conventional chemotherapy. However, while FDA has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, it has still not approved a single non-patented alternative drug.
Subsequent events further isolated the ACS in its fixation on orthodox as opposed to complementary alternative treatments. Bypassing the ACS and NCI, the National Institutes of Health in June 1992 opened a new Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) for the investigation of unconventional treatment of cancer and other diseases. Leading proponents of conventional therapy were invited to participate. ACS refused. NCI grudgingly and nominally participated while actively attacking alternative therapy with its widely circulated Cancer Information Services. Meanwhile, NCI’s police partner, the FDA has used its enforcement authority against distributors and practitioners of innovative and nontoxic therapies.
In an interesting recent development, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C. held a two day conference on “Comprehensive Cancer Care: Integrating Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” According to Dr. James Gordon, President of the Center and Chair of the Program Advisory Council of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, the object of the conference was to bring together practitioners of mainstream and alternative medicine, together with cancer patients and high ranking officials of the ACS and NCI. Dr. Gordon warned alternative practitioners that “they’re going to need to get more rigorous with their work — to be accepted by the mainstream community.” However, no such warning was directed at the highly questionable claims by NCI and ACS for the efficacy of conventional cancer chemotherapy. As significantly, criticism of the establishment’s minimalistic priority for cancer prevention was effectively discouraged by Dr. Gordon. In the fall of 1998 OAM was upgraded by congress to an autonomous institute, “The National Center for Complimentary Alternative Medicine,” forcing the ACS to cease attacks on cancer “quackery.”
The Mammography Industry
The ACS has close connections to the mammography industry. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and film, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker. In fact, if every woman were to follow ACS and NCI mammography guidelines, the annual revenue to health care facilities would be a staggering $5 billion, including at least $2.5 billion for premenopausal women.Promotions of the ACS continue to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure “nearly 100 percent of the time.” An ACS communications director, questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey, responded in an article published by the Massachusetts Women’s Community Cancer Project:
The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point. . . . Mammography today is a lucrative (and) highly competitive business.
In addition, the mammography industry conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on advisory boards, and donates considerable funds. DuPont also is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program; sponsors television shows and other media productions touting mammography; produces advertising, promotional, and information literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organizations, and doctors; produces educational films; and, of course, lobbies Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services. In virtually all of its important actions, the ACS has been strongly linked with the mammography industry, ignoring the development of viable alternatives to mammography.
The ACS exposes premenopausal women to radiation hazards from mammography with little or no evidence of benefits. The ACS also fails to tell them that their breasts will change so much over time that the “baseline” images have little or no future relevance. This is truly an American Cancer Society crusade. But against whom, or rather for whom?
The highly publicized “National Breast Cancer Awareness Month” campaign further illustrates these institutionalized conflicts of interest with the mammography and cancer drug industries. ACS and NCI representatives help sponsor promotional events, hold interviews, and stress the need for mammography every October. The flagship of this month-long series of events is National Mammography Day on October 17 in 1997. Conspicuously absent from the public relations campaign of the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is any information on environmental and other avoidable causes of breast cancer. This is no accident. Zeneca Pharmaceuticals — a spin-off of Imperial Chemical Industries, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of chlorinated and other industrial chemicals, including those incriminated as causes of breast cancer — has been the sole multimillion-dollar funder of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month since its inception in 1984. Zeneca is also the sole manufacturer of tamoxifen, the world’s top-selling anticancer and breast cancer “prevention” drug, with $400 million in annual sales. Furthermore, Zeneca recently assumed direct management of eleven cancer centers in United States hospitals. Zeneca owns a 50 percent stake in these centers known collectively as Salick Health Care, posing serious conflict’s of interest.
The link between the ACS and NCI and Zeneca is especially strong when it comes to tamoxifen. The ACS and NCI continue aggressively to promote the tamoxifen trial, which is the cornerstone of its minimal prevention program. On March 7, 1997, the NCI Press Office released a four-page “For Response to Inquiries on Breast Cancer.” The brief section on prevention reads:
Researchers are looking for a way to prevent breast cancer in women at high risk. . . . A large study (is underway) to see if the drug tamoxifen will reduce cancer risk in women age 60 or older and in women 35 to 59 who have a pattern of risk factors for breast cancer. This study is also a model for future studies of cancer prevention. Studies of diet and nutrition could also lead to preventive strategies.
Since Zeneca influences every leaflet, poster, publication, and commercial produced by National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is no wonder these publications make no mention of carcinogenic industrial chemicals and their relation to breast cancer. Imperial Chemical Industries, Zeneca’s parent company, profits by manufacturing breast-cancer-causing chemicals. Zeneca profits from treatment of breast cancer, and hopes to profit still more from the prospects of large-scale national use of tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is a masterful public relations coup for Zeneca, providing the company with valuable, if ill-placed, good will from millions of American women.
The Pesticide Industry
Just how inbred the relations between the ACS and the chemical industry are became clear in the spring of 1993 to Marty Koughan, a public television producer. Koughan was about to broadcast a documentary on the dangers of pesticides to children for the Public Broadcasting Service’s hour-long show, “Frontline.” Koughan’s investigation relied heavily on an embargoed, ground-breaking report issued by the National Academy of Sciences in June of 1993 entitled “Pesticides in the Diet of Children.” This report declared the nation’s food supply “inadequately protected” from cancer-causing pesticides and a significant threat to the health of children.An earlier report, issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1989, “Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in our Children’s Food,” had also given pesticide manufacturers failing marks. The report was released in high profile testimony to Congress by movie actress Meryl Streep. A mother of young children, Streep explained to a packed House chamber the report’s findings, namely, that children were most at risk from cancer-causing pesticides on our food because they consume a disproportionate amount of fruits, fruit juices, and vegetables relative to their size, and because their bodies are still forming.
Shortly before Koughan’s program was due to air, a draft of the script was mysteriously leaked to Porter-Novelli, a powerful public relations firm for produce growers and the agrichemical industry. In true Washington fashion, Porter-Novelli plays both sides of the fence, representing both government agencies and the industries they regulate. Its client list in 1993 included Ciba-Geigy, DuPont, Monsanto, Burroughs Wellcome, American Petroleum Institute, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb, Hoffman-LaRoche, Hoechst Celanese, Hoechst Roussel Pharmaceutical, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Johnson & Johnson, the Center for Produce Quality, as well as the USDA, the NCI, plus other National Institutes of Health.
Porter-Novelli first crafted a rebuttal to help the manufacturers quell public fears about pesticide-contaminated food. Next, Porter-Novelli called up another client, the ACS, for whom Porter-Novelli had done pro bono work for years. The rebuttal that Porter-Novelli had just sent off to its industry clients was faxed to ACS Atlanta headquarters. It was then circulated internationally by e-mail on March 22, 1993, virtually verbatim from the memo Porter-Novelli had crafted for a backgrounder for 3,000 regional ACS offices to have in hand to help field calls from the public after the show aired.
The program makes unfounded suggestions . . . that pesticide residue in food may be at hazardous levels,” the ACS memo read. “Its use of a ‘cancer cluster’ leukemia case reports and non-specific community illnesses as alleged evidence of pesticide effects in people is unfortunate. We know of no community cancer clusters which have been shown to be anything other than chance grouping of cases and none in which pesticide use was confirmed as the cause.
This bold, unabashed defense of the pesticide industry, crafted by Porter-Novelli, was then rehashed a third time, this time by the right-wing group, Accuracy in Media. AIM’s newsletter gleefully published quotes from the ACS memo in an article with the banner headline: “Junk Science on PBS.” The article opened with “Can we afford the Public Broadcasting Service?” and went on to disparage Koughan’s documentary on pesticides and children. “In Our Children’s Food . . . exemplified what the media have done to produce these ‘popular panics’ and the enormously costly waste (at PBS) cited by the New York Times.”
When Koughan saw the AIM article he was initially outraged that the ACS was being used to defend the pesticide industry. “At first, I assumed complete ignorance on the part of the ACS,” said Koughan. But after repeatedly trying, without success, to get the national office to rebut the AIM article, Koughan began to see what was really going on. “When I realized Porter-Novelli represented five agrichemical companies, and that the ACS had been a client for years, it became obvious that the ACS had not been fooled at all,” said Koughan. “They were willing partners in the deception, and were in fact doing a favor for a friend _ by flakking for the agrichemical industry.”
Charles Benbrook, former director of the National Academy of Sciences Board of Agriculture, worked on the pesticide report by the Academy of Sciences that the PBS special would preview. He charged that the role of the ACS as a source of information for the media representing the pesticide and product industry was “unconscionable.” Investigative reporter Sheila Kaplan, in a 1993 Legal Times article, went still further: “What they did was clearly and unequivocally over the line, and constitutes a major conflict of interest.”
The Role of the ACS in the War Against Cancer
The verdict is unassailable. The ACS bears a major responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer. The launching of the 1971 War Against Cancer provided the ACS with a well-exploited opportunity to pursue it own myopic and self-interested agenda. Its strategies remain based on two myths — that there has been dramatic progress in the treatment and cure of cancer, and that any increase in the incidence and mortality of cancer is due to aging of the population and smoking while denying any significant role for involuntary exposures to industrial carcinogens in air, water, consumer products and the workplace.
As the world’s largest non-religious “charity,” with powerful allies in the private and public sectors, ACS policies and priorities remain unchanged. In spite of periodic protests, threats of boycotts, and questions on its finances, the Society leadership responds with powerful PR campaigns reflecting denial and manipulated information, and pillorying its opponents with scientific McCarthyism.
The verdict is unassailable. The ACS bears a major responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer.
Reforming the American Cancer Society: What to do about it
Reforming the ACS is, in principle, relatively easy and directly achievable. Boycott the ACS. Instead give your charitable contributions to public interest and environmental groups involved in cancer prevention. Such a boycott is well overdue and will send the only message this “charity” can no longer ignore. The Cancer Prevention Coalition and some breast cancer groups have already taken steps in this direction. For Individuals:
- Boycott all ACS events. Better yet, organize counter-protests at events sponsored by ACS.
- Refuse to donate to the ACS and let them know in writing as to why you are doing so.
- Donate to organizations that are concerned with cancer prevention, better yet join these organizations.
For Organizations:
- Please link this document to your websites.
- Organize protests outside ACS offices.
- Circulate petitions to be signed by your members and send to your local ACS office.
Show your support for the boycott Send an e-mail to the CPC (Cancer Prevention Coalition) with your name and organizational information to: epstein@uic.edu.
Visit the CPC site at www.preventcancer.com.