science

Columnist Dimitri Vassilaros received a news release about a grassroots "petition to stop climate alarmism" and attacking Al Gore's work. He checked it out and found that "for an organization that claims 'we are grassroots to the core,' Grassfire.org acts as if it is hiding a lot of Astroturf. The politically conservative nonprofit is happy to talk about its worthy online petition campaigns," but is "very tight-lipped about talking about itself. ... The Maxwell, Iowa, address for donations to the grassroots organization is clearly displayed on its Web site. But its 2006 IRS 990 form states its address is Bethesda, Md., near Washington, D.C." The SourceWatch article on Grassfire revealed its relationship to Craig Shirley and his "slick Washington-area PR firm, Shirley & Banister Public Affairs. ... When asked a few times about the organization's finances, [Grassfire's] Mr. De Jong first said he didn't know the size of the organization that he speaks for. He also said he 'could ask around' about that 990 form. When I offered to ask the bookkeeper for him, De Jong said, 'She will call, dude. Relax. I'll take care of it for you. I am a man of my word.' As of Thursday noon, no one had called this dude."

"Prozac Nation: Revisited," a show that aired on U.S. National Public Radio member stations, "featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. ... All four said that worries ... have been overblown." But the show did not disclose that all four "have financial ties to the makers of antidepressants," or that the series that produced the show, "The Infinite Mind," has received "unrestricted grants" from drug companies including Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac. One guest, Peter Pitts, heads the industry-funded Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and is "senior vice president for global health affairs at the PR firm Manning Selvage & Lee," which counts among its clients Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and "more than a dozen other pharmaceutical companies." In other drug news, Congressman Bart Stupak held a hearing titled "Direct to Consumer Advertising: Marketing, Education or Deception?" Stupak said "he wants to lay the groundwork for future legislation to tighten controls on drug marketing," reports the Wall Street Journal. The hearing addressed such "recent controversies" as ads for Pfizer's Lipitor, where artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik "appears to be giving medical advice," and ads for Johnson & Johnson's anemia treatment Procrit that promote off-label uses for the drug.

Who could blame them if they sent the Mounties to the border? CMD reported previously on the Heartland Institute's climate change skepticism, and its efforts to cast doubt on the overwhelming evidence of global warming. The Chicago-based, ExxonMobil-funded think tank has taken its case north of the border, sending out "more than 11,000 brochures and DVDs to Canadian schools urging them to teach their students that scientists are exaggerating how human activity is the driving force behind global warming." While Heartland says that the outreach effort is an attempt to introduce "balance" into the discussion, the Sierra Club of Canada disagrees. Spokesperson Emilie Moorhouse said, "It's alarming that an American think tank is distributing misinformation on the most important issue of our time in Canadian schools, to actually create an illusion that there is a scientific debate." Ignoring the consensus reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that climate change is "unequivocal" and caused by human activities, "the brochure and DVD said that scientists were 'deeply divided' about 'the notion that climate change is mostly the result of human activities.'" Heartland also sent the information packets to 200 Canadian policymakers.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been criticized for not totally banning "downer" cows -- animals "too sick or hurt to stand for slaughter" -- from the food supply. So "when a coalition of major industry groups reversed their position and joined animal advocates and several lawmakers in calling for an absolute ban," why wouldn't the USDA agree? Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer hasn't responded to the new stance of the American Meat Institute and other industry groups. So, industry leaders are encouraging meat producers to institute their own voluntary ban. But the Humane Society of the United States says a total ban is needed and "the USDA should take immediate action." The limited regulation of downer cows was instituted after mad cow disease was found in the U.S. and Canada. CMD staffers John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote about the issue in their 1997 book "Mad Cow USA."

"Suppose, for example, that you own a company that sells bottled water," which is "shipped, in its little plastic bottles, ten thousand miles from the bottling plant to the consumer," writes Steve Burns. "Could you possibly 'brand' such a product as eco-friendly?" If the company is FIJI Water, you'll try. FIJI's new ad campaign, "every drop is green," calls the bottled water "carbon-negative," because of the carbon credits the company buys. To dismiss concerns about the sustainability of shipping bottled water around the world as the "food miles 'myth'," FIJI uses a study co-written by a New Zealand agribusiness representative. But, as Burns points out, "what choice do they have? If your entire brand identity is built around 'water from Fiji,' then the water has to come from Fiji, no matter the cost to the planet."

David Lewis, a University of Georgia professor and former Environmental Protection Agency scientist, is suing officials at his university for publishing allegedly fraudulent research funded by the federal government. In court documents, Lewis claims that university researchers, who were paid more than $1.5 million in federal grants, intentionally distorted toxic substance amounts in the sludge from wastewater treatment plants in Augusta, Georgia, by collecting samples only during droughts, when levels would be "misleadingly low." Last month U.S. District Court judge Anthony Alaimo ruled that sludge treated in Augusta's facilities had metals concentrations thousands of times over allowed toxicity levels, noting that the University of Georgia's report on those facilities was "faulty and incomplete." Lewis has investigated the harmful side effects linked with the sludge since 1998 and argued in 2005 that his research led to his firing from the EPA. (We examined the sludge issue in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.)

At an inquiry into the problems facing cash-strapped public hospitals in New South Wales, Australia, neurologist Dr Suzanne Hodgkinson explained that doctors sought financial support of drug companies. "I had insufficient clerical support and so as to try and remedy that I approached a company to help me with that on a temporary, part-time basis. ... Quite a few senior doctors do try to raise money to help with the provision of services," she said. Hodgkinson raised A$20,000 for the position, but would not name the drug company funder. The president of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Andrew Keegan, said the practice was common, especially for administrative roles. "I would assume it is happening in every major hospital, especially the teaching hospitals," he said. Opposition health spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said that "if it’s happening in our hospitals, there are ethical questions that need to be answered."

A review article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggested that tanning at the beach or an indoor tanning booth can help avoid the dangers of vitamin D deficiency. However, the NEJM didn't disclose that the article's author, Michael Holick, has received more than $150,000 in research funding from the artificial tanning industry. Martin Weinstock, a dermatologist at Brown University and an expert on the link between tanning beds and skin cancer, says he informed NEJM Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Drazen about Holick’s industry connections prior to the article's publication, adding that "the quality of evidence" behind Holick's recommendations was "poor." The Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) has also hired Berman & Co., a notorious Washington, D.C. PR firm, to develop what ITA called "an aggressive media relations and public relations campaign." Berman, who has created numerous web-based front groups for the food, alcohol and tobacco industries, created a new site called SunlightScam.com. He's also running advertisements that attack medical groups, calling the Skin Cancer Foundation and the American Academy of Dermatology part of the "sunscam industry" and dismissing as "hype" their warnings of the link between tanning and melanoma.

From the UCS reportThe Union of Concerned Scientists' new report, "Interference at the EPA: Science and Politics at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency," calls the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "an agency under siege from political pressures. On numerous issues -- ranging from mercury pollution to groundwater contamination to climate change -- political appointees have edited scientific documents, manipulated scientific assessments, and generally sought to undermine the science behind dozens of EPA regulations." The study found the White House Office of Management and Budget to be the worst culprit. A stunning "889 scientists (60 percent of respondents) personally experienced at least one incident of political interference during the past five years," while "among EPA veterans (scientists with more than 10 years of experience at the agency), 409 (43 percent) said interference occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period." One EPA scientist warned: "Do not trust the Environmental Protection Agency to protect your environment. Ask questions. Be aware of political and economic motives. Become politically active. Elect officials with motives to protect the environment and hold them accountable."

Soybean plantThe biotechnology industry has invoked the need for genetically modified (GM) crops to meet the growing global food crisis. For example, Archer Daniels Midland called itself the "supermarket to the world" in its ads. But a recent study carried out on soybeans in Kansas found that GM crops produced significantly less food than their conventional counterparts. A GM soybean from Monsanto produced 70 bushels per acre, compared to 77 per acre for a virtually identical unaltered soybeans. Even after adding extra nutrients that Monsanto's weedkiller, Roundup, seems to block, production was only brought up to the same level as the non-engineered plants. An earlier study in Nebraska found similar results. Monsanto said "it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would." Others are skeptical. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, said that "the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved." The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has also "concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger." And, "when asked if GM could solve world hunger," the chief scientist at the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Professor Bob Watson, said, "The simple answer is no."