Patrick Moore on Drugs [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
It is "inevitable that a small amount of ingested pharmaceuticals will eventually show up at trace levels in wastewater," Greenpeace [3] activist turned industry PR consultant Patrick Moore [4] writes in an op/ed. "The Pharmaceutical Assessment and Transport Evaluation (PhATE) model has been developed by industry as a tool to estimate concentrates of pharmaceutical residues in surface waters. ... But some activist organizations still push for costly and unnecessary controls. In Washington, Oregon and Illinois, for example, interest groups who believe that any trace amount of any compound in wastewater must be stopped at all cost are proposing an elaborate take-back plan." At the end of the op/ed, Moore is identified as "an adviser to government and industry." Moore's colleague at Greenspirit Strategies [5], Tom Tevlin, told the Center for Media and Democracy that the PR firm does count pharmaceutical companies among its clients. However, Tevlin would not name them. The PhATE model that Moore praised in his op/ed was developed by PhRMA [6], the major U.S. drug industry group.