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Friday, August 5
FDA & CDC Smear Respected Independent Scientists and Researchers
by
Caroline Vernon
on Fri 05 Aug 2005 05:37 PM CDT
 FDA & CDC Smear Respected Independent Scientists and Researchers
By Evelyn Pringle
Online Journal Contributing Writer
In their
public statements, officials within the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), are always claiming
that researchers and scientists who conduct studies not funded by drug
companies or the government are making unfounded claims about a link
between thimerosal-laced vaccines and autism, and other neurological
disorders, which they claim could lead to reduced vaccine coverage,
resulting in preventable outbreaks of disease affecting the entire
planet.
I say cut the crap.
Think
about it. Why would so many highly respected scientists, researchers
and physicians go to such great lengths to concoct bogus studies and
issue false reports, in essence putting their professional reputations
on the line, if their was no connection? I want these officials to do
two things. First I want them to give me one good reason why these
professionals would make this up, and two, I want them to give me one
logical alternative theory for the current epidemic of disorders.
Lets look at a few of these experts.
Dr.
Jeffrey Bradstreet, is a practicing physician who treats children with
autism and other brain-damage disorders. While in the Air Force, he was
trained in toxicology and environmental health. His duties as an
officer included the responsibility for military personnel who had
exposure to a wide variety of toxins, including mercury.
Dr.
Bradstreet has evaluated well over 2,000 children with neurological
disorders. He also directs a school for children with
neurodevelopmental disorders where his responsibilities include
supervising occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists,
and applied behavioral analysts.
Dr.
Bradstreet is a Harvard Certified Medical Education Instructor in
autism and has written three peer reviewed papers regarding the
relationship of thimerosal, developmental disorders and biological
markers for mercury-susceptibility....
In
addition, he has conducted research regarding these disorders and has
worked with some of the most highly respected professionals in the
country....
Apparently
the FDA, CDC, and vaccine makers expect us to believe that this long
line of highly respected professionals from universities all over the
country somehow got together and conspired to conduct fraudulent
research for decades and then authored thousands of false reports and
other papers.
I do not buy it. What would be the payoff?
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption.
An Epitaph: "Good Neighbor" Radio
by
Chad Thompson
on Fri 05 Aug 2005 12:58 PM CDT
 An Epitaph: "Good Neighbor" Radio
It's a
very odd occurrence these days that local media talks about other local
media, particularly if there is not a shared corporate parent.
(Whereupon you can expect to hear every cross-promotion in the
book...) That's why I was a bit surprised to see this article in the Des Moines Register
noting that WHO Radio in Des Moines was discontinuing two long-running
programs: Paul Harvey's monologues and ABC News reports.
(Clear Channel had signed a five year contract with Fox Radio News to
supply news reports to radio with talk formats.)
Now,
this hasn't really affected me personally - I haven't listened to WHO
outside of Iowa Hawkeye broadcasts for years. Most of WHO's
programming is now right-wing talk radio, with few exceptions.
What was surprising was the amount of reaction in the press and
elsewhere.
However,
this shouldn't be surprising: WHO Radio is not the community-based
radio of earlier years. WHO is now another holding of a large
corporate media outlet. Long gone is the WHO that produced local
programming like the Iowa Barn Dance Frolic that reached a million listeners every Saturday night.
At the same time WHO Radio made the switch, so did another Clear Channel station (WIBA) in Madison, WI. Via CommonDreams, a writer for the Madison Times points out an article written for The Nation by Garrison Keillor lamenting the loss of "good neighbor" radio.
I
love the great artists of public radio who simulate spontaneity so
beautifully they almost fool me--Terry Gross, Ira Glass, the Car Talk
brothers--all carefully edited and shaped, but big as life on the
radio, smarter than hell, cooler than cucumbers. I love the
good-neighbor small-town radio of bake sales and Rotary meetings and
Krazy Daze and livestock reports and Barb calling in to report that
Pookie was found and thanks to everybody who was on the lookout for
her. Good-neighbor radio used to be everywhere and was especially big
in big cities--WGN in Chicago, WCCO in Minneapolis-St. Paul, WOR in New
York, KOA in Denver, KMOX in St. Louis, KSL in Salt Lake City--where
avuncular men chatted about fishing and home repair and other everyday
things and Library Week was observed and there was live coverage of a
tornado or a plane crash and on summer nights you heard the ball game.
Meanwhile lawn mowers were sold and skin cream and dairy goods and
flights to Acapulco.
The
deregulation of radio was tough on good-neighbor radio because Clear
Channel and other conglomerates were anxious to vacuum up every station
in sight for fabulous sums of cash and turn them into robot repeaters.
I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being
trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer
processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a
microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I
tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing
next to me. Clear Channel's brand of robotics is not the future of
broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another
generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic
formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed.
Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.
Read the rest of Keillor's article here
- it's well worth a quick read to remind us what we've lost by giving
the radio spectrum to corporations that simply want to appeal to anger,
or simply try to sell us something.
Call to Action: Bush Admin to INCREASE Mercury in Air
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 05 Aug 2005 04:00 AM CDT
Call to Action: Bush Admin to INCREASE Mercury in Air
League of Conservation Voters
Mercury is a real horror show. It comes out of power plants, into our air, and causes brain damage in children. And now the Bush Administration actually wants to increase the amount of mercury in our environment.
Tell your Senators to re-write the ending to this feature by blocking these toxic regulations!
By taking action through our partner, Act for Change, you'll be
supporting the environment and helping to build strong environmental
coalitions.
Last March, the Bush Administration finalized a pro-industry rule for mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. But now
Congress has the opportunity to effectively overturn a key part of this
rule and force stricter regulation of this toxic pollutant.
This is
not science fiction: Mercury is especially harmful to women of
childbearing age, pregnant women, and children. Exposure to the heavy
metal can cause permanent damage to a fetus and has been linked to
neurological disorders in young children. Mercury emissions fall to the
ground and into our waterways, entering the food chain and tainting
fish in local lakes and streams. Most states have already issued warnings to limit fish consumption tied to mercury contamination.
But the Bush Administration's weak mercury rule is pure fantasy: it
allows more emissions of the toxin for a longer period of time.
More than half of all Americans live within 30 miles of mercury polluting plants,
but the Bush Administration made it clear whose side they're on. They
worked closely with the electric utility industry to develop rules to
allow more mercury in our air over a longer period of time - and save
the utility industry billions of dollars.
As the
Bush Administration proposed their weak rules, 45 Senators and 10
Attorneys General expressed opposition to the plan. Now it's time for
Congress to take action and force the Bush Administration to clean
mercury from coal-burning power plants.
Write to your Senators today. A blockbuster response will send the Bush Administration back for a rewrite.
Sincerely,
Deb Callahan
President
League of Conservation Voters
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