Consider the case of Douglas Nelson. Mr. Nelson is spokesperson for a Washington-based trade association called CropLife. As a spokesperson, it’s Mr. Nelson’s responsibility to see CropLife portrayed favorably in the media, so he works with spin; he tries to put an attractive face on news concerning his trade association.
One person’s spin is another person’s deception. Trade associations are formed by companies that do not want the corporate brand associated with the dirty business of politics. The name “CropLife” itself is a form of spin, a pleasant disguise for a group of pesticide manufacturers – primarily Dow Chemical, the people who brought you dioxin and Agent Orange.
Last week, the New York Times reported Mr. Nelson and his colleagues at CropLife are applying pressure to the Environmental Protection Agency to get EPA to accept data from studies in which researchers have had people drink pesticides or other chemicals to determine their toxicity. You can understand why Dow Chemical might want a spin doctor like Mr. Nelson, why Dow might want a trade association with a name like “CropLife.”
Mr. Nelson can already report some success. The Times quotes an EPA spokesperson as saying human experimentation studies are “not common.” There have been 15 such studies in the past four years. The EPA official did not explain what number must be achieved before the definition of “common” is invoked, but 15 studies, each of which involve dozens of subjects, seems common enough. It’s worth noting that EPA has had a moratorium on using data from human experiments since 1998. So in at least 15 instances, Mr. Nelson’s employers deliberately fed people substances which are poison by definition, even though the EPA had declared data from such studies would not be considered in product approval procedures, and yet Doug Nelson convinced the EPA to put CropLife’s spin on the issue.
That’s just micro-spin. Step back and look at the big picture. At this moment, 200,000 American troops are gathering in the desert, preparing to invade Iraq, in part because Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people. Meanwhile, back home, Doug Nelson is trying to get George Bush’s EPA to give its blessing so Dow Chemical can do the same thing to Americans – and it’s not front page news, it’s buried back in the national section.
The spin moves in many directions. On the consent form for one of the experiments, the unlucky, impoverished and not very bright subjects were informed, “Low doses of these agents have been shown to improve performance on numerous tests of mental function.” Okay, that’s not spin; that’s a lie. What the people were drinking was Dursban, an insecticide. It did not give them improved mental function. It gave them nausea, vomiting, abdominal pains, shortness of breath, impairment of sensation and chest pains. In the long term, it may have impaired their nervous systems. Maybe they did get smarter. By the time they were done retching and puking, maybe they were smart enough never to sign up for another experiment.
In speaking with the New York Times, Doug Nelson made the case that human experiments with pesticides should be treated like clinical trials for medicine. Once again, Mr. Nelson crosses the line from spin into falsehood. He wants us to forget basic truths. Clinical trials are the last step in the approval process for medicines. The purpose of medicine is to help sick people become well. There is no place for the human testing of pesticides, because the purpose of pesticides is to poison and kill.
The root question is: Why does Dow Chemical want to feed pesticides to people in experiments? Because Dow wants EPA to raise the limits on the allowed amounts of pesticide residue on food. The real purpose is not to feed pesticides to three dozen unfortunates, Dow wants to feed more pesticides to us all.
Ozzie and Harriet’s Bad Seed
Consider the case of Douglas Nelson. Mr. Nelson is spokesperson for a Washington-based trade association called CropLife. As a spokesperson, it’s Mr. Nelson’s responsibility to see CropLife portrayed favorably in the media, so he works with spin; he tries to put an attractive face on news concerning his trade association.
One person’s spin is another person’s deception. Trade associations are formed by companies that do not want the corporate brand associated with the dirty business of politics. The name “CropLife” itself is a form of spin, a pleasant disguise for a group of pesticide manufacturers – primarily Dow Chemical, the people who brought you dioxin and Agent Orange.
Last week, the New York Times reported Mr. Nelson and his colleagues at CropLife are applying pressure to the Environmental Protection Agency to get EPA to accept data from studies in which researchers have had people drink pesticides or other chemicals to determine their toxicity. You can understand why Dow Chemical might want a spin doctor like Mr. Nelson, why Dow might want a trade association with a name like “CropLife.”
Mr. Nelson can already report some success. The Times quotes an EPA spokesperson as saying human experimentation studies are “not common.” There have been 15 such studies in the past four years. The EPA official did not explain what number must be achieved before the definition of “common” is invoked, but 15 studies, each of which involve dozens of subjects, seems common enough. It’s worth noting that EPA has had a moratorium on using data from human experiments since 1998. So in at least 15 instances, Mr. Nelson’s employers deliberately fed people substances which are poison by definition, even though the EPA had declared data from such studies would not be considered in product approval procedures, and yet Doug Nelson convinced the EPA to put CropLife’s spin on the issue.
That’s just micro-spin. Step back and look at the big picture. At this moment, 200,000 American troops are gathering in the desert, preparing to invade Iraq, in part because Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on his own people. Meanwhile, back home, Doug Nelson is trying to get George Bush’s EPA to give its blessing so Dow Chemical can do the same thing to Americans – and it’s not front page news, it’s buried back in the national section.
The spin moves in many directions. On the consent form for one of the experiments, the unlucky, impoverished and not very bright subjects were informed, “Low doses of these agents have been shown to improve performance on numerous tests of mental function.” Okay, that’s not spin; that’s a lie. What the people were drinking was Dursban, an insecticide. It did not give them improved mental function. It gave them nausea, vomiting, abdominal pains, shortness of breath, impairment of sensation and chest pains. In the long term, it may have impaired their nervous systems. Maybe they did get smarter. By the time they were done retching and puking, maybe they were smart enough never to sign up for another experiment.
In speaking with the New York Times, Doug Nelson made the case that human experiments with pesticides should be treated like clinical trials for medicine. Once again, Mr. Nelson crosses the line from spin into falsehood. He wants us to forget basic truths. Clinical trials are the last step in the approval process for medicines. The purpose of medicine is to help sick people become well. There is no place for the human testing of pesticides, because the purpose of pesticides is to poison and kill.
The root question is: Why does Dow Chemical want to feed pesticides to people in experiments? Because Dow wants EPA to raise the limits on the allowed amounts of pesticide residue on food. The real purpose is not to feed pesticides to three dozen unfortunates, Dow wants to feed more pesticides to us all.