-Caveat Lector-
RadTimes # 45 - September, 2000
aka "Shit That Matters"
An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities.
"We're living in rad times!"
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ANNOUNCEMENT:
RadTimes is now on the web and in audio!
See LUVeR Alternative News <www.luver.org> for details.
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Contents:
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--1 in 3 women abused, UN report shows
--Women on the Verge of an Economic Breakdown
--Sexually Abused Children Get Little Help
--No One Is Illegal
--Lawyers Allege Maker of Ritalin, Psychiatric Group 'Created' Disease
(+ reader commentary)
Linked stories:
*13 Indicted In Biggest Lab Fraud In American History
*Ontario SWAT Team To Tackle Polluters
*From Marshes to Shopping Malls
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Begin stories:
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1 in 3 women abused, UN report shows
September 20, 2000
By Elaine Carey
Toronto Star Demographics Reporter
At least one in three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into
sex or abused in some way, most often by someone she knows, says a United
Nations report that decries ongoing prejudice against women.
Despite the tremendous gains of the 20th century, discrimination and
violence against women and girls ``remain firmly rooted in cultures around
the world,'' says the UN in its annual report on the State of World
Population, released today.
`But all of us in the development community realize that, unless we make
progress in gender equality, we can't make progress in any of these (other)
areas.' - Alanna Armitage UN program officer
``Girls and women the world over are denied access to education and health
care,'' it says. ``Millions are subjected to abuse and violence. Women's
legal rights are not protected. Their medical concerns are given less
attention than men's are. They are denied opportunities in the workplace and
receive less pay than men for the same work.''
While many countries have started taking steps to protect women's rights,
``actual progress has been slow,'' the report says, chronicling a host of
abuses:
Around the world, there are 80 million unwanted pregnancies, 20 million
unsafe abortions, 500,000 maternal deaths and 333 million new sexually
transmitted diseases each year. Adolescent girls are particularly at risk.
Women are becoming infected with HIV at a faster rate than men and in Africa
they outnumber infected men by 2 million. Older men are infecting teenage
girls at a rate that is five or six times higher than the rate among teenage
boys.
Two million girls aged 5 to 15 are taken into the commercial sex trade every
year.
Sexual assault and violence take away almost one in five healthy years of
life of women aged 15 to 44. In Canada, the health-related costs of violence
against women are estimated at $900 million a year.
Some 130 million girls and young women have undergone female genital
mutilation.
Women and girls worldwide ``across lines of income, class and culture are
subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse.''
An estimated 4 million women and girls are bought and sold worldwide each
year, either into marriage, prostitution or slavery.
A total of 1,400 women a day still die in childbirth, the equivalent of four
jumbo jets crashing.
Canada's record of physical assault against women by a male partner is
higher than in many other countries. Nationally, 29 per cent of women in an
intimate relationship have been assaulted, compared to 22 per cent in the
United States and 20 per cent in South Africa and 16 per cent in Cambodia.
It won't be known until the report's official release how these abuse
statistics were gathered.
Alanna Armitage, a UN program officer who is in Ottawa, found the number of
deaths during childbirth ``still so shocking, especially since we know how
to prevent it.''
The report is both optimistic and pessimistic, she said.
``We have come really far in some areas, like female genital mutilation,
which we couldn't even speak about 10 years ago. Now six or seven countries
have outlawed it.
``But all of us in the development community realize that, unless we make
progress in gender equality, we can't make progress in any of these areas,''
she said.
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Women on the Verge of an Economic Breakdown
<http://www.simulconference.com/public/sowf/sowf/dispatches/dispatch22.html>
On top of the "old poverty," globalization brings a new terrorism
by Phillip Tomlinson
Vandana Shiva and Devaki Jain have much in common. They spend a lot of time
speaking about their problems. That's because they've made the problems of
hundreds of millions of people their own. And, as they see it, that is
inescapable, since a large number of those people are among the
disenfranchised of India, Shiva's and Jain's native land.
Addressing separate sessions, "Science, Technology and Globalization," and
"Poverty Reduction and Development Cooperation", at the State of the World
Forum, both women made passionate pleas for a new ethic toward addressing
world poverty and the gender inequality that it fosters in an era where
technology has created an unfortunate divide.
"At the moment, we are faced with an information divide that arises from an
unequal system in information and knowledge, an unequal capacity to use the
information for development," said Shiva, director of the Research
Foundation for Science, Technology and National Research Policy in India.
"The divide is economic, ecological, political and particularly
gender-based."
According to estimates from World Development Indicators, inequality
continues to plague women across a broad spectrum. Women work two-thirds of
the world's working hours, produce half of the world's food, but earn only
10 percent of the world's income and own less than one percent of the
world's property. Almost a quarter of the global population lives in extreme
poverty, on less than the equivalent of one dollar per day. Seventy percent
of those people are women, and Shiva and Jain are accustomed to seeing those
women in India.
Said Jain: "They are bearing burdens beyond imagination, highest maternal
mortality, highest illiteracy, and now add that to the grotesque figures of
crimes against women in the household and in the theatres of war, and you
want to bow your head in shame."
The Harvard University study "The Global Burden of Disease" estimates that
gender violence causes more deaths and disability among women aged 15 to 44
than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war. Within this context, Shiva
painted an alarming picture with a depressing backdrop, emphasizing that
things taken for granted in the industrial world are scarce or non-existent
for the billions living in poverty in the developing world.
"Twenty percent lack access to safe drinking water, 40 percent lack adequate
sanitation, 20 percent live in inadequate housing, 25 percent of the world's
countries have less than one telephone per one hundred people, and 30
percent of the world's children under the age of five suffer from
malnutrition.
The idea that science is a means to curing much of the world's ills, said
Shiva, is an exciting one, but she also pointed out that, in places like
India, it remains a hope, not a reality.
Jain concurred, saying, "While the 'old poor' continue, there is a new
assault on livelihoods, a deeper sense of insecurity than before, due to the
speed and hype of what is called globalization. I call this form of
globalization economic terrorism."
Shiva cited as one example of this "terrorism" the fact that the spraying of
pesticides has deprived millions of people, most of them women, of their
livelihood. "The poorest of women can maintain their goats because fodder is
for free, as long as fodder exists. You start spraying around in these
ecosystems, that's the theft of the livelihood of 50 percent of rural India,
and I would apply that to Africa and Latin America and the rest of Asia.
"New independent studies are coming out that there is now evidence of very
large yield drops. The yields are actually coming down as you re-engineer
crops to have traits like plants resistant to herbicides, to have traits
like plants producing their own herbicides."
Before globalization, said Jain, "The aim of development cooperation has to
be national self-reliance and then regional self-reliance. This may look
weird and in total dissonant conflict with a world that yearns for
borderlessness through globalization."
Shiva added that we must address gender inequalities in parallel with
technological and economic gaps.
"If we are going to have a world different from the one we have known in the
past," said Shiva, "we must make sure that [women] have a role in making
decisions, and policies [must be] launched not only to protect investment,
intellectual property, and individual privacy, but also to promote the
rights of women to participate in development.
"We need open and well-regulated information and communications markets, but
also policies that enhance women's participation in these markets. We need
education policies that not only favor a skilled labor force, but also a
system that encourages women's participation in this labor force. We need
effective regulatory and standard-setting institutions that are just and
equitable for all."
Shiva sums it up in this context: "In many developing countries, there is
now a nearly critical mass of educated women ready to participate and ready
to act as intermediaries for raising consciousness and organizing the
grassroots. Technology has changed the possibilities for communication, not
simply in terms of facilitating the imparting of knowledge from one group to
another but, more importantly, in terms of allowing all groups to take part
in creating knowledge. This is a way of saying that, as we move into the
21st century, women will increasingly have to take on the responsibility of
defining the dimensions of the good life. That is, a plentiful, but also a
just and equitable life, as we become partners in a world whose parameters
are determined by forces not only beyond individual control, but sometimes
seemingly beyond national control."
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Sexually Abused Children Get Little Help
By Rosario Liquicia
BANGKOK, Sep 17 (IPS) - Sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of
very young children is rampant in Asia, but health and social
services are grossly inadequate to meet the needs of these traumatised
victims, experts say.
While there are existing laws to protect children against these
crimes, enforcement is poor and in some cases, hampered by corruption
and the complicity of police and the military.
''Sexual abuse continues to be the most hidden and unreported form
of sexual violence against children and youth in Asia due to the
'taboo' nature of the subject and the societal sanction of the
abusers,'' said a summary of the findings of two separate studies
on sexually abused and sexually exploited children and youth in
the Mekong sub-region and South Asia.
The studies, conducted by the Bangkok-based Economic and Social
Commission for the Asia-Pacific (ESCAP), focused on the health
needs of and services available to abused and exploited children
under 18 in two main areas: the Greater Mekong sub-region and South
Asia.
The countries in the Mekong covered by the study were Cambodia,
China's Yunnan province, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and Thailand. In
South Asia, the countries included Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka,
Pakistan and Nepal.
ESCAP executive secretary Kim Hak-Su, at the launch of the reports
here Sep 15, said they were the first comprehensive studies on the
sexual abuse and exploitation of children, which remains a sensitive
issue in the region.
The findings, he said, illustrate the gravity of the problem, be
they abuse of children within and outside the family and exploitation
by traffickers that result in youngsters working in the sex industry.
Kim added that the reports' findings are also a reminder for
government and civil society to do more to address the problem and
help victims become reintegrated into society.
Despite the urgency of the problem, Kim said, few attempts are
being made to provide children and adolescents with the psychological
support they need to overcome the severe trauma they suffer as a
result of working in the sex industry.
''We found that there were virtually no services available for
young victims of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation and, where
services existed, they only treated physical ailments,'' Kim added.
''Almost no regard was paid to the emotional and psychological care
young victims need to help them recover and reintegrate into the
community,'' he pointed out.
Vitit Muntarbhorn, from the law faculty of Chulalongkorn University,
describes child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation as modern-day
slavery.
''Slavery is with us and it comes as the children in the region
are thugged, mugged and drugged into sexual abuse and exploitation
and we are ashamed of it,'' he said.
The majority of sexual abuse victims covered by the studies were
girls aged six to 12 years in the Mekong area, and girls aged 10-15
in South Asia. Some girls were as young as four when they first
suffered sexual abuse, the findings showed.
Sexual abuse -- rape and incest -- occurred predominantly at the
hands of family members, relatives or acquaintances, the reports
said. Sexual exploitation, which comprises prostitution, trafficking
and pornography, was mostly perpetrated by nationals of the region,
the findings further revealed, debunking perceptions that the crime
is largely committed by foreigners.
Poverty, dysfunctional families as well as lack of, or low levels
of education and skills of children and parents, all contribute to
the sexual exploitation of children.
The involvement of police and military personnel in these illegal
activities also allows such crimes to persist.
In Thailand, laws criminalising child sexual abuse and exploitation
exist, but the problem lies in their enforcement, says former Prime
Minister Anand Panyarachun.
''You can write up laws, you can enact laws but ... they do not
become a real thing, or become effective until and unless there is
a full and effective enforcement,'' he said during the launch of
the reports.
''But in our society where corruption is rampant at every level,
in the public sector or otherwise, that is a great impediment to
the enforcement of those laws,'' said Anand, chairman of the national
committee for the formulation of Thailand's human rights action
plan.
According to ESCAP, most children sampled in the surveys in Laos,
Thailand and China's Yunnan province, said they entered prostitution
willingly for financial incentives, but the majority of those in
the other Mekong areas and in South Asia were forced into selling
their bodies.
In many areas of Bangladesh and Nepal, the South Asian report says,
the level of poverty is so distressing that parents of young girls
often sell one of their daughters in order to secure two meals a
day for the rest of the family.
The trafficking of children and youth for the sex industry, both
within Asia and from Asia to other continents, continues to be a
lucrative business and a cause for great concern, ESCAP says.
Trafficking of girls from India to the Gulf states and Europe is
common, the report points out, with many middle-aged men travelling
to India with the purpose of ''marrying'' girls from 13 to 18 years
of age.
Because certificates for these marriages are easily obtained for
a price, the girls are taken away and then coerced into being sex
slaves or sold for a higher price.
Likewise, the studies estimate that up to 400,000 children are in
prostitution in India's metropolitan cities, and that about 20
percent of them are brought in annually from Nepal.
In Cambodia, virgins are sold for up to 800 U.S. dollars, an amount
that is three times the annual GDP (gross domestic product) per
capita of the country. All the 53 girls covered by the Cambodian
study were main breadwinners for their families, and 71 percent of
them were the eldest children.
Boys as young as five form the majority of victims of sexual
exploitation in Sri Lanka, which has been fuelled by sex tourism.
These are bonded children who are used in prostitution and pornography
and are controlled by strong international rings that cannot be
easily penetrated, the ESCAP reports say.
''The fate of the bonded child is bleak,'' the ESCAP reports
conceded. "Young victims are often discarded after a season or
two, doomed to a life of crime thereafter.''
Unless the victims, who are often injected with hormones and drugs,
are removed from their abusive environment at an early age, effective
rehabilitation would be difficult, conclude the ESCAP reports.
The offenders are usually foreign paedophiles, but local ''new
rich'' paedophiles have emerged in recent years, the same reports
note.
In Pakistan, where child sexual abuse is probably the least
acknowledged and least explored form of child abuse, the commercial
sexual exploitation of children is kept underground.
The studies say sexually abused and exploited children suffer from
severe psycho-social problems such as depression and guilt, and
show signs of self-mutilation, substance abuse and tendency to
carry out suicide.
Often, they also have sexually-transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.
In Cambodia, the ESCAP reports say as many as 61 percent of sex
workers are HIV-positive.
Abused children also had unwanted pregnancies and had undergone
unsafe abortions, endangering the health and sometimes their lives
and those of their babies.
But governments have hardly offered help, and NGOs and private
organisations have provided the most effective services to address
the medical, educational and training needs of these traumatised
children, the reports say.
But their services are concentrated in urban centres and insufficient
budgets and staff limit their capacity.
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No One Is Illegal
In the creation, life forms upon Mother Earth were never told that they
could
not journey to where the pursuit of needs or desire would take them.
Many life forms depended upon the journey for their survival; the caribou,
the buffalo, the whale, the salmon, flocks of many types of birds, even
the human animal journeyed. In the Natural World there are no borders,
no one is illegal.
Along came groups of human animals who conquered other groups of
once free human animals. The conquerors set marks upon paper that
defined the limits of their conquest and these marks became the borders
that set all of the boundaries of their of authority. The land and all life
that lived within the boundaries of their authority were subject to the
dictates of the authority of the conquerors who became a ruling class over
all within their rule. The rules of the rulers were set down on paper as
laws which defined what was legal and what was illegal based upon
what benefited the rulers. Those outside of the boundaries could only
cross the borders legally if the rulers felt they would benefit from
that act. Those that crossed with little or no benefit to the rulers were
declared illegal. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is
illegal.
The rulers of the unnatural nations saw all lands of indigenous people
as unconquered lands. Since, within their system of unnatural nations
the rulers had, in their view, the divine right of authority, those outside of
their system had only the right to be conquered and ruled. Thus the
progression of the system of unnatural nations has been that of world
wide conquest of unconquered lands. In the Natural World there are no
borders, no one is illegal.
Though the ruling classes of the unnatural nations with their borders
sought to control those that crossed their borders, they did not place the
same limitations upon themselves. Throughout the history of the
unnatural nations acts of invasion of other unnatural nations have
continuously occurred which has advanced to the state of vast wars of
mass death and destruction. Given the ruler's laws of borders, that they
base the boundaries of their authority upon, all offensive wars should be
illegal, but the laws of the rulers only are for the governed and are not
meant for the governors. In the Natural World there are no borders, no
one is illegal.
Unnatural nations formed alliances with other unnatural nations, signed
military pacts and rights of exploitation which they called trade
agreements. The rulers and their exploitation were given free passage
across the borders of unnatural nations. Thus the repression and
exploitation of the people and the pillaging of Mother Earth became
multinational pursuits. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one
is illegal.
The people who are ruled by the rulers are documented and placed
under the ownership of the unnatural nations and called citizens. To be
owned by an unnatural state brings the slave's duty to follow the ruler's
laws, fight if needed in the ruler's army and to pay part of all that which
they make in the form of taxes to the rulers. To the ruled they may only
cross their master's borders with their master's permission or they
are declared illegal. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is
illegal.
Most of the governed classes must seek out employment from the
owning class, for the owning class has proclaimed resources and the
production of needs as their private property. Thus the governed class also
became the working class that produces the needs of society in which
the owning class profits from by selling back to the producers their
needs in the form of consumer products. To attempt to change this
arrangement is illegal by the ruler's laws, as is crossing their borders
without permission to sell one's labor for greater return. In the Natural
World there are no borders, no one is illegal.
Throughout the world the owning class seeks to accumulate all
that they can by keeping as little of produced wealth and needs as
possible out of the hands of the people. To back up this arrangement the
owning class uses it's hired guns, the police and military, it's laws,
courts and prisons to keep those that they govern from gaining a better
share. The very existence of the unnatural states and their borders is an
act to keep the owners rich, the governor's governing and the people
poor and oppressed. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one
is illegal.
The people struggle to survive under this system, for survival is this
first
natural law of all. Sometimes because economic needs become so
great, or to get out of the way of the ruler's wars, people find that they
must move to new locations to seek work or safety. If that move takes
them across the master's borders without permission, they become
illegals, even if they are doing nothing more than following the first
natural law. In the Natural World there are no borders, on one is illegal.
Sometimes with family intact, other times forced to separate from
families, the ones called illegals move as they can down perilous paths,
hunted by agents of the unnatural states and sometimes preyed upon
by those seeking vulnerable victims. Cold or hot; hungry; hiding out in
the elements; longing for the home they were forced to leave behind;
moved by the hope that at the end of the journey they will find something
better. In the Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal.
Declared illegal by those who seek to control the world; hated by
those that cannot see beyond their master's deceitful social
conditioning. Those declared illegal become the master's blamed ones
for everything from driving wages down, to taking jobs away, crime rates
and even environmental destruction. All the things that, in fact, the
owner's greed produces. In the Natural World there are no borders, no
one is illegal.
The Natural World is thrown out of balance. Those following Natural law
become outlaws. Nothing makes common sense anymore. Where in the laws
that govern the existence of all upon our Mother Earth is there found that
a few have the legal right to govern and exploit the many? Where does it
state that the majority must do without so that a tiny minority can have
far more than they will ever need? Where in the Natural laws does it
declare those that cross unnatural borders are illegal persons? In the
Natural World there are no borders, no one is illegal.
The unnatural system of the greedy few cannot go on forever, for our
Mother Earth cannot withstand that continuous abuse. The people can
give to the greedy ones only so much. Mother Earth is already showing
signs of breaking down; things must change. We must restore the
natural balance of things, the borders must come down and those who
have been declared illegal must become legal once again. For there are
no borders in the Natural World, and no one is illegal.
In The Spirit Of Total Resistance
Arthur J. Miller
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Lawyers Allege Maker of Ritalin, Psychiatric Group 'Created' Disease
By RICHARD B. SCHMITT -
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The lawyers who brought you suits over tobacco, guns and health-maintenance
organizations have a new target: Ritalin. Wednesday, plaintiffs' lawyers
filed two suits, alleging that the maker of Ritalin, the commonly prescribed
attention-deficit treatment, conspired with a psychiatric group to "create"
a disease, and later hyped the drug's benefits. The cases, filed in
California and New Jersey, seek billions of dollars in damages, and are
likely to be followed by suits on behalf of consumers in other states, the
lawyers said.
The legal action tracks a growing public debate over Ritalin. Most
psychologists and psychiatrists believe that, at least in short-term use,
the drug is safe and effective in treating so-called Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder. But a vocal minority claims that ADHD has been
over-diagnosed, and that Ritalin has been over-prescribed, including among
many preschool children. Critics also say the long-term side-effects of
Ritalin haven't been adequately studied. This spring, the issue drew the
attention of the White House, which ordered up a study of ADHD drugs
prescribed for very young children.
Ritalin has been distributed in the U.S. since the 1950s, originally by
Ciba-Geigy Corp., which became part of Swiss-based Novartis AG, following a
1997 merger. Officials at Novartis, and another defendant, the American
Psychiatric Association, said they hadn't seen the suits, although they had
strongly denied any wrongdoing in connection with a similar suit over
Ritalin filed earlier this year in Texas.
"Ritalin has been used safely and effectively in the treatment of millions
of ADHD patients for over 40 years, and is the most studied drug prescribed
for the disorder," Novartis said, in a statement responding to the Texas
suit.
The American Psychiatric Association, in its own earlier statement on the
Texas case, said the allegation that it had conspired with Novartis to
create the ADHD diagnosis was "ludicrous and totally false," and said there
existed "a mountain of scientific evidence to refute these meritless
allegations."
Scruggs Leads Lawyers
In the latest suits, the lawyers are led by Pascagoula, Miss., plaintiffs'
attorney Richard Scruggs, famed for helping negotiate the landmark
settlements between state attorneys general and the tobacco industry in
1998, while earning his law firm an estimated $1 billion fee.
Other lawyers involved include members of the "Castano" group, a network of
plaintiffs' lawyers that filed suits against the tobacco industry on behalf
of smokers. Since the tobacco suits, some of the lawyers have launched cases
against gun manufacturers, health-maintenance organizations and drug
companies, including the manufacturers of the fen-phen diet cocktail. In
Ritalin's case, they are also joining forces with lawyers in the previously
filed Texas suit.
The Ritalin defendants "manufactured a disease," asserts Mr. Scruggs. "It
has been grossly over-prescribed. It is a huge risk."
Class-Action Status Sought
The lawsuits, which seek class-action status, contend that Novartis and
Ciba-Geigy, along with the psychiatric association, conspired to create a
broad-based definition of hyperactivity disorders in the standard medical
text used by doctors; that, the suits say, has had the effect of boosting
sales and profits. Subsequently, Novartis and Ciba-Geigy employed false and
misleading advertising, which played down the drugs' side-effects, and
oversold the benefits, the suits allege.
The suits also name Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder, or Chadd, a Landover, Md., nonprofit support group, which has
received financial backing from Novartis, according to the suit. Chadd
officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Donald Hildre, a San Diego lawyer, said the suit in California was filed
under a provision of the state's business and professions code, which
provides for forfeiture of profits and huge fines, in instances where
companies are found to have misled the public. He added that the same law
was invoked in state litigation against tobacco companies.
The lead plaintiff in his suit, filed in San Diego federal court, is the son
of a secretary at his law firm, who took Ritalin for five years. The New
Jersey suit was filed in state court in Hackensack.
----
reader commentary--
From: Mitzi Waltz
The other red herring in the "Ritalin fraud" story is the alleged
prescription of Ritalin to pre-school children. Aside of a few numbskull
docs out there--and they are out there--nobody is prescribing Ritalin to
pre-schoolers for ADHD. What is happening is it's being prescribed to kids
with autism, simply because docs have no clue what else to do.
Unfortunately, Ritalin is rarely helpful and often harmful to kids with
autism, a medical condition that has gone from "rare" (1 in 10000) to a
"common childhood disability" -- now the rate is 1 in 500 according to
official sources, but rates as high as 1:123 and 1:135 are popping up around
the world in areas as far removed from each other as Granite Bay, Calif.,
Brick Township, NJ, and Lewis Island off Scotland. Kuwait just opened a
treatment center. The situation in China is said to be reaching crisis
proportions. The rate in India is skyrocketing. This is a public health
tragedy -- and it is almost surely one that could have been prevented.
Want a real health conspiracy story? Did you know that the rate of the most
severe form of autism has gone up almost 300 percent since just 1988,
according to figures from multiple states? California is one of the few that
keeps records on "less severe" forms of autism as well (and "less severe" in
this case does not mean "mild"). The increase was over 1900 percent. Yep,
that's 1900, not 190--and these figures only measure cases coming into the
state's Regional Centers, not those never identified or that stayed in the
private sector.
Since a genetic epidemic is not a possibility, this HAS to be either an
environmental issue (very likely) or an infectious disease issue (also a
possibility), or some combination of both. Right now the fingers are pointed
at Thimerosol, a preservative used in vaccines, Rhogam injections, Pitocin
injections, etc. Thimerosol is 50 percent ethyl mercury, an extraordinarily
potent nervous-system poison. Whose bright idea was that, injecting mercury
into infants before their immune systems have developed? Others have
implicated the measles vaccine itself, organophosphate pesticides, and other
possible culprits.
I spent the weekend at a conference of alternative health practitioners and
parents of kids with autism. The sheer revulsion, anger, and despair people
were feeling was palpable.
And there are good reasons to believe that the root causes of the autism
epidemic, whatever they may be, have also contributed to the increase in
other childhood brain disorders and childhood diabetes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linked stories:
********************
13 Indicted In Biggest Lab Fraud In American History
September 22, 2000 (ENS) - An environmental laboratory
falsified test results at thousands of Superfund sites across the United
States, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday. Thirteen former
employees of the now closed lab have been indicted in what federal
authorities are calling the biggest case of laboratory fraud in the
nation's history.
<http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-22-06.html>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/national/22ENVI.html>
********************
Ontario SWAT Team To Tackle Polluters
<http://ens.lycos.com/ens/sep2000/2000L-09-22-10.html>
September 22, 2000 (ENS) - Determined to restore
public confidence in its ability to protect public health and the
environment, Ontario's provincial government has introduced Canada's
toughest fines and longest jail terms for repeat polluters.
********************
From Marshes to Shopping Malls
<http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38864,00.html?tw=wn20000923>
Developers -- such as the ones who want to build a mall in the
wetlands of New Jersey known as the Hackensack Meadowlands -- are
getting around the regs by purchasing and restoring wetlands elsewhere.
********************
======================================================
"Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control."
-Jim Dodge
======================================================
"Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant."
-Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
======================================================
"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."
-J. Krishnamurti
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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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