=======================Electronic
Edition========================
.
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #631 .
---December 31, 1998--- .
HEADLINES: .
CHANGES THAT HURT .
========== .
Environmental Research Foundation .
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
========== .
Back issues available by E-mail; to get instructions, send .
E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the single word HELP .
in the message; back issues also available from .
http://www.rachel.org . To start your free subscriprion, .
send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words .
SUBSCRIBE RACHEL-WEEKLY YOUR NAME in the message. .
=================================================================
CHANGES THAT HURT
Politicians in Washington say the economy did well in 1998,
citing such facts as these:
** The stock market continues to return phenomenal profits to
investors. As 1998 came to a close, the S&P 500 (an average of
500 large firms) had returned an average of 29% per year to
investors for the fourth year in a row.[1]
** Executive salaries have never been higher. The NEW YORK TIMES
reported recently that Michael Eisner, chairman of the Walt
Disney Company, was paid $471.5 million for his work in 1998;
Sanford Weill, chairman of Citigroup, received $227.3 million
for his year's effort; Eugene Isenberg, chairman of Nabors
Industries, received a paycheck of $209.7 million in 1998;
Eckhard Peiffer, chairman of Compaq Computer, was paid $192.5
million in 1998; Mark Ruben, chairman of Colgate-Palmolive
received $170.6 million; Eli Broad, chairman of Sun America,
$149.8 million; Charles Heimbold, chairman of Bristol-Myers
Squibb, $146.6 million; General Electric's chairman, John Welch,
made do with $138.6 million in 1998. For his efforts (notably
unsuccessful) to expand the sale of sugar water worldwide,
Summerfield Johnston, Jr., chairman of Coca Cola, received
$132.4 million in 1998... so life is good in the executive
suites.[2]
For real people doing real work, on the other hand, the
situation in 1998 was somewhat different, according to the NEW
YORK TIMES:[3]
** Despite strong hiring since 1993 and record-setting low
unemployment rates, the number of Americans living in poverty is
now just where it was in 1990. People have jobs, but many of
those jobs pay poverty wages.
** The middle class has not gained either. Despite a steady
expansion of the economy for 8 years, says the TIMES, "While
wealthier families enjoyed big gains, particularly from the
booming stock market, most households find that their incomes,
adjusted for inflation, are no higher today than they were in
1989, when the last expansion ended. Americans, for the most
part, have been running in place for 25 years," says the TIMES.
** "As the Federal budget deficit has turned into a surplus,
private indebtedness, particularly for consumers, has risen to
record levels, giving the economy the sort of boost that
Government deficits did in the 1980's.
"But that debt accumulation has come at a cost," says the TIMES.
"By one estimate, 5 percent of all the nation's households have
filed for bankruptcy protection [during] the last five years."
** In 1990, 16.1% of the non-elderly lacked health insurance
coverage. Today the figure has risen to 18.3% -- a 14% increase
in the medically uninsured in the past 8 years.
** After adjusting for inflation, the median family income (half
earn more, half earn less) was $37,005 in 1997, just about where
it was in 1989, and only $1260 higher than it was in 1973. In
other words, purchasing power grew 0.14% per year, 1973-1997.
The NEW YORK TIMES says, "Many households in the 1960's added
more to their incomes in a single year than their counterparts
today have added in 25 years. And they did it with one wage
earner, not two or three, working fewer hours than the average
jobholder does today. Such changes hurt. Even in good times, the
long working hours strain family life."[3]
Even conservative, market-oriented economists are now saying
that the performance of the '90s economy demonstrates that
government action is needed to alleviate poverty and inequality.
Robert Lucas, the Nobel prize winning economist at the
University of Chicago, told the TIMES, "We are living through a
period of sustained economic growth without inflation, and the
unemployment rate has come down to levels I never thought I
would see again in the United States. But there are obviously
plenty of problems. Poverty and income inequality are two. These
are problems that cannot be addressed by the markets. They have
to be addressed by specific government programs offering
specific solutions," Lucas said.
Unfortunately the so-called "conservatives" (of both parties)
who control this Congress have their minds elsewhere.
"A VAST DELUSION OF DENIAL"
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced in March[4] that
the incidence of cancer (all types combined) decreased during
the period 1990-1997 at an annual rate of 0.7%. The cancer death
rate (all types combined) also declined during the period, NCI
said. This was the first multi-year decline in cancer rates ever
reported.
The NCI's upbeat report said incidence rates declined for both
males and females and for most ethnic groups. Two exceptions to
the trend were black males and Asian and Pacific Islander
females; in these two groups, the incidence of cancers (of all
types) continued to increase.
Unfortunately all this good news was thrown into question by a
study published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION in October, showing that more than 40% of cancers
are never diagnosed among people who die in hospitals. Thus,
many cancers are never counted in the nation's cancer
statistics.[5]
The study, of 1105 autopsies (654 men and 451 women) over a
10-year period, found 250 malignant cancers in the 1105 cadavers
but 103 of the 250 cancers (41%) had not been diagnosed prior to
autopsy. Furthermore, of the 103 undiagnosed cancers, 57 (or
55%) were the immediate cause of death, so cancer incidence and
cancer deaths are both seriously under-reported. The average age
of the 1105 cadavers was 48.3 years; the average age of the
people who died with an undiagnosed malignancy was 54.3 years.
This study examined autopsies completed during the period
1986-1996 at the Medical Center at New Orleans, a major teaching
hospital for medical students at Tulane and Louisiana State
universities.
Importantly, the study pointed out that autopsy rates have
declined, nationwide, from an average of 50% in the mid-1960s to
about 10% today in teaching hospitals and 5% in community
hospitals. The "autopsy rate" means the percentage of people
dying in a hospital who are autopsied.
If we accept that the average autopsy rate in the U.S. is now
somewhere between 10% and 5% (say, 7.5%), then we can calculate
that the autopsy rate has declined at an annual rate of 5.2
percent per year for the past 35 years.[5] Since autopsies are
needed to discover 40% of the cancers in those who die in
hospitals, it seems entirely possible that the decline in the
autopsy rate completely explains the recently-reported declines
in both cancer incidence and cancer deaths in the U.S. Indeed,
one might legitimately ask whether U.S. cancer rates are, in
actual fact, continuing to climb steadily, with the trends
hidden by misdiagnosis and the absence of autopsies.
Commenting on the Louisiana study, the editor of the JOURNAL OF
THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, George D. Lundberg, says, "The
autopsy rates for hospital deaths at nonteaching hospitals
nationally now average below 9%; many hospitals have autopsy
rates at or near 0% despite many deaths."[6] Dr. Lundberg points
out that in 1965 Chicago-area hospitals ("a reasonable sample
for urban areas") autopsied 50% of those who died. Now they
autopsy about 10%.
Why has the autopsy rate declined? The autopsy has fallen by the
wayside, Dr. Lundberg says, because it provides an uncomfortable
truth about disease -- a truth that contradicts the medical
community's wishful thinking about the ability of high-tech
medicine to diagnose illness accurately.
"The autopsy is not dead, but it slumbers deeply, apparently the
victim of a vast cultural delusion of denial," Dr. Lundberg
says. "It is not exactly a conspiracy of silence or necessarily
a massive intentional cover-up, but it is a movement with
millions of players, all in complicity for widely varying
reasons with the final result of 'do not bother me with the
truth' on the sickest patients--the ones who die."
Dr. Lundberg recommends that the government require at least a
30% autopsy rate for any hospital wishing to participate in the
Medicare program, and that the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Health Care Organizations require at least a 25% autopsy rate
as a condition of hospital accreditation. He says these measures
are needed to return to a "hospital culture that values medical
truth rather than values hiding it."
GOING AFTER A CORPORATE CHARTER
In September, a coalition of 30 citizens' groups petitioned the
Attorney General of California to begin proceedings to revoke
the charter of the Unocal Corporation (Union Oil Company of
California).[7]
The 127-page petition charged that Unocal has consistently
broken the law, devastated the environment in California and
around the world, committed hundreds of violations of
occupational safety and health regulations, violated human
rights in Afghanistan and Burma, and "usurped political power."
California's attorney general, Dan Lundgren, a so-called
"conservative," took less than a week to reject the petition in
a 3-sentence letter: "we decline to institute legal proceedings
at this time," he said without offering any reasons.
The petitioners say they were not surprised and they will
continue to try to revoke the charters of recidivist
corporations.
To keep abreast of activism about corporations, join the E-mail
list corp-focus. Send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing
the following information on a single line: subscribe corp-focus
<your name> (no period).
==========
[1] Data from INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY December 23, 1998, pg.
B1. The S&P 500 returned 24.2% in 1998; 33.4% in 1997; 23.0% in
1996; and 37.6% in 1995, a four-year geometric mean of 29%.
[2] Geraldine Fabrikant and Shelby White, "How the Other Half
Gives," NEW YORK TIMES December 20, 1998, Section 3, pgs. 1, 10,
11.
[3] Louis Uchitelle, "Muscleman, or 98-Pound Weakling?" NEW YORK
TIMES October 18, 1998, Section 3, pgs. 1, 11.
[4] Phyllis A. Wingo and others, "Cancer incidence and
mortality, 1973-1995: a report card for the U.S.," CANCER Vol.
82, No. 6 (March 15, 1998), pgs. 1197-1207.
[5] Elizabeth C. Burton and others, "Autopsy Diagnoses of
Malignant Neoplasms," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION Vol. 280, No. 14 (October 14, 1998), pgs. 1245-1248.
[6] George D. Lundberg, "Low-Tech Autopsies in the Era of
High-Tech Medicine," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
Vol. 280, No. 14 (October 14, 1998), pgs. 1273-1274.
[7] Russell Mokhiber, "De-Chartering Unocal," MULTINATIONAL
MONITOR (September 1998), pgs. 6-7.
Descriptor terms: economy; wages; poverty; inequality; executive
pay; cancer; cancer underreporting; statistics; george lundberg;
corporations; unocal;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL, or at
(410) 263-1584, or fax us at (410) 263-8944.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
.
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #631 .
---December 31, 1998--- .
HEADLINES: .
CHANGES THAT HURT .
========== .
Environmental Research Foundation .
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403 .
Fax (410) 263-8944; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
========== .
Back issues available by E-mail; to get instructions, send .
E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the single word HELP .
in the message; back issues also available from .
http://www.rachel.org . To start your free subscriprion, .
send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words .
SUBSCRIBE RACHEL-WEEKLY YOUR NAME in the message. .
=================================================================
CHANGES THAT HURT
Politicians in Washington say the economy did well in 1998,
citing such facts as these:
** The stock market continues to return phenomenal profits to
investors. As 1998 came to a close, the S&P 500 (an average of
500 large firms) had returned an average of 29% per year to
investors for the fourth year in a row.[1]
** Executive salaries have never been higher. The NEW YORK TIMES
reported recently that Michael Eisner, chairman of the Walt
Disney Company, was paid $471.5 million for his work in 1998;
Sanford Weill, chairman of Citigroup, received $227.3 million
for his year's effort; Eugene Isenberg, chairman of Nabors
Industries, received a paycheck of $209.7 million in 1998;
Eckhard Peiffer, chairman of Compaq Computer, was paid $192.5
million in 1998; Mark Ruben, chairman of Colgate-Palmolive
received $170.6 million; Eli Broad, chairman of Sun America,
$149.8 million; Charles Heimbold, chairman of Bristol-Myers
Squibb, $146.6 million; General Electric's chairman, John Welch,
made do with $138.6 million in 1998. For his efforts (notably
unsuccessful) to expand the sale of sugar water worldwide,
Summerfield Johnston, Jr., chairman of Coca Cola, received
$132.4 million in 1998... so life is good in the executive
suites.[2]
For real people doing real work, on the other hand, the
situation in 1998 was somewhat different, according to the NEW
YORK TIMES:[3]
** Despite strong hiring since 1993 and record-setting low
unemployment rates, the number of Americans living in poverty is
now just where it was in 1990. People have jobs, but many of
those jobs pay poverty wages.
** The middle class has not gained either. Despite a steady
expansion of the economy for 8 years, says the TIMES, "While
wealthier families enjoyed big gains, particularly from the
booming stock market, most households find that their incomes,
adjusted for inflation, are no higher today than they were in
1989, when the last expansion ended. Americans, for the most
part, have been running in place for 25 years," says the TIMES.
** "As the Federal budget deficit has turned into a surplus,
private indebtedness, particularly for consumers, has risen to
record levels, giving the economy the sort of boost that
Government deficits did in the 1980's.
"But that debt accumulation has come at a cost," says the TIMES.
"By one estimate, 5 percent of all the nation's households have
filed for bankruptcy protection [during] the last five years."
** In 1990, 16.1% of the non-elderly lacked health insurance
coverage. Today the figure has risen to 18.3% -- a 14% increase
in the medically uninsured in the past 8 years.
** After adjusting for inflation, the median family income (half
earn more, half earn less) was $37,005 in 1997, just about where
it was in 1989, and only $1260 higher than it was in 1973. In
other words, purchasing power grew 0.14% per year, 1973-1997.
The NEW YORK TIMES says, "Many households in the 1960's added
more to their incomes in a single year than their counterparts
today have added in 25 years. And they did it with one wage
earner, not two or three, working fewer hours than the average
jobholder does today. Such changes hurt. Even in good times, the
long working hours strain family life."[3]
Even conservative, market-oriented economists are now saying
that the performance of the '90s economy demonstrates that
government action is needed to alleviate poverty and inequality.
Robert Lucas, the Nobel prize winning economist at the
University of Chicago, told the TIMES, "We are living through a
period of sustained economic growth without inflation, and the
unemployment rate has come down to levels I never thought I
would see again in the United States. But there are obviously
plenty of problems. Poverty and income inequality are two. These
are problems that cannot be addressed by the markets. They have
to be addressed by specific government programs offering
specific solutions," Lucas said.
Unfortunately the so-called "conservatives" (of both parties)
who control this Congress have their minds elsewhere.
"A VAST DELUSION OF DENIAL"
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced in March[4] that
the incidence of cancer (all types combined) decreased during
the period 1990-1997 at an annual rate of 0.7%. The cancer death
rate (all types combined) also declined during the period, NCI
said. This was the first multi-year decline in cancer rates ever
reported.
The NCI's upbeat report said incidence rates declined for both
males and females and for most ethnic groups. Two exceptions to
the trend were black males and Asian and Pacific Islander
females; in these two groups, the incidence of cancers (of all
types) continued to increase.
Unfortunately all this good news was thrown into question by a
study published in the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION in October, showing that more than 40% of cancers
are never diagnosed among people who die in hospitals. Thus,
many cancers are never counted in the nation's cancer
statistics.[5]
The study, of 1105 autopsies (654 men and 451 women) over a
10-year period, found 250 malignant cancers in the 1105 cadavers
but 103 of the 250 cancers (41%) had not been diagnosed prior to
autopsy. Furthermore, of the 103 undiagnosed cancers, 57 (or
55%) were the immediate cause of death, so cancer incidence and
cancer deaths are both seriously under-reported. The average age
of the 1105 cadavers was 48.3 years; the average age of the
people who died with an undiagnosed malignancy was 54.3 years.
This study examined autopsies completed during the period
1986-1996 at the Medical Center at New Orleans, a major teaching
hospital for medical students at Tulane and Louisiana State
universities.
Importantly, the study pointed out that autopsy rates have
declined, nationwide, from an average of 50% in the mid-1960s to
about 10% today in teaching hospitals and 5% in community
hospitals. The "autopsy rate" means the percentage of people
dying in a hospital who are autopsied.
If we accept that the average autopsy rate in the U.S. is now
somewhere between 10% and 5% (say, 7.5%), then we can calculate
that the autopsy rate has declined at an annual rate of 5.2
percent per year for the past 35 years.[5] Since autopsies are
needed to discover 40% of the cancers in those who die in
hospitals, it seems entirely possible that the decline in the
autopsy rate completely explains the recently-reported declines
in both cancer incidence and cancer deaths in the U.S. Indeed,
one might legitimately ask whether U.S. cancer rates are, in
actual fact, continuing to climb steadily, with the trends
hidden by misdiagnosis and the absence of autopsies.
Commenting on the Louisiana study, the editor of the JOURNAL OF
THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, George D. Lundberg, says, "The
autopsy rates for hospital deaths at nonteaching hospitals
nationally now average below 9%; many hospitals have autopsy
rates at or near 0% despite many deaths."[6] Dr. Lundberg points
out that in 1965 Chicago-area hospitals ("a reasonable sample
for urban areas") autopsied 50% of those who died. Now they
autopsy about 10%.
Why has the autopsy rate declined? The autopsy has fallen by the
wayside, Dr. Lundberg says, because it provides an uncomfortable
truth about disease -- a truth that contradicts the medical
community's wishful thinking about the ability of high-tech
medicine to diagnose illness accurately.
"The autopsy is not dead, but it slumbers deeply, apparently the
victim of a vast cultural delusion of denial," Dr. Lundberg
says. "It is not exactly a conspiracy of silence or necessarily
a massive intentional cover-up, but it is a movement with
millions of players, all in complicity for widely varying
reasons with the final result of 'do not bother me with the
truth' on the sickest patients--the ones who die."
Dr. Lundberg recommends that the government require at least a
30% autopsy rate for any hospital wishing to participate in the
Medicare program, and that the Joint Commission on Accreditation
of Health Care Organizations require at least a 25% autopsy rate
as a condition of hospital accreditation. He says these measures
are needed to return to a "hospital culture that values medical
truth rather than values hiding it."
GOING AFTER A CORPORATE CHARTER
In September, a coalition of 30 citizens' groups petitioned the
Attorney General of California to begin proceedings to revoke
the charter of the Unocal Corporation (Union Oil Company of
California).[7]
The 127-page petition charged that Unocal has consistently
broken the law, devastated the environment in California and
around the world, committed hundreds of violations of
occupational safety and health regulations, violated human
rights in Afghanistan and Burma, and "usurped political power."
California's attorney general, Dan Lundgren, a so-called
"conservative," took less than a week to reject the petition in
a 3-sentence letter: "we decline to institute legal proceedings
at this time," he said without offering any reasons.
The petitioners say they were not surprised and they will
continue to try to revoke the charters of recidivist
corporations.
To keep abreast of activism about corporations, join the E-mail
list corp-focus. Send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing
the following information on a single line: subscribe corp-focus
<your name> (no period).
==========
[1] Data from INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY December 23, 1998, pg.
B1. The S&P 500 returned 24.2% in 1998; 33.4% in 1997; 23.0% in
1996; and 37.6% in 1995, a four-year geometric mean of 29%.
[2] Geraldine Fabrikant and Shelby White, "How the Other Half
Gives," NEW YORK TIMES December 20, 1998, Section 3, pgs. 1, 10,
11.
[3] Louis Uchitelle, "Muscleman, or 98-Pound Weakling?" NEW YORK
TIMES October 18, 1998, Section 3, pgs. 1, 11.
[4] Phyllis A. Wingo and others, "Cancer incidence and
mortality, 1973-1995: a report card for the U.S.," CANCER Vol.
82, No. 6 (March 15, 1998), pgs. 1197-1207.
[5] Elizabeth C. Burton and others, "Autopsy Diagnoses of
Malignant Neoplasms," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION Vol. 280, No. 14 (October 14, 1998), pgs. 1245-1248.
[6] George D. Lundberg, "Low-Tech Autopsies in the Era of
High-Tech Medicine," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
Vol. 280, No. 14 (October 14, 1998), pgs. 1273-1274.
[7] Russell Mokhiber, "De-Chartering Unocal," MULTINATIONAL
MONITOR (September 1998), pgs. 6-7.
Descriptor terms: economy; wages; poverty; inequality; executive
pay; cancer; cancer underreporting; statistics; george lundberg;
corporations; unocal;
################################################################
NOTICE
Environmental Research Foundation provides this electronic
version of RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY free of charge
even though it costs our organization considerable time and money
to produce it. We would like to continue to provide this service
free. You could help by making a tax-deductible contribution
(anything you can afford, whether $5.00 or $500.00). Please send
your tax-deductible contribution to: Environmental Research
Foundation, P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403-7036. Please do
not send credit card information via E-mail. For further
information about making tax-deductible contributions to E.R.F.
by credit card please phone us toll free at 1-888-2RACHEL, or at
(410) 263-1584, or fax us at (410) 263-8944.
--Peter Montague, Editor
################################################################
http://members.xoom.com/ThePiedPiper/Intro2.htm
1. Take the 60-day No Aspartame Test and send us your case history.
Mission Possible International
5950-H State Bridge Rd. #215 Duluth, GA 30097 USA
2. Tell your doctor and all of your friends!
3. Return Asparcidal food to the store.
(anything with Monsanto's NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/Benevia/NatraTaste)
VISIT http://www.dorway.com Get links to over 30 sites on aspartame
VISIT http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/ ..FAQs & Cases
VISIT http://www.notmilk.com Exposing Bovine Growth Hormone
Disability and Death are not acceptable costs of business!
1. Take the 60-day No Aspartame Test and send us your case history.
Mission Possible International
5950-H State Bridge Rd. #215 Duluth, GA 30097 USA
2. Tell your doctor and all of your friends!
3. Return Asparcidal food to the store.
(anything with Monsanto's NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/Benevia/NatraTaste)
VISIT http://www.dorway.com Get links to over 30 sites on aspartame
VISIT http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/ ..FAQs & Cases
VISIT http://www.notmilk.com Exposing Bovine Growth Hormone
Disability and Death are not acceptable costs of business!
