 |
Part 3: America's Maddest Scientists |
Staff
8/29/2005
In his infamous 2003
memo on how to blunt the environmental movement,
pollster Frank Luntz instructed polluters and their
allies on how to suppress and marginalize science and
scientists when their results don’t jive with industry’s
goals. These mad scientists are on the frontline of this
campaign against the public interest. Each has made a
highly lucrative career out of corrupting scientific
method and attacking their colleagues to bamboozle the
public and the press:
- Elizabeth Whelan: Ardent defender of the most toxic substances
known to mankind. Whelan is the author of
Panic in the Pantry and Toxic Terror. In
Panic, Whelan rejects back-to-nature "mania" like
organic lifestyles and pesticide-free eating as a
"hoax." Whelan is President and founder of the
American Council on Science and Health, a group that
asserts "there is no scientific evidence that DDT
harms the environment" and that dioxin, one of the
most toxic substances in existence, "was not such a
bad actor." Whelan has suggested, contrary to a
considerable body of research, "that there is no
credible evidence that PCB exposure in the general
environment, in fish, or even at very high levels in
the workplace, has ever led to an increase in cancer
risk."
- Dennis Paustenbach: Keeping the world safe
for chromium polluters. Paustenbach is the
president and founder of ChemRisk, a consulting firm
that helps companies, "confront public health,
occupational health, and environmental challenges."
Paustenbach served as an expert witness for Pacific
Gas and Electric when the utility was sued for
allowing the poisonous heavy metal chromium to leach
into groundwater – a case made famous in the movie
Erin Brockovich. In the 1990s, Honeywell, PPG
Industries Inc. and Maxus Energy Corp. were faced with
spending nearly a billion dollars to clean up New
Jersey communities they had contaminated with
chromium. Instead, they hired Paustenbach to mount a
successful campaign to force the state to raise the
allowable limit of chromium in soils. Paustenbach has
taken his pro-toxic chemical stance nationwide with
his recent Bush administration appointment to the
advisory committee for the Center for Disease
Control’s National Center for Environmental Health
- John P. Giesy: Ensuring that good science
doesn’t stand in the way of America’s #1 pesticide.
Giesy is a leading apologist for atrazine, the most
common pesticide used in the United States, and an
endocrine disruptor so dangerous that it has been
banned in Europe. When University of California
toxicologist Tyrone Hayes linked tiny amounts of
atrazine to deformities and infertility in frogs,
Sygenta, atrazine’s manufacturer, hired Giesy to
dispute Hayes’ research. Despite running faulty
studies and misinterpreting the results, Giesy’s
research was widely used by Sygenta and other
pro-industry lobbyists to force EPA to back away from
plans to tighten regulations on atrazine.
- S. Fred Singer: Spreading a gospel of mis-truth
about global warming. Singer is President of
the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), a
non-profit policy research group that denies global
warming. SEPP is directly funded by ExxonMobil,
according to the company’s own disclosures. In 2001,
Singer however denied ever receiving oil industry
funding. During the past two decades Singer has become
one of the most prominent "experts" refuting the
existence of global warming and the impact of human
activities on climate change. In 1996, he wrote a
declaration arguing that there was no scientific
consensus on global warming and therefore no grounds
for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Singer claimed the declaration was co-signed by "more
than 100 European and American climate scientists"
when most of the signers were not climate experts, and
many were not scientists. But Singer made it clear
that he is not necessarily ready to give up on global
warming, in testimony to Congress he stated "a warmer
climate would be generally beneficial for agriculture
and other human activities."
- Dennis Avery: Guarding factory food from
"dangers" of the organic food movement. This
self-styled "leading critic of organic produce" is a
self-righteous attack dog who serves the interests of
the corporate agriculture companies who pay the bills
at his "think tank," the Hudson Institute. "Organic
foods," Avery claims, "have clearly become the
deadliest food choice." He gained notoriety by
insisting that people who eat organic food are eight
times more likely to suffer E. coli food poisoning – a
figure he claimed to draw from research conducted by
the Centers for Disease Control. But CDC has never
conducted such research. Avery frequently repeats his
mantra that there is no hard scientific evidence that
pesticides harm humans, flatly ignoring decades of
scientific analysis. Avery’s "research" has been paid
for by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow-Elanco, Sandoz,
Ciba-Geigy, ConAgra, Cargill, and Procter & Gamble.
|
Copyright © 2005
Waterkeeper Alliance .
http://www.waterkeeper.org/mainarticledetails.aspx?articleid=186 |