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Monday, November 15, 2004

Tuskeegee 2005, or, Dr. Mengele, please call your office
Posted by Jill | 3:31 PM
Do the horrors of the Bush Regime ever stop?

Emphases mine:

(October 12, 2004) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) announced today a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to conduct a landmark study to learn more about how young children come into contact with household pesticides and other chemicals in their homes.

The study is being conducted to understand more about children's exposure to chemicals in their environment. Families will be asked to keep records of their pesticide and household product use and children will be monitored in their homes. The study is designed to measure the concentrations of the chemicals in the children's homes and determine how the children who are exposed to chemicals that are present in consumer products used in the home.

The study will involve 60 children, age 0 to 3 years, for two years in Duval County, Florida.


What this official and innocuous-sounding press release from the EPA doesn't tell you is that those 60 children were chosen from 6 health clinics and three hospitals in Jacksonville, FL. These medical facilities report that 51% of their births are to NON-WHITE mothers and 62% of mothers have only received an elementary or secondary education.

Here are the goodies that these parents who consent to have their children used as EPA guinea pigs AND allow these government employees into their homes every 3-6 months for two years get:

- both monetary and non-monetary compensation
- A Study t-shirt
- An official, framed Certificate of Appreciation
- A Study bib for your baby
- A calendar
- A Study Newsletter
- A video camcorder, if you complete all of the study activities over the two-year study period

The friendly sounding acronym of this study is "CHEERS".

Since the study was announced, enough people have spoken out that the study is now "suspended" until early 2005 pending final review:

The Environmental Protection Agency has suspended a controversial study aimed at exploring how infants and toddlers absorb pesticides and other household chemicals, officials said yesterday.

Several rank-and-file EPA scientists had questioned the ethics of the two-year experiment, which would have given the families of 60 children in Duval County, Fla., $970 each as well as a camcorder and children's clothing in exchange for having the children participate. The critics said low-income Floridians might continue to use pesticides -- which have been linked to neurological damage in children -- in their homes to qualify for the project.

Environmentalists had also criticized the study because the industry-funded American Chemistry Council had agreed to pay $2 million of the project's approximately $9 million cost.

EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said officials had asked a group of independent experts to reexamine the study design, which has already been reviewed by several independent panels of academics, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and representatives of the Duval County Health Department. The new panel is set to give the EPA its assessment next spring.

"Since the study was announced last month, many have raised concerns, including scientists within EPA. We want to be responsive to those concerns," Bergman said.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said, "Regardless of the number of reviews, paying poor parents to dose their babies with commercial poisons to measure their exposure is just plain wrong."


Let's look at what we have here: We have low-income mothers being targeted for a study to measure the effects of household chemicals on their children (as if no one else uses such products). We have bribes in the form of cheap goodies, money, and one desirable consumer commodity (a video camera) being offered in return for letting the government into your home to videotape your family two to four times a year for two years. This is not about MINIMIZING risk to children, it's about MEASURING it -- but only in low-income children.

I don't want to hear the anti-abortion folks talk about Margaret Sanger and eugenics ever again.
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