Sandra Finley

2005-10-03 Lockheed Martin gets American census contracts, Washington Post

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Oct 032005
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/02/AR2005100201032.html

Local Contract

Lockheed Gets Census Job

By Mary Mosquera

Special to The Washington Post
Monday, October 3, 2005; Page D04

Lockheed Martin Corp. won a $500 million contract last week from the Census Bureau to develop and operate the information processing system for the 2010 Census. The bureau’s goal is to make the next population count more automated than the one in 2000 and to make it simpler for citizens to participate.

The Decennial Response Integration System contract includes developing an option for citizens to answer census questionnaires over the Internet. The contract provides for systems, facilities and staffing to capture and standardize census data from paper forms and the telephone as well as the Internet.

The contract also calls for capturing data coming from handheld computers to be used by census takers; a contract for the handheld devices has yet to be awarded.

“It’s like a big catch net, capturing all the data coming in no matter where it comes from,” said Preston J. Waite, associate director for the 2010 Census. “It will integrate everybody who tries to answer the census form.”

The Census Bureau also has improved its geographic database to better match housing units and street addresses using Global Positioning System coordinates.

The bureau pulled together all of its information processing services, equipment, systems and software under one contract, said Arnold Jackson, assistant director of information technology systems for the 2010 Census. “We’re hoping with one integrator there will be fewer handoffs, lower risk, and solutions can be envisioned by the prime contractor and pushed all the way through the system. We have fewer problems with unintended differences in our data that way.”

Lockheed Martin developed the information processing system used in 2000, but it was one of three contractors handling data gathered from paper forms and over the phone, said Julie Dunlap, Lockheed Martin’s 2010 program director for the contract.

Lockheed Martin’s teammates on the six-year contract include Cardinal Technologies Inc. of Bethesda; Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif.; Evolver Inc. of Reston; International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y.; Metier Ltd. of Washington; Nortel PEC Solutions of Fairfax; and Pearson Government Solutions Inc. of Arlington.

Mary Mosquera is a staff writer with Government Computer News. For more information on these and other contracts, go tohttp://www.gcn.com.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

2005-09-19 Robert F. Kennedy Jr, The Junk Science of George W. Bush

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Culture and Ethics, Knowledge Base, Robert F Kennedy Jr  No Responses »
Sep 192005
 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr is the guest speaker at the FSIN (Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nation)’s  “Only a Matter of Time” Conference,  Saskatoon in Octctober.  He is one of my heroes.  I get to hear him in person!

THE WORK OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance (used to be Riverkeepers Alliance) …  I didn’t realize how much of his work we’ve distributed. It began with his attendance in Calgary and Banff to challenge the Government of Alberta on intensive livestock operations (developers who are shut down in the U.S. move to Canada to do their deeds).  An Alberta chapter of his Waterkeeper Alliance was launched.

The following postings are excerpts from his written work, pretty amazing given his court work and the number of public appearances he does.  The articles are lengthy and excellent!

==================================

THE JUNK SCIENCE OF GEORGE W. BUSH, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Publication:  The Nation

(Link no longer valid)

article | posted February 19, 2004 (March 8, 2004 issue)

As Jesuit schoolboys studying world history we learned that Copernicus and Galileo self-censored for many decades their proofs that the earth revolved around the sun and that a less restrained heliocentrist, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive in 1600 for the crime of sound science. With the encouragement of our professor, Father Joyce, we marveled at the capacity of human leaders to corrupt noble institutions. Lust for power had caused the Catholic hierarchy to subvert the church’s most central purpose–the search for existential truths.

Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration–aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals–are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own.

Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration’s corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact “for partisan political ends.”

I’ve had my own experiences with Torquemada’s modern successors, both personal and related to my work as an environmental lawyer and advocate working for the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

At the time of the World Trade Center catastrophe on September 11, 2001, I had just opened an office at 115 Broadway, cater-corner from the World Trade Center and within the official security zone to which access was, afterward, restricted for several months. Upon returning to the office in October my partner, Kevin Madonna, suffered a burning throat, nausea and a headache that was still pounding twenty-four hours after he left the building.

Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s claims that air quality was safe, Kevin refused to return and we closed the office. Many workers did not have that option; their employers relied on the EPA’s nine press releases between September and December of 2001 reassuring the public about the wholesome air quality downtown. We have since learned that the government was lying to us. An Inspector General’s report released last August revealed that the EPA’s data did not support those assurances and that its press releases were being drafted or doctored by White House officials intent on reopening Wall Street.

On September 13, just two days after the terror attack, the EPA announced that asbestos dust in the area was “very low” or entirely absent. On September 18 the agency said the air was “safe to breathe.” In fact, more than 25 percent of the samples collected by the EPA before September 18 showed presence of asbestos above the 1 percent safety benchmark. Among outside studies, one performed by scientists at the University of California, Davis, found particulates at levels never before seen in more than 7,000 similar tests worldwide. A study being performed by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has found that 78 percent of rescue workers suffered lung ailments and 88 percent had ear, nose and throat problems in the months following the attack and that about half still had persistent lung and respiratory illnesses nine months to a year later.

Dan Tishman, whose company was involved in the reconstruction at 140 West Street, required his crews to wear respirators but recalls seeing many rescue and construction workers laboring unprotected–no doubt relying on the government’s assurances. “The frustrating thing is that everyone just counts on the EPA to be the watchdog of public health,” he says. “When that role is compromised, people can get hurt.”

I also recall the case of Dr. James Zahn, a nationally respected microbiologist with the Agriculture Department’s research service, who accepted my invitation to speak to an April 2002 conference of more than 1,000 family farm advocates and environmental and civic leaders in Clear Lake, Iowa. In a rigorous taxpayer-funded study, Zahn had identified bacteria that can make people sick–and that are resistant to antibiotics–in the air surrounding industrial-style hog farms. His studies proved that billions of these “superbugs” were traveling across property lines daily, endangering the health of neighbors and their herds. I was shocked when Zahn canceled his appearance on the day of the conference under orders from the Agriculture Department in Washington. I later uncovered a fax trail proving the order was prompted by lobbyists from the National Pork Producers Council. Zahn told me that his supervisor at the USDA, under pressure from the hog industry, had ordered him not to publish his study and that he had been forced to cancel more than a dozen public appearances at local planning boards and county health commissions seeking information about health impacts of industry mega-farms. Soon after my conference, Zahn resigned from the government in disgust.

Ignoring Bad News

The Bush Administration’s first instinct when it comes to science has been to suppress, discredit or alter facts it doesn’t like. Probably the best-known case is global warming. Over the past two years the Administration has done this to a dozen major government studies on global warming, as well as to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its own efforts to stall action to control industrial emissions.  The list also includes major long-term studies by the federal government’s National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences, and by scientific teams at the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, and a 2002 collaborative report by scientists at all three of those agencies.

The Administration has taken special pains to shield Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, which is part of an industry that has contributed $58 million to Republicans since 2000. Halliburton is the leading practitioner of a process used in extracting oil and gas known as hydraulic fracturing, in which benzene is injected into underground formations. EPA scientists studying the process in 2002 found that it could contaminate ground-water supplies in excess of federal drinking water standards. A week after reporting their findings to Congressional staff members, however, they revised the data to indicate that benzene levels would not exceed government standards. In a letter to Representative Henry Waxman, EPA officials said the change was made based on “industry feedback.”

As a favor to utility and coal industries, America’s largest mercury dischargers, the EPA sat for nine months on a report exposing the catastrophic impact on children’s health of mercury, finally releasing it in February 2003. Among the findings of the report: The bloodstream of one in twelve US women is saturated with enough mercury to cause neurological damage, permanent IQ loss and a grim inventory of other diseases in their unborn children.

The list goes on. In October 2001 Interior Secretary Gale Norton, responding to a Senate committee inquiry on the effects of oil drilling on caribou in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, falsely claimed that the caribou would not be affected, because they calve outside the area targeted for drilling.  She later explained that she somehow substituted “outside” for “inside.” She also substituted findings from a study financed by an oil company for some of the ones that the Fish and Wildlife Service had prepared for her. In another case, according to the Wall Street Journal, Norton and White House political adviser Karl Rove pressed for changes that would allow diversion of substantial amounts of water from the Klamath River to benefit local supporters and agribusiness contributors. Some 34,000 endangered salmon were killed after National Marine Fisheries scientists altered their findings on the amount of water the salmon required. Environmentalists describe it as the largest fish kill in the history of the West. Mike Kelly, the fisheries biologist on the Klamath who drafted the biological opinion, told me that under the current plan coho salmon are probably headed for extinction.  According to Kelly, “The morale is very low among scientists here. We are under pressure to get the right results. This Administration is putting the species at risk for political gain. And not just in the Klamath.”

Roger Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service, told me that the alteration and deletion of scientific information is now standard procedure at Interior. “It’s hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the Administration’s politicization of the scientific process,” he said, “its disdain for professional scientists working for our government or its willingness to deceive the American public.”

Getting the Right Answer

But suppressing or altering science can be a tricky business; the Bush Administration has found it easier at times simply to arrange to get the results it wants. A case in point is the decision in July by the EPA’s regional office overseeing the western Everglades to accept a study financed predominantly by developers, which concludes that wetlands discharge more pollutants than they absorb. There was no peer review or public comment.  With its approval, the EPA is giving developers credit for improving water quality by replacing natural wetlands with golf courses and other developments.

The study was financed by the Water Enhancement and Restoration Committee, which was formed primarily by local developers and chaired by Rick Barber, the consultant for a golf course development for which the EPA had denied a permit because it would pollute surrounding waters and destroy wetlands. The study contradicts everything known about wetlands functioning, including a determination by more than twenty-five scientists and managers at the Tampa Bay Estuary Program that, on balance, wetlands do not generate nitrogen pollution. Bruce Boler, a biologist and water-quality specialist working for the EPA office, resigned in protest. Boler says the developers massaged the data to support their theory by evaluating samples collected near roads and bridges, where developments discharge pollutants. “It was like the politics trumped the science,” he told us.

In a similar case, last November the EPA cut a private deal with a pesticide manufacturer to take over federal studies of a pesticide it manufactures. Atrazine is the most heavily utilized weedkiller in America. First approved in 1958, by the 1980s it had been identified as a potential carcinogen associated with high incidences of prostate cancer among workers at manufacturing facilities. Testing by the US Geological Survey regularly finds alarming concentrations of Atrazine in drinking water across the corn belt. Even worse, last year scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Atrazine at one-thirtieth the government’s “safe” 3 parts per billion level causes grotesque deformities in frogs, including multiple sets of organs. And this year epidemiologists from the University of Missouri found reproductive consequences in humans associated with Atrazine, including male semen counts in farm communities that are 50 percent below normal. Iowa scientists are finding similar results in a current study.

The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical’s manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherry Ford, a spokesperson for Syngenta, praised without irony the advantages of having the company monitor its own product. “This is one way we can ensure it’s not presenting any risk to the environment.”

In a dramatic expansion of this disturbing strategy, the Bush Administration now plans to systematically turn government science over to private industry by contracting out thousands of science jobs to compliant consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support corporate profits. The National Park Service is preparing a first phase of contracting reviews, involving about 1,800 positions, including biologists, archeologists and environmental specialists. Later phases may entail replacement of 11,000 employees, more than two-thirds of the service’s permanent work force.

At least federal employees enjoy civil service and whistleblower protection intended to allow them to operate professionally and independently. Private contractors don’t enjoy the same level of protection. “You can shop for the right contractor to give you the kind of result you want,” says Frank Buono, a retired Park Service veteran who now serves on the board of a nonprofit whistleblower protection organization.

As a Last Resort, Fire the Messenger

Most federal employees have gone along with the Bush Administration’s wishes, but a few have tried to stand up for sound science. The results are predictable. When a team of government biologists indicated that the Army Corps of Engineers was violating the Endangered Species Act in managing the flow of the Missouri River, the group was quickly replaced by an industry-friendly panel. (In an unexpected–and fortunate–development, the new panel ultimately declined to adopt the White House’s pro-barge-industry position and upheld the decision to manage the river to protect imperiled species.) Similarly, last April the EPA suddenly dismantled an advisory panel that had spent nearly twenty-one months developing rules for stringent regulation of industrial emissions of mercury [see Alterman and Green, page 14].

Or consider the case of Tony Oppegard and Jack Spadaro, members of a team of federal geodesic engineers selected to investigate the collapse of barriers that held back a coal slurry pond in Kentucky containing toxic wastes from mountaintop strip-mining. The 300-million-gallon spill was the largest in American history and, according to the EPA, the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the Eastern United States. Black lava-like toxic sludge containing sixty poisonous chemicals choked and sterilized up to 100 miles of rivers and creeks and poisoned the drinking water in seventeen communities. Unlike in other slurry disasters, no one died, but hundreds of residents were sickened by contact with contaminated water.

The investigation had broad implications for the viability of mountaintop mining, which involves literally lopping off mountaintops to get access to the underlying coal. It is a process beloved by coal barons because it practically dispenses with the need for human labor and thus increases industry profits. Spadaro, the nation’s leading expert on slurry spills, recalls, “We were geotechnical engineers determined to find the truth. We simply wanted to get to the heart of the matter–find out what happened and why, and to prevent it from happening again. But all that was thwarted at the top of the agency by Bush appointees who obstructed professionals trying to do their jobs.”

The Bush Administration appointees all had coal industry pedigrees. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (the wife of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s biggest recipient of industry largesse) appointed Dave Lauriski, a former executive with Energy West Mining, as the new director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which oversaw the investigation. His deputy assistant secretary was John Caylor, an Anamax Mining alumnus. His other deputy assistant, John Correll, had worked for both Amax and Peabody Coal.

Oppegard, the leader of the federal team, was fired on the day Bush was inaugurated in 2001. All eight members of the team except Spadaro signed off on a whitewashed investigation report. Spadaro, like the others, was harassed but flat-out refused to sign. In April of 2001 Spadaro resigned from the team and filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Labor Department. Last June 4 he was placed on administrative leave–a prelude to getting fired.

Bush Administration officials accuse Spadaro of “abusing his authority” for allowing a handicapped instructor to have free room and board at a training academy he oversees, an arrangement approved by his superiors. An internal report vindicated Spadaro’s criticisms of the investigation, but the Administration is still going after his job. “I’ve been regulating mining since 1966,” Spadaro told me. “This is the most lawless administration I’ve encountered. They have no regard for protecting miners or the people in mining communities. They are without scruples.”

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world.   At their best, scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth. Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science. They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming. In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process.

Now Congress and this White House have used federal power for the same purpose. Led by the President, the Republicans have gutted scientific research budgets and politicized science within the federal agencies. The very leaders who so often condemn the trend toward moral relativism are fostering and encouraging the trend toward scientific relativism. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have now institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America’s federal agencies.

The Bush Administration has so violated and corrupted the institutional culture of government agencies charged with scientific research that it could take a generation for them to recover their integrity even if Bush is defeated this fall. Says Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer, “If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge and in a search for the truth, this White House is an absolute disaster.”

2005-09 Roundup to herbicide-tolerant crops to fusarium to myco toxins to tuberculosis to the regulatory function of government. PRRCG

 Genetically Modified, Health, Tuberculosis  No Responses »
Sep 142005
 

Regulatory environment (the political CONTEXT) in which we are operating:   address context if you are to understand what will work and what won’t, to bring about correction.

Vet my logic. Tell me where I am in error.  Thanks.

===============================

Based on experience and information collected during

–  the battle against roundup-resistant (RR) wheat  (GMO’s)

–  my bout with tuberculosis,

 

here’s what I’m thinking:

– the application of poisons (Roundup / glyphosate) to living organisms weakens and sets them up for disease.

– which would explain the increase in the incidence of fusarium in crops that have been treated with herbicides.

Fusarium is a fungus.

As per the USDA web-page that discusses the seriousness of fungus and the myco toxins they produce,  as well as the book on fungal infestations in the human body, myco toxins from fungus from crops enter humans through the plant food we eat. It also enters animals through feed crops;  meat we eat then becomes another vector for it  (although steps are taken to keep crops  contaminated with things like fusarium out of the human and animal food supply.  At one time there was “zero tolerance” for grain with fusarium in it.)

– with the industrialization of agriculture, things done on grand scales by people who are more and more removed from the plants and the animals and from the people eating the food, there will be more fungus entering the industrialized food supply.  (more chemicals and yet again more chemicals with the introduction of gmo crops, the research that shows increased incidence of fusarium in gmo crops)

– myco toxins weaken us and set us up for disease.  It used to be that if the routine sampling from a truckload of grain arriving at the elevator showed ANY fusarium, the truckload was rejected and the whole crop was destroyed.

– A high myco toxin load in my body made me susceptible to disease.  My main question to the naturopath was “why didn’t my immune system take care of the TB bug?”  His tests suggested that the real villain was a high level of myco toxins.  There is more TB around.  When I came into contact with its virulence, I succombed.  It could as well have been a different disease.  (We looked after the source of the myco toxins;  I recovered from the TB.)

…   As part of writing this email, I updated developments at the PRRCG (The Prairie Registration Recommending Committee for Grains) whose role we have discussed earlier.   The developments at the PRRCG (described below) are extremely worrisome. I am beginning to think the only way to get the corporations out is to change the Government. The PRRCG is now a glaring example of the degree of infiltration and takeover of critical parts of the regulatory system by the corporations.  Weakened regulations on fusarium is another.

The CONNECTIONS AND CONTEXT  are:

(the herbicide glyphosate (“roundup” is just one of the trade names under which it is marketed) is widely used and is used in even greater quantities after Monsanto’s patent on it expired)

  1.  The Government-Monsanto partnership has resulted in the introduction of crops such as Roundup Resistant (RR) Canola.

2.  A critical part of the licensing for new crop varieties is the PRRCG, the Prairie Regional Recommending Committee for Grain. The public is not allowed in to its meetings – I attended under a press pass in 2003 or 2004. The CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) had been trying for at least 3 years to rob the plenary session of its power over which seed varieties go forward for registration. Supposedly in the interests of “stream-lining”, they wanted the grain sub-committees to be able to determine which varieties would be registered.  Coincidentally, Monsanto and its bought ally, the Canola Growers Assoc (who also intervened in the Supreme Court on the side of Monsanto) have a great deal of influence in, for example, the sub-committee responsible for which varieties of canola will get registered. Today I read with dismay, that the PRRCG “voted … to dissolve the committee, effective April 1, 2005, and shift full powers to its four crop-specific subcommittees, allowing them to become independent recommending committees.” This is all part of legislative changes brought forward by Agriculture Canada that provide “rights” to Plant Breeders (which now includes large chemical-biotech corporations). It is part of the attempt to “own” seeds which are the basis of our food supply.

3.  In the battle over the ownership of seeds (against RR Wheat) we learned that there is a great deal of research from different countries and in regard to different crops, but with a common denominator – the application of the herbicide glyphosate. The research shows there is a higher incidence of FUSARIUM in crops treated with glyphosate. Also in the literature, the incidence of fusarium is on the increase and spreading, especially in some locations on the prairies.

4.  The introduction of herbicide tolerant crops (resistant to roundup/glphosate) leads to the use of MORE herbicides. That is researched and documented, common sense tells you the same thing, as does the experience of farmers. They now spray a field with glyphosate to kill all but the plants that are resistant to the chemical. RR Canola is now a weed. Farmers must go back and apply 2,4D to kill the plants that withstand the glyphosate/roundup application.

5.  Recently I read where Monsanto is working on the development of crops that are resistant to fusarium.  (Why not stop spraying them with the chemicals that weaken the plants AND the environment?  Strong plants have strong immune systems that do not succumb to disease.)

6.  April 1 this year it was confirmed that I have active tuberculosis (which is fortunately “encapsulated” outside the lung and not contagious, so not an immediate threat).

7.  Internet information shows that TB is on the rise world-wide. I think it kills a million people world-wide.

8.  With the support of the doctor in charge of the Tuberculosis Control Centre, it was arranged that I would work with conventional medicine (the TB Control Centre) AND a naturopathic doctor who came highly recommended.

9.  The naturopathic doctor looked for why it was that my immune system hadn’t successfully defended against the TB (many people carry inactive TB with no ill effect).  He diagnosed an internal fungal infestation, for which I was treated with anti-fungals to kill the overgrowth of myco-toxin-producing fungus in my body.  I also had to keep to a diet that would not potentially introduce more myco toxins, or feed the fungus (sugar, etc.). Think of candida, a yeast (fungal) infection (I happened to have different fungal infection).

10.  In learning about fungal infestations and the myco toxins they produce,  from a book on the sources and effects of fungal infestations and myco toxins in the human body I came to understand that fusarium in crops isn’t just a problem for farmers, it’s a very real problem for my own health.

11.  After 4 months of treatment for a fungal infestation the symptoms of tuberculosis (“the sweats”) are gone and my vitality has returned.

12.  An interesting note from Slim: when people die, by law the corpse must be quickly treated or disposed of.  The reason?   when you die your immune system shuts down. The bad organisms in your body then enjoy a heyday. Inactive organisms come alive and rapidly multiply in the absence of that immune system.   I (Sandra speaking now) recall reading a book that put forward the idea that you ARE your immune system.   Without it, there is no you!

13.  Extension:   That’s why disease becomes rampant in the aftermath of the death surrounding hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, mud-slides, etc.

2005-09-12 Monsanto – Video sows seeds of controversy, Univ of Manitoba

 Food, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Genetically Modified, Take back the University  No Responses »
Sep 122005
 

This is chilling.  Suitors to corporations, University’s role in control of information.

Two researchers accuse the University of Manitoba of blocking for three years the release of their video exploring the risks of genetically modified crops, while at the same courting funds from biotech companies.

I never dreamt that when we started following the work of Ian Mauro it would come to this.

BACKGROUND: 

–   2004-02-19  Prairie farmers consulted on GM wheat,  U of M student leading independent study. Winnipeg Free Press

“University of Manitoba PhD student Ian Mauro is distributing 11,000 questionnaires to rural addresses in high-wheat-growing areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Farmers will be asked whether they would grow Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready Wheat, which is resistant to the company’s popular Roundup weed killer.”

 

–   we circulated email about ensuing documentary by Ian Mauro,   2005-01-25 Transgenics (GMO’s): New documentary, “Genetic Matrix”

 

–   I forwarded some of our information to Ian:

  • Bill C-11, Whistle-blower legislation.
  • Plant Breeders’ Responsibilities, not “Rights” (Proposed changes to Plant Breeders’ Rights Act raise serious issues of GOVERNANCE (In whose interest?)
  • HEALTH (Our food supply. Health is dependent upon food supply. What is criteria for seed selection?)
  • ENVIRONMENT  (Introduced species do not have enemies. They proliferate and become weeds.) and
  • OWNERSHIP OF LIFE FORMS, the right of citizens to save seeds.

 

UPDATE:  (Thanks to Mike)

Mon 12 Sep 2005

Winnipeg Free Press

Video sows seeds of controversy

by Helen Fallding

 

Two researchers accuse the University of Manitoba of blocking for three years the release of their video exploring the risks of genetically modified crops, while at the same courting funds from biotech companies.

 

The case is being compared to a University of Toronto scandal over the suppression of drug research concerns.

 

University of Manitoba environment professor Stéphane McLachlan and his PhD student Ian Mauro completed a feature-length documentary in

2002 with help from independent Winnipeg filmmaker Jim Sanders.

 

It is based on interviews with Prairie farmers about their experiences — good and bad — with genetically-modified canola.

 

But the Seeds of Change video has never been screened because the university and the researchers, who share the copyright, have been unable to negotiate an agreement on its release.

 

“We’ve had people knocking on our door wanting this,” said Mauro, citing interest from Denmark, Australia and the U.S.

 

The university originally demanded assurances it would not be liable if anyone sued. One insurer demanded a $50,000 deductible for any lawsuits by crop marketer Monsanto, which has a reputation for protecting its interests vigorously through the courts.

 

The company is featured in the documentary because of its legal battle with Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser and its development of genetically-modified wheat.

 

‘Never seen (the video)’

 

“Obviously, we’ve never seen (the video), so I’m not sure how these guys could assume that we would sue them,” Monsanto Canada spokeswoman Trish Jordan said.

 

Now that a private investor has pulled out of the Seeds of Change project and the filmmakers have made it clear they don’t intend to make a profit, the lawsuit issue has apparently been dropped by the university.

 

“I’ve seen (the video) and I think it’s fair. It’s not a biased kind of thing,” said Alan Simms, who represented the university in early negotiations before going on to head the university’s Smartpark research complex.

 

Simms said preliminary negotiations with Monsanto Canada over moving its Canadian headquarters to a new $6.5-million building in Smartpark did not begin until after his involvement with the documentary issue ended.

 

But McLachlan said the university is still demanding control over where and when the video is shown, while at the same time requiring a disclaimer indicating the project has nothing to do with the university. An independent lawyer advised him not to sign the agreement the university proposed.

 

University spokesman John Danakas would not say what restrictions the university would place on how the video is screened, because those details have not yet been discussed with the researchers. The university wants to make sure the documentary is only used for educational purposes, he said.

 

Filed grievance

 

McLachlan has filed a grievance through the faculty association claiming the university is infringing on his academic freedom — and even his responsibility as a public servant — to disseminate his research results as he sees fit.

 

If he and Mauro wrote a book about their interviews with the farmers, or even published the documentary transcript, the university administration would have no say. But a university copyright bylaw originally written to govern the use of taped lectures says the university has 50 per cent ownership of video and audio recordings by staff.

 

University of Manitoba ethics professor Arthur Schafer noted that universities are sometimes reluctant to offend corporate donors who compensate for government underfunding.

 

But Danakas said the lengthy negotiations over the video have more to do with the complexities of new media and the involvement of an outside filmmaker.

 

Sanders, meanwhile, is tired of waiting for permission to release the increasingly dated video.

 

In an article in the current issue of Canadian Dimension magazine, the independent filmmaker promised to put the documentary on his website for free download next month.

 

The Canadian Association of University Teachers has also taken up the case and plans to help McLachlan release the video in Winnipeg this fall — with or without the university’s permission. The professor recently received tenure, which gives him job security he did not have when negotiations with the university began.

 

CAUT executive director James Turk compared the case to the University of Toronto’s failure to support Dr. Nancy Olivieri when drug company Apotex tried to prevent her from going public with her concerns about one of their drugs. The company was also negotiating with the university over a huge donation.

 

Turk said stalling by the university amounts to suppression of research-based discussion of a compelling public issue — the very reason universities exist.

 

Equally vigilant

 

“We hope this never happens to another researcher.”

 

He said the association would be equally vigilant if the documentary focused on the benefits of genetically-modified crops.

 

Mauro said he has spent more time fighting to get the video released than he did interviewing farmers.

 

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, which helped fund the documentary, encourages researchers to disseminate their work in a format accessible to the general public and has raised no objection to Seeds of Change.

 

helen.fallding@freepress.mb.ca

 

Video summary

 

Seeds of Change: Farmers, Biotechnology and the New Face of Agriculture

 

Summary: The video documentary explores the impacts genetically modified canola is having on farmers and rural communities in the Canadian Prairies, outlining benefits, but paying special attention to the risks. The voices of farmers have sometimes been missing in the public debate between anti-GM activists and the biotech industry.

 

Scientists critical of GM crops are interviewed, including activist David Suzuki, University of Guelph professor Anne Clark and Indian activist Vandana Shiva. Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace activist turned advocate for GM crops, also appears in the film.

 

Monsanto, one of the main marketers of genetically modified crops, declined to participate in the project.

 

Date: The documentary was completed in 2002, but has not yet been released.

 

Length: 70 minutes

 

Budget: Less than $200,000, including grants from the federal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council.

 

Created by: University of Manitoba PhD student Ian Mauro, independent Winnipeg filmmaker Jim Sanders and University of Manitoba professor Stéphane McLachlan. Other films by activist filmmaker Sanders include The Real Thing: Coca, Democracy and Rebellion in Bolivia, which screened last year at Cinematheque.

 

Benefits of genetically-modified crops mentioned in the video: yield increases, profitability, better weed control, reduced tillage and fuel savings.

 

Risks highlighted: contamination of non-GM seed, GM crops as weeds in other fields, resistance to herbicides, loss of markets in Europe, lawsuits against farmers for patent violations, impact on zero-till agriculture and organic farming. Similar issues were raised in an award-winning Free Press series on genetically-modified wheat in 2002.

 

Excerpt: “You have the extreme groups on the anti-GMO. You also have big business, which I don’t trust all the time — or ever — telling you something else on the other side. We’re stuck in the middle.”

(Farmer from Starbuck, Manitoba.)

 

Potential audience: farmers, academic conferences, agriculture policy makers, film festivals and alternative theatres. The potential for international distribution is limited now that independent funder Angband has pulled out following delays in releasing the video.

 

 

 

2005-08-05 But what’s happening in the forest? (Science under siege) & Successful Revolutions

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Take back the University  No Responses »
Aug 052005
 

The article “SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE” (below)  in its excellence was making me depressed – so many problems demanding remedy.

My sub-conscious went to work on it while I slept.   In the morning “Science under siege” downloaded into my consciousness, not in its isolation, but connected to other happenings in the world.   Perception changed:  the article actually represents very positive developments.   The “COMMENT” below explains.

AND THEN!    enter delightful serendipity – “SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS” – received before I could email SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE to you.  In one short paragraph “Successful revolutions” says it better than my “comment”.

Thanks to Elaine and Eduard who both submitted “Science under siege” – – not to depress us!

Cheers!

Sandra

===================================

CONTENTS:

(1)  COMMENT

(2)  SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE, RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #822

(3)  SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS, E.F. SCHUMACHER FOUNDATION

———————————–

(1)  COMMENT

The article SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE tweaks an internal “fretful” chord that I usually silence.

THE FRET:  our society is treading on a thin edge when science falls into the hole of disrepute it is digging.

But step back and you will see a pattern that is deliberate in its repetition.  It is not that we fight battle after battle, all the same and going nowhere.  We are methodically chipping away at the institutions and thinking that do not serve us well.  Growing numbers of people participate.

We live in extremely interesting times.  Stepping back you see the de-construction and reconstruction work that is happening, you see the potential for the beauty of the forest to emerge.

  • “Advertising corrodes science”    Aug 13, 2004 we circulated information re ANGELL MARCIA, former New England Journal of Medicine editor, now senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School and her book “The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It” (Random House, 2004).

 

  • Doctors and scientists are lobbying to require that pharmaceutical companies must register all research into their products at the time the research commences.  And the results must then be reported. Currently, if there are 4 negative test results and one positive, the pharmaceutical/chemical companies will only report the one positive test (which could be a manipulated test done by a scientist who is on their payroll).

 

  • In “Selling Sickness” on the “Nature of Things” (Sept 30 and Oct 3/04) David Suzuki “explores the unhealthy relationships between society, medical science and the pharmaceutical industry as they promote their new miracle cures – selling not just drugs but also the latest diseases that go with them.”

 

  • We circulated Globe & Mail articles with related condemnations from the Canadian Medical Association.

 

The article SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE nicely packages what we know.

SO WHY DO I FRET ABOUT CORRUPTED SCIENCE?

The Dark Ages is a metaphor most commonly used in relation to the European Middle Ages which spanned 900 years; written records all but evaporated in smoke.  The monasteries in Ireland are credited with the maintenance of knowledge during this period and later re-introduction back into continental Europe. “Dark Age” is used generally to emphasize the violence or difficulty of a particular period in history.  The erosion of science is, to me, skating on thin ice over a pool of ignorance which I equate with dark age chaos and fear.

In our network we seem to be banging up against trees and into dense thickets of hawthorne spikes, whirling under relentless attack from new legislation that is in the interests of transnational corporations, attacks on water, air, food, forests, environment, health and spirit.

We talked about Jane Jacobs’ DARK AGE AHEAD, Jared Diamond’s COLLAPSE, John Ralston Saul’s book THE COLLAPSE OF GLOBALISM, all recent books from long-established, reputable authors.  The best place to find hope is to put your head in the sand!

 

WHY IS DESPAIR NOW REPLACED BY EXHILARATION AND HOPE?

Kidding aside, look to CONTEXT – there you will discover hope.  Fit SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE into the larger context.  A decade ago it was recognized that the pillar stone churches were losing their influence.  Then 50% of marriages end in divorce.  Five years ago we felt powerless against entrenched problems.  Today we tell the Federal Government:  if you won’t do your job in protecting the environment and us from toxic synthetic chemicals, we will take back our power and do it ourselves (70 – – became more than 100 – –  communities in Canada and the Province of Quebec passed laws prohibiting the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes).  Roundup Resistant wheat was halted. Outraged citizens forced the Feds to provide an entry visa to Ethiopian scientist Dr. Tewolde to attend the Biosafety Protocol meetings in Montreal. The Federal Government is losing ITS power and control.

…  what’s the bigger picture?  Step-by-step we are taking apart the corrupted foundations of our society that no longer serve us well. “Science” is one of the rotting foundations that requires attention.

… why exhilaration?  Because it offers a huge opportunity, of our choosing.  Yes, there is the potential to descend into a dark age.  But if we stick with it, and if we have a vision of what we want to replace the thoroughly worn out, we can emerge into a much improved place.  Care must be taken to preserve that which has served us well.  Not everything requires replacement.  Already we are recognizing the value of and polishing up our neglected communities.  They have not failed us, ever.  Together we are strong.  We fight the good fight and will prevail.

/Sandra

– – – – – – – – – — –  — – – – –  – – – –

(2)  SCIENCE UNDER SIEGE, RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #822

http://www.rachel.org

July 21, 2005

By Tim Montague

An ill wind is gusting through the halls of science these days: faked research, suppression of unwelcome results, corruption of science advisory panels, university research falling under the influence of corporate sponsors, and many other conflicts of interest.

It’s as if science were under siege.

For at least the last thirty years science has strongly supported the positions taken by environmental and public health advocates. The proponents of ‘business as usual’ have claimed that chemical and nuclear technologies have created only minor problems or no problems whatsoever — but time after time science has shown otherwise. They said global warming was a “chicken little” fantasy. They said the Earth’s ozone shield couldn’t possible be harmed. They argued that asbestos was benign. They said lead in paint and gasoline was entirely safe. They said harm from hormone-disrupting chemicals was imaginary. They said a little radioactivity might actually improve your health. They said human health was constantly and consistently improving —  until scientific study revealed increases in birth defects, asthma, diabetes, attention deficits, nervous system disorders, diseases of the reproductive system, immune system disorders, cancer in children, and on and on. In each of these cases science showed that the advocates of ‘business as usual’ were simply wrong.

Science cannot solve all our problems or tell us everything we need to know, but it remains a powerful tool for reaching agreement about the nature of reality (at least for those parts of reality amenable to scientific inquiry). For the past 30 years, science has shown us unmistakably that we are destroying the natural systems (and bodily defences) that we ourselves depend upon, so ‘business as usual’ is a dead end.

Perhaps this is why science itself is now under systematic attack by corporate interests. Whatever the underlying reasons, it seems clear that industry has lined up to discredit science, control the research agenda, take over the apparatus for scholarly publication and otherwise undermine the scientific and democratic pursuit of knowledge in the public interest. Perhaps they see it as their only hope of defending themselves against the overwhelming scientific evidence that — if accepted by the public — would end ‘business as usual’ and set us on a new precautionary path.

The Los Angeles Times reported July 11 that allegations of faked scientific findings increased 50% between 2003 and 2004.[1] But the Times also noted that the federal Office of Research Integrity cannot keep up with the rising tide of scientific fakery because it’s budget is far too small. The office received 274 allegations of scientific fakery in 2004, but was able to complete only 23 investigations.

Corporate suppression of data is now so routine that no one raises an eyebrow. In the wake of an EPA advisory panel classifying the Teflon chemical C8 (ammonium perfluorooctanoate, or PFOA) as a “likely carcinogen,” reporter Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette learned that in 1981 DuPont initiated a study to learn whether exposure to C8 caused birth defects in the children of Teflon factory workers. When the study found an excess of birth defects in the children, the study was abandoned and the results filed away without notifying the federal government. Under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) companies must tell the EPA when they find information “that reasonably supports the conclusion that [a chemical] presents a substantial risk of injury to health.”[2]

Generating Doubt — OSHA Gives Up

It is common practice for industry to wage scientific and public relations war against the regulatory agencies whose job is to protect public health. The Wall Street Journal reports that PR firm executives openly admit to hiring university professors to put their names on ghost-written letters to the editor.[3] The letters are written by hacks paid to put a corporate “spin” on the science, and the experts sign their names to lend credence to the spin (and to earn a fat fee).

Another common practice these days is “seeding the scientific literature” with bogus results, to create doubt and confusion. In recent years, corporations have seeded the literature with false findings related to tobacco, lead, mercury, asbestos, vinyl chloride, chromium, nickel, benzene, beryllium and others. They cook the numbers, publish misleading articles in obscure journals, and then cite their own work to create confusion and doubt.

This strategy has brought the federal government to its knees. The case of beryllium is illuminating. Beryllium is a strong, light metal used in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Beryllium dust is a potent lung toxicant and carcinogen.  In 1999 the Department of Energy (DOE) set beryllium exposure levels for federal workers that are ten times as strict as the general industrial exposure standard set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The OSHA standard was set based on data available in 1949.  When OSHA proposed to tighten its safety standard for beryllium exposure, to bring it into line with the new standard set for federal workers, industry was able to create enough doubt and confusion that OSHA backed off and concluded that “more research was needed” before a tighter standard could be justified.

A writer in Scientific American concludes that “OSHA administrators have simply recognized that establishing new standards is so time and labor-intensive, and will inevitably call forth such orchestrated opposition from industry, that it is not worth expending the agency’s limited resources on the effort.”[4]  Creating confusion and doubt pays off.

Science in the Private Interest

Chester Douglass — chairman of the Department of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology at Harvard — is being investigated for concluding that there is no relationship between fluoride in drinking water and bone cancer in children. He himself cites research — described as the most rigorous to date — concluding the opposite. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which funded the research with a $1.3 million dollar grant, and Harvard are investigating. Why would a public health expert skew his results? Does it matter that Dr. Douglass is the editor of The Colgate Oral Health Report, a quarterly newsletter published by Colgate-Palmolive, which makes fluoridated toothpaste?[5] Professor Sheldon Krimsky, author of Science in the Private Interest, warns that science in the public interest will increasingly lose out as the entire system favors a tight collaboration between industry, government and academia.[6]

Academic scientists are under increasing pressure to find commercial applications for their research so that their institution can patent, license and profit from the work. Corporate partnerships and lucrative consulting deals inject big money into the equation. In 1996, Sheldon Krimsky analyzed the biomedical literature and found in 34% of the articles, at least one of the chief authors had a financial interest in the research. None of these financial interests was disclosed in the journals. Krimsky said the 34% figure was probably an underestimate because he couldn’t check stock ownership or corporate consulting fees paid to researchers.[7] No wonder allegations of misconduct by U.S. scientists are at an all time high. [1] A recent survey of several thousand scientists found that 33% had committed at least one of ten serious misbehaviors — like falsifying data or changing conclusions in response to pressure from a funding source.  Six percent admitted to failing to present data that contradicted their own previous research.[8]

FDA, NIH Broken

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are now so thoroughly beholden to industry that they are broken, unable to perform their duties to protect the public.

The New York Times reports “the White House and Congress forced a marriage between the agency [FDA] and industry years ago for the rich dowry that industry offered.” Dr. Janet Woodcock, deputy commissioner of operations at the FDA said that the drug approval process is “pretty much broken down… and has been for some time.”[9] The FDA has become so focused on approving new drugs at the expense of monitoring the ones already on the market that thousands of people have been put in harm’s way by drugs like Vioxx. One FDA analyst estimated that Vioxx caused between 88,000 and 139,000 heart attacks — killing somewhere between 26,400 and 55,600 people (assuming 30 to 40 percent of heart attacks were fatal).[4, 10]

An investigation into drug company ties with NIH scientists found that more than half of those investigated had violated existing policies meant to limit conflict of interest. Director of the NIH Elias Zerhouni said, “We discovered cases of employees who consulted with research entities without seeking required approval, consulted in areas that appeared to conflict with their official duties, or consulted in situations where the main benefit was the ability of the employer to invoke the name of NIH as an affiliation.” To his credit, Zerhouni ushered in reforms banning NIH employees from accepting drug company consulting fees or stock. But congress is now pressuring him to relent because NIH employees have objected to the restrictions.[11]

To their credit, many courageous government scientists are now speaking out about the corruption of science and there have been a number of high profile firings and resignations ranging from the Fish and Wildlife Service to NASA where scientists are blowing the whistle on government abuses of solid science.[12]

Some 6,000 scientists including 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 135 members of the National Academy of Sciences have signed the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making.”

The Bush government is certainly not the first to abuse science, but they have raised the stakes and injected ideology like no previous administration. The result is scientific advisory panels stacked with industry hacks, agencies ignoring credible panel recommendations and concerted efforts to undermine basic environmental and conservation biology science.[12]   In the words of the UCS, “The actions by the Bush administration threaten to undermine the morale and compromise the integrity of  scientists working for and advising America’s world-class governmental research institutions and agencies… To do so carries serious implications for the health, safety, and environment of all Americans.”[12]

We have merely scratched the surface here.  The corruption of the scientific enterprise has proceeded very far. In some areas of scientific endeavor, there are almost no independent researchers left because nearly every scientist in the field is funded by corporations with an axe to grind.

Agricultural biotechnology (genetically engineered food) is one such field of inquiry. The flip side of that coin is that certain avenues of research have been nearly eliminated by the funding sources — for example, researchers say funds to study the health effects of biotech foods are now almost non- existent. [13]

What does this all mean for science and society?  The public’s trust in science will most certainly continue to erode. When this happens, even honest science is tarnished and loses its power to protect nature and public health because the public doesn’t believe it. Honest science in the public interest is becoming an endangered species. And America slides further from democracy by and for the people.

==========

[1] Martha Mendoza, “Allegations of Fake Research Hit New High,” THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, July 11, 2005.

[2] Ken Ward Jr., “DuPont Proposed, Dropped ’81 Study of C8, Birth Defects,” THE CHARLESTON GAZETTE, July 10, 2005.

[3] Michael Schroeder, “Some Professors Take Payments To Express Views,” THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, December 10, 2004, pg. B1.

[4] David Michaels, “Doubt Is Their Product, Industry groups are fighting government regulation by fomenting scientific uncertainty,”SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (June 2005) Vol. 29 No. 6, pg. 96, 6p.

[5] Juliet Eilperin, “Fluoride-Cancer Link May Have Been Hidden,” THE WASHINGTON POST, July 14, 2005.

[6] Sheldon Krimsky, SCIENCE IN THE PRIVATE INTEREST; HAS THE LURE OF PROFITS CORRUPTED BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH? (New York, Rowman & Littlefield 2003). ISBN 074251479X.

[7] Sheldon Krimsky and L.S. Rothenberg, “Conflict of Interest Policies in Science and Medical Journals: Editorial Practices and Author Disclosures,” SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ETHICS (2001) Vol. 7, pgs. 205-218.

[8] Meredith Wadman, “One in Three Scientists Confesses to Having Sinned,” NATURE (June 9, 2005) Vol. 435, pgs.718-719.

[9] Gardiner Harris, “Drug Safety System Is Broken, a Top F.D.A. Official Says,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, June 9, 2005.

[10] The World Health Organization estimates that 39% of all heart attacks globally are fatal. INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF CARDIOVASCULAR RISK: report of a WHO meeting, (World Health Organization, Geneva, 9-12 July 2002).

[11] David Willman, “NIH Inquiry Shows Widespread Ethical Lapses, Lawmaker Says,” THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, July 14, 2005.

[12] SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY IN POLICYMAKING; INVESTIGATION INTO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S MISUSE OF SCIENCE (Cambridge, Mass.: Union of Concerned Scientists, February 2004). And SEE SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY IN POLICYMAKING; FURTHER INVESTIGATION (Cambridge, Mass.: Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2004), both available at:  http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/index.cfm   (Link no longer valid)

[13] “Monsanto research causes concern about biotech corn,”Canadian Press June 23, 2005.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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(3)  SUCCESSFUL REVOLUTIONS, E.F. SCHUMACHER FOUNDATION

—–Original Message—–

From: E.F. Schumacher Society [mailto:efssociety AT  smallisbeautiful.org]

Sent: July 30, 2005

Subject: Successful Revolutions    

 

Those who know me, know of my great love for Russian Literature:  Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol‹trusted sources of insight into the struggle of human beings learning to conduct themselves responsibly on earth and with each other.  Among these giants in Russian literature is Peter Kropotkin, known best for his “Mutual Aid,” describing the Buryat people of Lake Baikal in Siberia and their unique social structure.  In times of need, the independent Buryat tribes band together in a spirit of cooperation to resolve problems without resorting to hierarchal command.  Kropotkin’s autobiography, “Memoirs of a Revolutionist” first published as a series of essays in the 1898  “Atlantic Monthly“, spills over with relevancy for today. 

     “Socialist papers have often a tendency to become mere annals of complaint about existing conditions.  The oppression of the laborers in the mine, the factory, and the field is related; the misery and sufferings of  the workers during strikes are told in vivid pictures; their helplessness in the struggle against employers is insisted upon: and this succession of hopeless efforts, related in the paper, exercise a most depressing influence upon the reader.  To counterbalance that effect, the editor has to rely chiefly upon burning words by means of which he tries to inspire his readers with energy and faith.  I thought, on the contrary, that a revolutionary paper must be, above all, a record of those symptoms which everywhere announce the coming of a new era, the germination of new forms of social life, the growing revolt against antiquated institutions.  These symptoms should be watched, brought together in their intimate connection, and so grouped as to show to the hesitating minds of the greater number the invisible and often unconscious support which advanced ideas find everywhere, when a revival of thought takes place in society.  To make one feel sympathy with the throbbing of the human heart all over the world, with its revolt against age-long injustice, with its attempts at working out new forms of life,– this should be the chief duty of a revolutionary paper. It is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions.” 

     from MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST by Peter Kropotkin, Grove Press edition

     Following is a list of upcoming events conducted or sponsored by the E. F. Schumacher Society.  They are gatherings of hope, not despair–announcing the coming of a new era  Join us.

Susan Witt, Executive Director

E. F. Schumacher Society

140 Jug End Road

Great Barrington, MA 01230 USA

www.smallisbeautiful.org

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL

E. F. SCHUMACHER LECTURES

With Nancy Jack Todd and Tom Linzey

October 22, 2005

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

www.smallisbeautiful.org

FIRST ANNUAL BIONEERS BY THE BAY:

CONNECTING FOR CHANGE   With Wangari Maathai, Juliet Schor, Susan Witt, John Lash, Gunter Pauli, and others.

October 14-16, 2005

Dartmouth, Massachusetts

www.bioneersbythebay.org   (Link no longer valid)

THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL NORTHEAST ORGANIC FARMING ASSOCIATION SUMMER CONFERENCE

With keynote speaker Satish Kumar

August 11-14, 2005

Amherst, Massachusetts

www.nofamass.org

CONFERENCE ON ETHICAL COMMERCE

With Jonathan Rosenthal and others

Sept 23, 2005

University Park, Pennsylvania

www.ethicalcommerce.org

2005-08-02 GMO’s Monsanto applies for global pig patent

 Food, Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Aug 022005
 

Monsanto never ceases to amaze!

Convergence of GMOs and Factory Farming.

Thanks to Elaine, and to Dr. Ann Clark from the University of Guelph:

Greenpeace reveals Biotech giant Monsanto application for global pig patent

Amsterdam/New Delhi, 2 August 2005 – Greenpeace researchers have uncovered patent application from the biotech giant Monsanto which, if granted, would give the company world-wide control over breeding of pigs and their off spring. Greenpeace warns that Monsanto’s aggressive patent practices covering genetically modified (GM) crops and normal seeds threaten biodiversity, endanger world food security and ruin the livelihoods of farmers and calls for the patent applications to be withdrawn.

Speaking at an international conference on Biodiversity, Biopiracy and Patents (1), being held in New Delhi, Eric Gall of Greenpeace International said: “Monsanto is once again trying to control the food we grow.  This is patenting life. This is abuse of patent laws and it is an outright offence to farmers world-wide.”

Filed at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva (2) the patent application stakes a claim on pig rights in more than 160 countries, including the UK, Germany, the US, Russia, Brazil, Australia, China and India. If granted, US-based Monsanto will be in a position to prevent breeders and farmers from breeding pigs with certain characteristics or methods of breeding, or force them to pay royalties. The patents cover methods of conventional breeding and also the screening for naturally occurring genetic conditions that can make pigs grow faster.

Monsanto wants to enter a growing market with an increasing consumer demand for meat products globally. The Monsanto patents pretend to speed up breeding for higher economical profit. The hitch is that these pigs and their descendants would all be patented – and royalties would have to be paid to Monsanto.

Monsanto is already infamous for its aggressive marketing of GM crops such as GM soy and GM maize, as well as for its far-reaching monopolies on all kind of seeds (3). Greenpeace wants Monsanto to drop patent applications on farm animals and seeds, and stop the abuse of patent law, bio-piracy, animal patents and seed monopolies.

Greenpeace also launched a cyberaction against Monsanto today.

“If this patent gets granted, Monsanto could control the normal breeding of pigs to a large extent, without any real invention behind it. The experience farmers have with this company so far (4) let them expect a further shocking exercise of squeezing royalties and suing farmers on global scale,” warned Gall. “This patent application is so absurd we wonder what Monsanto will come up with next?”

For more information Eric Gall, Greenpeace European Unit GMO policy adviser, mobile +91 98 116 82601 (in India)  and +32 (0)496 161 582 Christoph Then, GE campaigner, Greenpeace International, mobile +49 171 878 0832  Judit L. Kalovits, media officer, Greenpeace International, mobile +31 621 296 914

Notes to Editors

(1) “EU – India Dialogue cum Strategy Session on Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights” conference between the European Union and India is held in New Delhi, India on the 1-2 August 2005.

(2) Patent applications WO 2005/017204 and WO 2005/015989 were filed in February 2005 at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. There are more than 160 countries mentioned where the patent should be granted, such as in Europe, Russian Federation, Asia (India, China, Philippines) America (USA, Brazil, Mexico),  Australia and New Zealand. The WIPO itself can only receive applications, but does not grant any patents; it will forward the applications to regional patent offices in the US, Europe or elsewhere. At this stage the patent are not granted yet, but they could be accepted for example under European and US Regulation.

For the full document see:   (link no longer valid)   http://www.wipo.int/cgi-pct/guest/ifetch5?ENG+PCT-ALL.vdb+14+1147748-SCORE+256+4+20872+BASICHTML-ENG+1+1+1+25+SEP-0/HITNUM,B,,SCORE+2005015989

(3) The company has spent about 10 billions US $ over the last ten years to buy a large range of companies involved in seed and agricultural production.  According to Greenpeace, such patents and monopolies lead to a decrease of biodiversity in agriculture, endanger global food security and put pressure on farmers’ livelihoods worldwide. For more on patents at   (link no longer valid)http://archive.greenpeace.org/geneng/reports/pat/intrpat.htm

(4) The way Monsanto tries to control its genetically manipulated seeds such as herbicide resistant soybeans by taking farmers to court has already led to worldwide controversies and protests. Recently it was made public that Monsanto even tries to get additional royalties for harvests from Argentinean soybean farmers exported to Europe by filing court cases in Denmark, claiming the cargo of shipments was their intellectual property.

Take Action against Monsanto at http://www.greenpeace.org/no-pig-patent.   (Link no longer valid)

*************************************************************

BACKGROUND INFO

Monsanto goes pig monopoly

The US company Monsanto filed two global patent applications on pigs and related breeding methods.

The patents WO 2005/017204 and WO 2005/015989 were published in February 2005 at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva. There are more than 160 countries mentioned where the patent should be granted, such as in Europe, Russian Federation, Asia (India, China, Philippines) America (USA, Brazil, Mexico), Australia and New Zealand. WIPO itself can only receive applications, but does not grant any patents; it will forward the applications to regional patent offices in the US, Europe or elsewhere. At this stage the patent are not granted yet, but they could be accepted for example under European and US Regulation. (For the full claim please see: (link no longer valid)   http://www.wipo.int/cgi-pct/guest/ifetch5?ENG+PCT-ALL.vdb+14+1147748-SCORE+256+4+20872+BASICHTML-ENG+1+1+1+25+SEP-0/HITNUM,B,,SCORE+2005015989 )

The patents are based on simple procedures, but are incredibly broad in its claims.

In WO 2005/015989 Monsanto is describing general methods of pig breeding, such as normal crossing and selecting methods, using artificial insemination and other methods which are already in use.

The main so-called “invention” is a certain way to combine these elements to speed up breeding for animals that are better in meat quality, health or in other economical aspects.

The patent covers the idea how to combine the different elements of breeding but also claims the whole animals and even herds of animals used for breeding. Some quotes from the patent claims (see page 53 ff):

Claim 43 reads: “A target herd produced using a method according to … ”

Claim 53 reads: “A swine production (SP) herd produced using …”

This means not only a certain of breeding practises will be monopolized, but the whole animals as such will be subjected to the patent.

WO 2005/017204 refers to genetic diagnosis of pigs for a certain gene, which is related to faster growth. There is a certain variation of a natural occurring gene sequence, related to gaining weight that was first identified in mice and humans. Monsanto wants to use this gene for screening pig populations to find animals with conditions that are likely to enhance pork production by better uptake and conversion rate of feed. But again, not only the method is claimed but also the specific genetic information related to the breeding method and the whole animals are subjected to the claims (see page 37 ff):

Claim 16 reads: “A pig off spring produced by a method…”

Claim 17 reads: “A pig herd having an increased frequency of a specific …gene…”

Claim 23 reads: “A pig population produced by the method…”

Claim 30 reads: “A swine herd produced by a method…”

This means the pigs and their off spring, as well as the use of the genetic information for breeding will be monopolized by company of Monsanto.

These patents have to be seen in context of Monsanto´s general strategy of gaining monopolies at large extent in the context of all levels of food production. Traditionally the company earns its money with agrochemicals. In the last ten years the company spent about 10 billion US dollars to buy up seed producers and companies in other sector of agricultural business. Last big coup was the acquisition of biggest producer of vegetable seeds, Seminis, for about 1 billion USD. Monsanto is holder of extremely broad patents on seeds, most but not all of them related to GMOs. Monsanto also claimed for example patents on traditional bred wheat from India and soy plants from China. Many of the patents are not only directed to use of seeds but all uses of plants and harvest. For example Monsanto has a European patent on genetically manipulated soybeans, which covers cultivation and all parts of the plants. On the basis of this patent Monsanto filed court cases against Argentinean soy producers in Europe who import their harvest by shipments, to force them to pay additional royalties.

Several patents even cover use of the crops in food and feed. By claiming monopolies on pig production, the company tries to enter another area of food production with high economical expectations. As it is explained in patent application WO 2005/017204: “The economic impact of the industry on rural America is immense. Annual farm sales typically exceed $11 billion, while the retail value of pork sold to consumers reaches $38 billion each year.”

[From this perspective it could be expected Monsanto is filing patents on retailers selling their soybeans and pigs in the very near future.]

The overall perspective is dramatic. Very few agrochemical multinationals such as Monsanto already control international seeds market more or less (Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont). By claiming global monopoly right patents throughout the whole food chain farmers and food producers get dependent on them to an extent which is unique in history. Food and seed supply ends up in the hands a few companies, which at the same try to feed force the world with its genetically manipulated crops.

Greenpeace demands a global ban of patents on seeds and farm animals as well as on related genetic resources.

**************************************************

Eric Darier

Responsable de la campagne OGM

Greenpeace

454, ave. Laurier Est, 3e étage

Montreal H2J 1E7

Tél. (514) 933-0021 x 15

Cell. (514) 605-6497

Fax. (514) 933-1017

Skype: ericdarier

—

Ann E. Ann Clark, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Plant Agriculture

University of Guelph

Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1

(519) 824-4120 Ext. 52508

http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/research/homepages/eclark/

2005-06-26 GMO’s Great! EU upholds national bans on GMOs, NY Times

 Food, Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Jun 262005
 

Thanks to Hart and the New York Times. 

(Aside – In response to the line about Canada’s participation in the challenge by the WTO against the EU over its right to set standards related to its food supply:  Maybe I will write the WTO to tell them that the position of the Canadian Government is not that of its citizens!  Societies are not ruled by economics (trade agreements).  Cultural, ethical, environmental, and social considerations trump.  The global ECONOMIC model has been tested and shown to be a miserable failure.  (On the other hand, the global COMMUNITY model is very successful.)  Citizens have moved beyond the economic globalization that the Canadian Government and transnational corporate interests are still trying to jam down our throats.  That Canada continues to be a part of the WTO challenge is an international embarrassment. The WTO should be embarrassed by the challenge, too. 

The EU Commissioners support GMOs, some individual member states oppose them.  Note the use of fear as a tool to bring about compliance, used by those who hold power:  “… further delays would weaken our position at the WTO,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.”  ) 

/Sandra

================================================= 

EU ministers uphold sovereign right to ban GMOs  

By Jeremy Smith  |  June 24, 2005 

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – EU environment ministers dealt a blow on Friday to efforts to get more GMO crops grown in Europe as they agreed to uphold eight national bans on genetically modified maize and rapeseed types. 

The vote was a sharp rebuff for the European Union’s executive Commission, which had wanted the ministers to endorse an order to lift the bans within 20 days. EU law provides for national GMO bans if the government can justify the prohibition. 

It also played into the hands of the United States, Canada and Argentina, whose suit against the European Union at the World Trade Organization alleges that EU biotech policy harms trade and is not founded on science. 

The EU’s 1998-2004 biotech ban, they say, was illegal.

The WTO is now expected to issue its initial ruling on the GMO case in early October, postponed from August, officials say. 

“A very large majority, 22 member states, rejected proposals to lift these national bans. We were able to give a clear message to the European Commission,” Luxembourg Environment Minister Lucien Lux told a news conference. 

It was the EU’s first agreement on GMO policy since 1998, when the bloc began its unofficial moratorium on approving new GMO foods and crops — lifted last year by a legal default.

Between 1997 and 2000, Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Luxembourg banned specific GMOs on their territory, focusing on three maize and two rapeseed types approved shortly before the start of the EU moratorium. 

For the Commission, the votes were a setback, especially in its WTO defense, but it was still “business as usual.” 

The EU executive now has several options, including returning to the ministers with the same proposals for lifting the bans, though at a later date, or changing them radically.

“The EU is under considerable pressure at the WTO, and not only due to the lack of action (on national GMO bans) in previous years. And further delays would weaken our position at the WTO,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. 

“This does not call our regulatory framework into question…(which) is the strictest in the world. We are going to apply the existing framework and we are obliged to do so.”

Ironically, on the same day that the EU’s Official Journal issued an authorization for a GMO rapeseed, made by Monsanto, it was forced to revoke it due to a bureaucratic error.

The authorization, for GT73 rapeseed made by U.S. biotech giant Monsanto, will probably be issued in a few weeks. 

GREENS ECSTATIC, INDUSTRY ANGRY 

Spain was the only country to uphold all eight bans, despite the fact that its farmers grow one of the maize types, the Bt-176 strain made by Swiss biotech giant Syngenta .

Spain is one of the few countries that grows GMO crops extensively in Europe, where much of the public view them as “Frankenstein” foods despite industry assurances they are safe.

Green groups were ecstatic that the EU had finally agreed to slap down not just one of the national bans, but all eight. 

“The European Commission asked for more guidance from the member states and they got it,” said Adrian Bebb, GMO campaigner at environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth Europe.

“Countries today have demanded the sovereign right to ban genetically modified crops if there are questions over their safety,” he said in a statement. 

Apart from the Bt-176 strain, the other maize types were MON 810, made by Monsanto, and Bayer’s T25 maize. There are also two rapeseed types, both made by Bayer.

But Europe’s biotech industry was incensed by the decisions. “Today’s vote is another failure of member states to play by the rules that they themselves established. The EU’s approval process for safe GMOs is arguably the strictest in the world and these bans are not scientifically justifiable,” said Simon Barber at European biotech industry association

EuropaBio. 

GMO DEADLOCK ELSEWHERE  

Even though the EU has now lifted its six-year unofficial moratorium on approving new GMO products, national governments have consistently clashed over biotech policy.

The EU’s member states have now ended meetings in deadlock 14 times in a row on whether to approve new GMO products, usually for use in industrial processing or as animal feed.

The latest occasion was also on Wednesday, when the ministers failed to agree on authorizing another Monsanto maize known as MON 863, modified to resist the corn rootworm insect.

The Commission will now take up the dossier and most likely issue a rubberstamp authorization in the next few months, officials say. This process kicks in when EU ministers fail to agree after three months on whether to authorize a GMO or not.

Monsanto’s requested use was for processing into animal feed, not for growing or for consumption as human food. 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

2005-06-25 Transgenics: Legislation to open way for Terminator Technology, ends right to save seeds.

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Food, Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Jun 252005
 

NOTE to self:  full text is not displaying properly.  Fix it.

Lorne writes:

The circle is complete- I hope NOT !!

If beaurocrats have their way We will be forced to buy new seed each year-    I am an organic gardener and save seed – I reserve the right of freedom of choice  to grow legal food of my choosing each year – A dictatorship may try to impose items like terminator genes and G.M garbage on a populace – I believe Canada is still a democratic country –  Banana republics were the result when multinationals ruled nations     Where does the Ministry of Agriculture get the right to impose ?

If parliament passes this legislation — we can only assume that very well paid  gov. ( our ) employees have been influenced by external forces such as Monsanto or  Bayer.   We know that “pieces of silver ” can persuade !!

Send this to your M.P. or M.L.A.

Yours for pure food.

Lorne

 
Organic ConsumersAssociation
Campaigning for Food Safety, Organic Agriculture, Fair Trade & Sustainability
 
  Canada Agriculture Ministry Paves Way for Seed Monopolies & Terminator TechnologyScience for Peace Bulletin May 2005 Volume 25, Issue 2 Terminators Galore!Joe CumminsThe author is Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario.In Canada, the Seed Sector Review advisory committee issued a report calling for changes to legislation to (A) collect royalties on farm-saved seeds, (B) compel farmers to buy officially certified seed, and (C) terminate the right of farmers to sell common seed. The report was financed by the Agriculture Ministry at a cost of nearly a million dollars to the Canadian taxpayers but essentially rubber-stamped the demands of multinational agricultural corporations (1). The onerous licensing requirements of the biotechnology industry are to be extended to all seeds, imposing a form of serfdom on any remaining independent farmers. In the future it is likely that even home gardeners will face the loony corporate payments for those willing to spy on neighbors and report covert seed activity. We may be entering a time when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are required to raid grow operations such as a row of radishes in a backyard garden.

The development of “terminator” technology goes hand in hand with the corporate move to control production and use of seeds. Terminator technology is the use of genetic engineering to produce seeds that can be used only once. The progeny of such seeds would either produce no flowers or produce seeds that provide grain or oil but cannot germinate to produce as new plants. In other words, terminator blocks viable seed production, production of pollen or ovule or the production of flowers.

The first terminators were developed by the United Sates Department of Agriculture (USDA) and corporate interests, and that technology was patented jointly by the corporation and USDA. As in Canada, the regulator of genetically modified (GM) crops also acts as an advocate and commercial developer of such crops (a clear conflict of interest).

The first terminator patent was granted to USDA and The Delta and Pineland Corporation (later joined to Monsanto Corporation) in 1999.

That patent provoked a flurry of opposition both on the basis of the fundamental right of farmers to save seed and on the scientific ground that the genetic changes might harm those consuming the crops. In response to those concerns Monsanto Corporation backed off from immediate production of terminator seeds. But in spite of that action a great deal of government sponsored research in the U.S. has focused on development of terminator technology to provide financial benefits for
corporations.

Beginning in 1999, the Institute of Science in Society in London, England has distributed a number of reports by Dr. MaeWan Ho and myself.

In those reports we described the genetic technology of the original and later biotechnology inventions (2,3,4,5,6,7). The basic design of the constructions has been to prevent reproductive tissue from developing in a way that allows the seed producer to maintain fertile lines that can be maintained but also trigger the production of commercial seed lines that cannot produce pollen or eggs, or produce lines that lack flowers.

The genes used to produce such lines usually involve reproductive cello ablation (cell suicide genes) using toxins such as barnase ribonuclease that digests cellular RNA, diptheria toxin or excess phytohormone production in the reproductive tissue. In some cases anti-sense genes have been used to block reproductive cells from maturing. Anti-sense genes are complementary copies of the RNA gene messages governing reproductive cell maturation forming double stranded RNA that is recognized as an invading virus by the plant cell and destroyed.

During the 1990s a startling new discovery in plant molecular genetics led to the identification of homeotic genes that govern the pathways leading to cell differentiation. These specify proteins produced by short stretches of DNA called MADS-boxes. These are the regions controlling transcription of the genes involved in formation of reproductive tissue, leaves, roots and branches that govern plant development (8). That discovery has led to a flood of inventions employing the MADS-boxes transcription factors to control flowering and gamete production as terminators in trees and in crops. Steven Strauss of the US Forest Service in Oregon has been field testing poplar trees modified with cell suicide genes to eliminate flowering and plans to extend that system to shade trees. Finnish researchers at Sopanen University are developing this for sterile silver birch (9). Along with concerns about the cell suicide toxins and their impact on animal life, the sterile trees must be propagated asexually and thus lack genetic diversity. This renders them sensitive to attack by emerging pathogens and without a reservoir of diversity to mitigate the attack of the novel pathogen. A flood of patent applications has begun to appear for control of flowering or sexual development in both evergreen trees and crop plants (10).

A flood of terminator trees and crops has been developed using government funding and in some cases by government researchers. The main scientific objection to such terminators has been the introduction of untested and hazardous toxins such as cell suicide toxins. As well the technology would result in genetic uniformity in forest expanses and in crop lands rendering the trees and crops likely susceptible to plagues resulting from the spread of emerging pathogens because the forests and crops lack the reservoir of genetic diversity needed to counter novel pathogens. The inventions will drive farmers and foresters into serfdom at the behest of corporations and their lackeys in the government bureaucracy.

Is it too late to terminate the terminators? It is not too late, but once they begin to crowd out natural trees and crops it will be too
late. What can be done? We will soon have to have an international convention to limit use of terminators. In the meantime it is wise to alert the public to the extensive public funding of technologies that threaten the farm community and public alike and benefit corporations and their stockholders exclusively.

References

1. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, “The report of the seed sector advisory committee 2004.” http://www.seedsectorreview.com/reports-e.html
2. Ho, MW and Cummins J. “Chronicle of an Ecological Disaster Foretold.” ISIS Report, 20 February 2003; also Science in Society 2003, Spring, 18, 26-27.
3. Ho, MW. “Terminator technologies in new guises.” ISIS News 3, December 1999.
4. Cummins J. “Terminator gene product alert.” ISIS News 6, September 2000.
5. Ho, MW, Cummins J and Bartlett J. “Killing fields near you:
Terminator crops at large.” ISIS News 7/8, February 2001. 6 Ho, MW and Cummins J. “Terminator patents decoded.” ISIS News 11/12, October 2001.
7. Cummins, J. and Ho, MW, “New terminator crops coming.” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/
8. Cummins, J. “View from MADS house.” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/
9. Cummins, J. and Ho, MW. “Terminator Trees.” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/
10. Cummins, J. “Lurking terminators.” (in preparation).

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This GMO news service is underwritten by a generous grant from the Newman’s Own Foundation, edited by Thomas Wittman and is a production of the Ecological Farming Association www.eco-farm.org <http://www.eco-farm.org/
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2005-06-23 Tuberculosis – TB patient (Toronto) jailed and other articles

 Tuberculosis  No Responses »
Jun 232005
 

This one is not me!
It’s in Ottawa, male, and infectious.
The guy will likely be held in jail for 8 or 9 months or until he is fully willing to comply with taking the drugs and quarantine until he is not infectious.  It will probably be like here:  the health officials come to your door every day for a month, then twice weekly with the pills to ensure you take them, to reduce the risk of developing resistant strains of TB.

Note:  I submitted a letter from the head of TB here to the educational programme my daughter attends, to officially confirm that my case is not
contagious.  I consider myself extremely fortunate!

Thanks to Hart Haidn for these items (the last one is about a new test that is under development, it takes 3 minutes for positive/negative test as opposed to the current 2 days.)

===========================

Court orders TB patient jailed

Last Updated Wed, 22 Jun 2005 CBC News

A court in Ottawa has ordered a man with a highly infectious form of tuberculosis to be held in custody while doctors treat him.

Abdullahi Fourreh, who is from Ethiopia, has consistently resisted treatment, claiming the drugs used to treat the disease are killing him.

But public health officials say he’s already infected one person and they intend to cure him whether he likes it or not.

Doctors tried three different drug therapies on Fourreh in an attempt to reduce the side-effects. Each time Fourreh quit, finally deciding that his doctors were “assassins” and “men without souls.”

He also convinced himself that his tuberculosis wasn’t that much of a threat, says his lawyer Kevin Murphy.

“TB, as he put it, grows like weeds in Eastern Africa, and I think he was suggesting there was some innate alternative way of fighting off the disease, like overcoming a case of the flu,” said Murphy.

Public health officials didn’t see it that way. Pulmonary tuberculosis, which can be spread by coughing, is the most contagious strain of the disease. Ottawa assistant medical officer of health David Salisbury won the court order detaining Fourreh in Toronto.

“We will need to know that he is no longer infectious and is compliant with a treatment regimen that ensures that eventually he will be cured of this disease,” said Salisbury.

Murphy says his client now has few options but to take the drugs his doctors prescribe him, or sit in jail indefinitely.

Headlines: Canada

=============================

BOSTON Almost 600 additional Boston Medical Center patients need tuberculosis tests than previously thought.

Officials say 4,300 patients and workers could have been exposed to tuberculosis by a surgical intern. Doctors diagnosed the intern with an infectious form of the lung disease last week.

The intern worked at B-M-C. She also rotated through the V-A Boston Health Care System hospital in West Roxbury, Brockton Hospital and Cape Cod Hospital.

B-M-C officials identified the 593 additional patients when they were reviewing records of those who could have been exposed.  B-M-C  spokeswoman Ellen Berlin says she doesn’t expect the hospital to find more exposures.  One-hundred forty-four B-M-C patients and 517 workers had received T-B tests as of noon today.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.  This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

==============================

Tuberculosis Outbreak June 22, 2005

Second tuberculosis outbreak hits Allen County Health officials say cases of tuberculosis are on the rise in the Fort Wayne area.

The Allen County health department has confirmed ten new cases of TB and one death so far this year.  Seven other possible cases are being investigated.

Health Commission Deb McMahan says a second strain of the disease which can be spread through the air was discovered in late spring.  She says she thinks the outbreak has ended for the year.

Tuberculosis can be treated by a combination of antibiotics over six months but can cause severe illness and death if untreated.

The county is working with health care providers and free clinics to promote awareness of the disease’s symptoms.

==========================================

Proteome Systems doubles on TB fast track Jun 21 13:05 AAP

Shares in Proteome Systems surged as much as 106 per cent on Tuesday after the biotechnology company said it would fast-track the development of a portable diagnostic test for tuberculosis.   Proteome shares climbed by as much as 17¢ to 33¢ after the company said it had won the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organisation to fast-track the test.

Proteome has developed the basis for a portable test that can determine if a person is suffering from tuberculosis in just three minutes, compared with conventional tests that take 24 hours to process.

“Bringing the diagnosis back from hours to minutes is significant,” ABN Amro Morgan’s biotech analyst Scott Power said.

Proteome chief executive Stephen Porges said the partnership would provide the critical support to speed the development of the test in addition to clinical material, assistance with trials and fast-tracking of registration, in return for exclusive royalty-free rights to distribute the product in the public health sector in developing countries.

Proteome announced the news at the BIO 2005 biotechnology convention in Philadelphia in the United States.

Proteome shares were 14¢, or 88 per cent, higher at 30¢ at 1254 AEST.   (2012:  the last share price is in 2011 and in the 14¢ range.)

2005-06-14 Steve Jobs’ address to Stanford University students.

 Empowerment  No Responses »
Jun 142005
 

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

 (Video of the Commencement address:  http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die)

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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