Sandra Finley

2004-01-11 Biotech critics at risk, San Francisco Chronicle. Scientists attacked. Corruption of science by corporate interests.

 Food, Genetically Modified, Health, Take back the University  No Responses »
Jan 112004
 

Ignacio Chapela, Tyrone Hayes, John Losey.  In different emails in the past we have followed the shattering attacks on each of these 3 scientists.   This follow-up adds 1 more name:  Arpad Pusztai.

One of our members has attended a conference in which Tyrone Hayes participated.

These are ordinary people doing their ordinary work.  The more people that know how the chemical/transgenic companies work, the better.  That our Governments and Universities partner with them, with our money, is reprehensible.

These are stories about attempts to intimidate scientists.  People in the media have had their careers destroyed when they have tried to publish stories that reveal the operations of these companies.

NOTE:  I believe there is an error in the text.  “…The new gene patched into the butterfly’s genome …”  should probably read “”…The new gene patched into the corn’s genome …”

/Sandra

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

Thanks to Elaine.

(link no longer valid)

San Francisco Chronicle

Biotech critics at risk : Economics calls the shots in the debate

Mark Dowie  Sunday, January 11, 2004

Four biologists from Europe and North America met face to face for the first time on the UC Berkeley campus last month.

Although none of them is particularly famous as a scientist — not one Nobel among them — they know each other’s names and work as well as if they had been working together for 10 years in the same laboratory.  They share a painful experience.

Between 1999 and 2001, unbeknownst to the others, each made a simple but dramatic discovery that challenged the catechism of the same powerful industry — biotechnology — that by then had become the handmaiden of industrial agriculture and the darling of venture capitalists, who are still hoping they have invested their most recent billions in “the next big thing.”

If any one of the experiments of these four scientists is proved through replication to be valid, the already troubled agricultural arm of biotech will be in truly dire straits. No one knows that better than Monsanto, Sygenta and other biotech firms that have so aggressively attacked the four discoveries in question.

When he was the principal scientific officer of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, Hungarian citizen Arpad Pusztai fed transgenically modified potatoes to rodents in one of the few experiments that have ever tested the safety of genetically modified food in animals or humans.

Almost immediately, the rats displayed tissue and immunological damage.

After he reported his findings, which eventually underwent peer review and were published in the United Kingdom’s leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai’s home was burglarized and his research files taken.

Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett, and he has since suffered an orchestrated international campaign of discreditation, in which Prime Minister Tony Blair played an active role.

While Pusztai was fighting for his professional life, Cornell Professor John Losey was patiently dusting milkweed leaves with genetically modified corn pollen. When monarch butterfly larvae that ate the leaves died in significant numbers (while a control group fed nongenetically modified pollen all survived), Losey was not particularly surprised.

The new gene patched into the butterfly’s (INSERT by Sandra: error in text? corn’s)  genome was inserted to produce an internal pesticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), intended to attack and kill the corn borer and some particularly troublesome moth caterpillars.

What did surprise Losey was the vehement attack on his study that followed from Novartis and Monsanto, their open attempts to discredit his work and the extent to which mass media leapt to their support. Losey is still at Cornell, where his future seems secure.

Not true of Ignacio Chapela, a microbial ecologist in the plant sciences department at UC Berkeley.

In 2000, Chapela discovered that pollen had drifted several miles from a field of genetically modified corn in Chiapas into the remote mountains of Oaxaca in Mexico, landing in the last reserve of biodiverse maize in the world.

If genes from the rogue pollen actually penetrated the DNA of traditional crops, they could potentially eliminate maize biodiversity forever. In his report, Chapela cautiously stated that this indeed might have happened. He expressed that sentiment in a peer-reviewed study published by Nature in November 2001.

After an aggressive public relations campaign mounted for Monsanto by the Bivings Group, a global PR firm that began with a vicious e-mail attack mounted by two “scientists” who turned out to be fictitious, Nature editors did something they had never done in their 133 years of existence.  They published a cautious partial retraction of the Chapela report. Largely on the strength of that retraction, Chapela was recently denied tenure at UC Berkeley and informed that he would not be reoffered his teaching assignment in the fall.

When Tyrone Hayes, a UC Berkeley endocrinologist specializing in amphibian development, exposed young frogs in his lab to very small doses of the herbicide Atrazine, they first failed to develop normal larynxes and later displayed serious reproductive problems (males became hermaphrodites), suggesting that Atrazine might be an endocrine disrupter.

Hayes’ subsequent experience differed slightly from the other panelists’, but was no less troubling to academic scientists. As soon as word of Hayes’ findings reached Sygenta Corp. (formerly Novartis) and its contractor, Ecorisk Inc., attempts were made to stall his research. Funding was withheld. It was a critical time, as the EPA was close to making a final ruling on Atrazine. Hermaphroditic frogs would not help Sygenta’s cause.

Hayes continued the research with his own funds and found more of the same results, whereupon Sygenta offered him $2 million to continue his research “in a private setting.” A committed teacher with a lab full of loyal students, Hayes declined the offer and proceeded with research that he knew had to remain in public domain.

This time he found damaging developmental effects of Atrazine at even lower levels (0.1 parts per billion). When his work appeared in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sygenta attacked the study and claimed that three other labs it contracted had been unable to duplicate Hayes’ results.

Hayes, who keeps his head down on the Berkeley campus, has obtained tenure and continues to teach.  But his studies that could affect approval of the most widely used chemical in U.S. agriculture are being stifled at every turn.

In a public conversation attended by 500 people and Webcast to 4,000 more worldwide recently on the Berkeley campus, Pusztai, Losey, Hayes and Chapela shared their experiences and together explored ways to prevent similar fates from ever happening to their peers.  Their similar stories provide a unique window into a disturbing trend in modern science.

None of the four complained that his science had been challenged, although in each case it had. All science is and should be challenged. No one knows that better than a practicing scientist, who also knows that if tenure depended on a perfect experimental record, there would be very few tenured scientists anywhere in the world.

These four men were not attacked because of flawed or imperfect experiments but because the findings of their work have a potential economic effect.  The sad part is that the academies and other allegedly independent institutions that once defended scientific freedom and protected employees like Hayes, Chapela, Losey and Pusztai are abandoning them to the wolves of commerce, the brands of which are being engraved over the entrances to a disturbing number of university labs.

Mark Dowie lives in Point Reyes and teaches a science writing class at UC Graduate School of  Journalism.”

2003-11-02 Resistance starts, Letters of Protest and News Reports

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Nov 022003
 

The original media reports are at the very bottom.

In early 2004 more than 3,000 emails of protest were received by Statistics Canada.

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

Sun 11/2/2003  from Mel Hurtig:

Now let’s turn to the census fiasco. Many of you will have received copies of Bill Blaikie’s questions and comments in the House, or seen them on www.vivelecanada.ca.

A couple of points need to be emphasized. It’s true that NAFTA made it necessary to open up the RFP to American firms, as Rock, Fellegi et al keep pointing out, BUT there was no necessity for a RFP in the first place!!! As I indicated previously, Statistics Canada should be developing the technology, the methodology, the implementation THEMSELVES. Given the many millions of dollars they have agreed to pay Lockheed Martin, there is ZERO reason why they could not have done so using good, talented Canadian experts.

Note the egregious repeated explanation (this time by yet another cabinet minister), that Lockheed Martin is a Canadian company!!!

Vive has sent over 2,000 letters to Rock, Chretien and Fellegi re the census. Visit vive and add your name if you haven’t  already. Vive has had an amazing 50,000 plus hits in October, a spectacular figure for such a new site.

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

—– Original Message —–

From: Mel Hurtig

To: Ivan.P.Fellegi@statcan.ca

Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 6:12 PM

Dear Dr. Fellegi:

As you know, I am a long-time fan of yours and of Statistics Canada. All the more reason I am appalled by your decision re Lockheed Martin. This said, I am certainly not blaming you for the poorly-negotiated NAFTA agreement and its national treatment provisions.

Unfortunately, I am not one bit impressed by your assurances re the data that will be collected in the next census given the involvement of the giant American defence contractor.

There are many reasons for this, beginning with the Patriot Act and the way it has already been used in the U.S., Mexico and in South America. As you know, Mr. Ashcroft and associates can request that Lockheed Martin hand over all data to them and not only will this happen but you will never know that it has happened. Rest assured that Lockheed Martin will have whatever access to your data that they wish. To believe otherwise is at best wishful thinking.

I remain quite unimpressed by your conclusion that it was necessary to bring in a foreign firm. You should have embarked on a research program allowing S.C. to become the world leader in the necessay technology. You haven’t been rated so highly in international comparisons in the past because you relied on paying tens of millions of dollars to non-citizens to do your work for you. Moreover, you know as well as I do how many truly talented Canadians work for Statscan. In my opinion you had lots of time to develop the required technologies yourself. Surely, given what you are planning to pay Lockheed Martin, money was not a problem.

I would like to once again correct you. Lockheed Martin is NOT a Canadian firm. Your own Corporations Returns Act makes that quite clear. You are quite foolish to contend otherwise and I am disappointed that you do so so stubbornly.

No doubt by now you are aware of just how outraged Canadians are as a result of this unfortunate decision.Frankly, I would have thought that you would have anticipated the anger. It’s so incredibly symbolic of how we’ve gone wrong in this country since 1984.

Lastly, you’ve done a good job of the census in the past. There’s zero reason why you couldn’t do a good or even better job in the future. This is a serious mistake that I’m certain you will regret in the future, if you don’t already.

Mel Hurtig

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

From:  T. Bennett Finley

Dear Dr. Fellegi:

As a Canadian I am appalled at the decision of StatsCan to use a US firm in the processing of Census data.

As someone who has worked on two censuses for StatsCan I know how sensitive the Canadian People are to the issue of confidentiality of their personal information. One of the most difficult and important tasks at census time was to convince Canadians that their information would never be shared with any other government department or agency especially Revenue Canada.

Because we who worked in the census truly believed in the promise of StatsCan that data would always remain confidential, we were able to convince most Canadians of this. I even had one discussion with Roy Romanow over this very issue.

Canadians will be most shocked when they discover an U.S. firm will have access to this information. I believe, and I think most Canadians also believe, that the U.S. government and its agencies such as the CIA and FBI, will be able to obtain any information that a U.S. corporation is able to access.

Sovereignty is a much discussed issue in Canada, sometimes mistakenly over issues that really do not effect our sovereignty, but this one does and will be seen to so do by most. There is no reason that StatsCan should have to go to outside countries to provide data services that can well be handled at home.

I do not believe you really realize what a media feast will be created when this Lockheed Martin involvement becomes an issue at the time of the next Census. The issue will be discussed by every TV outlet and newspapers throughout Canada. StatsCan and the Government of Canada will devote untold time in handling this issue. I assure you of this.

Please, please, turn back while you still can.

Respectfully,

T. Bennett Finley

2605 Estey Drive

Saskatoon, Sask. S7J 2V4

3063733973 finld AT  sasktel.net

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

From Sandra Finley to Ivan Felligi, Chief Statistician:

SUBJECT: awarding of Canadian Census to Lockheed

Dear Dr. Fellegi;

(I am also communicating with Allan Rock, Minister Responsible for Statscan.)

I am incredulous and disturbed that you would even consider putting the Canadian census into the hands of Lockheed Corporation. In the past the Government has been capable of handling the job. If you cannot do the job, it is likely because you are planning to gather more information than necessary, in which case re-consideration would be productive.

Do not be so naive as to think that I, for one, will provide data to a census orchestrated by Lockheed Corporation, even if under threat of going to jail for failure to comply with census requirements.

Please tell me

(1) how awarding the contract for Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin helps to strengthen the Canadian economy.

(2) how awarding this contract to Lockheed helps to develop Canadian expertise and confidence.

(Question for Mr. Rock) (3) how much money Lockheed Martin contributes to the Liberal party and its members.

By my observation,  by hiring Lockheed to do the Canadian census you:

1) Send jobs, profits and tax revenues outside Canada. Parent companies are known to benefit substantially by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries (Canada in this case).

2) Make the statement that we can’t do the job ourselves; other people can do it better.

3) Add to our dependency on the United States.

Thank-you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,

Sandra Finley

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

from Melva Armstrong:

… Bill Blaikie (on behalf of many of us Canadians who are questioning why Stats Can is not doing this work itself) has been asking the Liberal gov’t to explain why Lockheed Martin was awarded this contract.  From Hansard:

Bill Blaikie pressures government on Lockheed Martin

Government Contracts

Thursday October 9, 2003 

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

We have heard a troubling rumour that Statistics Canada has awarded a multi-million dollar contract to an American corporation to do the dress rehearsal for the census in 2005 and subsequently the census itself. That corporation, we have heard, is Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest munitions companies in the world.

I wonder if the minister could tell us whether or not this is in fact true and, if it is true, why the Liberal government has decided to award such a contract.

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, one thing I can assure the House is that Statistics Canada will continue to do its job according to the worldclass standards that it has always achieved. We will make certain of that. It has a well deserved reputation for excellence and it will continue to work to deserve that reputation.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, let the House take note that the Minister of Industry did not answer my question and did not deny that such a contract has been offered.

Given that this is an American munitions corporation that is actually all wound up with the star wars thing, I wonder if the minister could explain to us the connection between star wars and Statistics Canada and tell us whether or not the government is involved in the letting of a contract of this kind to an American corporation. Would he answer the question? Surely he knows what is going on in his own department.

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is working himself into an agitated state when he should focus instead on the real purpose of all this, which is to make sure we get statistics numbers and a census that we can rely upon. Statistics Canada will continue to do what is necessary to achieve just that.

Bill rose again in the same question period on this.

Thursday October 9, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is again to the Minister of Industry.

I will allow for the fact that perhaps his first answer to my question might have been based on not knowing what the situation was. Some time has passed.

Could the minister tell us whether or not such a contract has been awarded to Lockheed-Martin for the census. If it has, could he tell us in which wing of the Pentagon all this information on Canadians will be stored?

Hon. Allan Rock (Minister of Industry, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as with any other such crown agency, contracts awarded by Statistics Canada are awarded after a full bidding process where value for money and the contract price is evaluated.

I have every confidence Statistics Canada used that process in its entirety in this and every other case

Government Contracts

Friday October 10, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I want to re-engage the Minister of Industry with respect to the contract given to Lockheed Martin for the Canadian census.

Yesterday the minister said on the way out of the House that the trade agreements made him do it. He knows that the trade agreements did no such thing. The trade agreements do not force the government to contract out the census to anyone.

I want to ask him why he is hiding behind the trade agreements. While he is at it, if he takes the trade agreements so seriously, can he tell us why the government does not take arms control treaties seriously enough that it is participating in star wars and negotiating with the Americans over NMD? If it took those treaties seriously–

The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Minister of Public Works and Government Services.

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, contrary to what the hon. gentleman has just said, the project in question does indeed fall subject to the rules of the NAFTA and the WTO. Industry participation, according to the rules of the trade agreement, were sought by a letter of interest.

The RFP was published on the Merx system from September 4, 2002 to the closing date of November 4, 2002. Proposals were received. The proposal from Lockheed Martin was judged to be the best of those proposals at the best price. It was indeed adjudicated by an independent third party.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the trade agreements do not force the government to put out an RFP in the first place. This is something that could be done by the government, by Statistics Canada. There is no need to contract it out in the first place and the trade agreement does not force the government to do that.

I want to ask the minister in charge, does he not think that the knowledge by Canadians that this is going to be done by a big American multinational will cause them concerns about confidentiality and about privacy? Does he not expect that there will be a lot less compliance with the census than there has been in the past? Given the mistake that the government is about to make, will it rescind this contract immediately?

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, there are in fact stringent provisions in the contract to ensure that the security of Canadians is properly respected and that the whole process with respect to the census is conducted with complete integrity.

Government Contracts

Friday October 24, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, it seems odd that some of those who support the new Liberal leader complain when a crown corporation gets money to do something that is long overdue in this country, but they are silent about the awarding of a contract to Lockheed Martin to do the census or for that matter, the contract that was awarded to Lockheed Martin to do health information services for our Canadian armed forces.

Has the Deputy Prime Minister had a chance to look at the Lockheed Martin file? Can he tell the House today that this contract will be rescinded and the census will be done in Canada, by Canadians, where it belongs?

Hon. Andy Mitchell (Secretary of State (Rural Development) (Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the reality is that it is a Canadian subsidiary that will be conducting the census. The information will be maintained in Canada. It will be conducted in Canada. It will be a Canadian enterprise that provides a valuable service to Canadians, which we have always done in terms of the census.

Government Contracts

Wednesday October 29, 2003

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, Canadians do not need more information, if they are up to their you know what in alligators. They do not want the Liberals counting the alligators. They want them to do something about it.

I have a question is for the Minister of Public Works and it has to do with the awarding of the census contract to Lockheed Martin.

I have information from a competitor of Lougheed Martin that it received this contract, not through due process, but sometime after the RFP had been initiated and others had gone through the process. However, Lougheed Martin showed up at the end and received the contract.

Could the Minister of Public Works undertake to look into this and report back to the House as to why that American corporation received favourable treatment in that way?

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the information that the hon. gentleman has just described is certainly at odds with the information I have. He has asked me if I will look into what he has suggested. I certainly will do that, and I will get back to him if there is anything further to report.

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

Thu 10/30/2003   I (Sandra Finley) received this communication from Dr. Fellegi:

From:  Ivan.P.Fellegi@statcan.ca

Statistics Canada would like to clarify and provide additional information concerning the contracting out portion of the 2006 Census with private industry. First of all, I would like to emphasize that only 20% of the work for the 2006 Census will be contracted out while the remaining 80% is being done by Statistics Canada.  The distribution, collection, follow-up and storage of questionnaires will be done strictly by Statistics Canada.

Important improvements and significant changes in the way census data are collected and captured are required for the 2006 Census.  These changes will move the census from what is now a highly decentralised, manual collection operation, to a more centralised and automated approach while addressing the issues of privacy, security, confidentiality and the provisions of an Internet response option for Canadians.  However, these and other improvements require the implementation of a very complex logistics and control system.

Why did we decide to contract out a portion of the software development for the 2006 Census?  Simply because, after a painstaking review, we concluded that we lacked the expertise needed.  The 2006 Census clearly has to offer the option of Internet filing of census returns, and this has to be integrated with the traditional paper filing option which, of course, must also be offered.  Further complicating the logistics is the fact that we will be mailing, for the first time, the census questionnaires to about 65% of all households in Canada.  This, together with the need to know at all times who completed and who did not their census forms (in order to initiate timely follow-up of those who did not do so) leads to exceptionally complex logistics.

Traditionally census returns have been key-entered but that option will no longer be available in 2006.  As a result, it will be necessary to introduce the scanning of the paper returns into the 2006 Census – and, again, integrate all of that with the Internet-filed returns. The complexity of these highly technical operations was entirely outside our range of past experience. When one considers the fact that the census must go almost flawlessly (because we do not have a second chance), it became abundantly clear that contracting out was the only realistic option.  In addition to the technical complexities, we also conducted a very thorough cost benefit analysis of the “buy or make” option, to determine the appropriate approach for undertaking the significant systems development and operational activities required for the 2006 Census.  The factors considered included cost, timeliness, integration, risk and the availability of resources/expertise and while not the only factor in our decision, the business case was clearly in favour for the private sector.  Incidentally, the same conclusion was reached not only by our US counterpart, but also by the Office of National Statistics in the UK for their census systems development and processing activities.

After a lengthy consultation process with industry, proposals were invited by Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) through a Request for Proposal (RFP).  Critical security and confidentiality requirements were built into the RFP to ensure the protection of census returns.  Indeed, these safeguards will be even higher in 2006 than they were in 2001 or in earlier censuses.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization Agreement regulations that governed this procurement, non-Canadian based firms were eligible to submit a bid.  All of the bidders were Canadian firms, although several were US owned.  The evaluation of proposals was very rigorous, with no opportunity for biasing the results either in favour of, or against, any one bidder.  In addition, an independent fairness monitor certified that the selection process followed the terms of the RFP and that the process was fair and objective to all bidders.  Through this process, PWGSC awarded the contract to Lockheed Martin Canada Inc. to carry out activities in support of the 2006 Census. The firm will be leading a consortium consisting of IBM Canada and Transcontinental Printing Inc. Canada and ADECCO Employment Services Ltd Canada.

Lockheed Martin specifically has a successful track record in developing and implementing solutions in a census context and has access to international expertise based on lessons learned in the United States and United Kingdom censuses.  Statistics Canada is capitalizing on this existing experience and investment.

Statistics Canada will maintain full control of all aspects of the census.  Indeed, the data collected from Canadians will, at all times, be under the care and full control of Statistics Canada and everyone working on the census will, as always, be subject to the provisions and penalties of the Statistics Act.  Only census agents who are sworn to secrecy under the Statistics Act – and subject to considerable penalties should their oath be violated (including imprisonment of up to six months) – will have access to individual census information.  Career employees will at all times be in charge of every aspect of census operations

All contractors will be security screened, and sworn in under the Statistics Act.  As such, they will become Statistics Canada employees, subject to all the sanctions of the Act.

Stringent safeguards will be in place to ensure that only information required for the processing operation is accessible by the contractor.  The census processing site will be strictly isolated from external networks, so unauthorised transmission of census data would be physically impossible.  In addition, all sites will be subject to 24-hour supervision by our career employees.  Needless to say, data will never be processed or stored outside the country.  Processed data will be stored at Statistics Canada premises.

Statistics Canada has a well-earned reputation for quality statistics, which in turn depends on the trust of Canadians.  It would never endanger that reputation by exposing to the slightest risk the confidential data that its respondents provide – let alone exposing it to access by any foreign country.  The confidentiality of 2006 Census returns will be as stringently guarded as in the past; in fact, technology allows us to implement even better safeguards.  We are ready to expose our plans to any expert scrutiny.

Ivan P. Fellegi
Chief Statistician of Canada

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

(S.F. distributed into network Oct 21/03)

Subject:  Strengthening the Canadian economy and society

Below: newspaper reports “Federal government acknowledges U.S. defence firm (Lockheed) doing Canada’s census”. Compliments of Allan Rock.

Let me connect a few dots and tell you what I’m doing on this one.

– The Meridian Dam exercise taught the importance of safeguarding control of our WATER resource against the efforts of transnational corporations and local short-sighted self-interest which would exploit that resource, not for the common or long-term good. As I see it, in order to maintain control of our communities and environment in the face of globalization/centralization it is essential to fight every effort that will weaken us. Build strength.

– Recall the article that explained how transnational companies set up a subsidiary in Canada to gain significant tax advantages? Tax is paid on Revenues minus Expenses. Some parent U.S. company’s dictate that the Canadian subsidiary purchase specified goods and services from the parent company at a price set by the parent. In some cases those prices are greatly inflated. The Canadian subsidiary thereby has substantially reduced earnings and pays little tax to the Canadian Government. The American parent company of course, makes rather nice profits.

– We know something about what makes economically and socially healthy communities:

It is important for people to PRACTICE a particular skill. Without practice the skill is lost. A sure way to lose a skill is to become dependent upon someone else to perform the task for you. Business skills are not exempt. If, by way of example, you buy only imported pre-fab houses, over time local people lose the know-how to build their own homes. They become completely dependent upon the whims and prices of the marketplace/outsiders. Inuit communities are a prime example of the decay that occurs. Not only is the knowledge base lost, but the jobs are exported and self-confidence is drained. Welfare is the panacea. (“colonizing” or colonialism. You should give thought to the questions “Are we being colonized and if so, by whom or what?”. In order for a country to be colonized there have to be collaborators at the top and ignorance in the population about what is going on.)

– Governments in Canada have made decisions such as those which favour truck transportation of goods over rail transport, congesting and breaking down the highway infrastructure, requiring more and bigger highways, contributing to global warming and the decline of communities. If we have learned anything it is that handing over responsibility to others for decision-making guarantees that the decisions will be made in the interests of “others”.

– I have a choice. This Lockheed incident is sufficiently serious to me, to warrant 3 small actions, to be added to the actions of others who are equally concerned. Below you will find a web-site you can email from, another option.

(1) I phoned and emailed Allan Rock’s office. They tried to put me off to Statistics Canada. Don’t let them do it; the Minister is responsible: 613-995-9001.   Allan Rock’s e-mail address is minister.industry@ic.gc.ca

(2) Ralph Goodale is the sole Liberal Member-of-Parliament from Saskatchewan. He is candidate to be the Deputy Prime Minister in the upcoming government of Paul Martin.  He is also Minister of Public Works and partly responsible, as the exchange in the House of Commons shows.  I think he is lobbiable. Telephone +1 (819) 997-5421 (Ottawa). … Who is your MP?

(3) Send information on into email networks.

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

The Vive Le Canada web-site below has a letter you might like. It makes some good points.

My letter to Rock:

SUBJECT: awarding of Canadian Census to Lockheed

Dear Minister Responsible Allan Rock,

Canadian census data is sensitive and private. I am incredulous and disturbed that you would even consider putting it into the hands of Lockheed. You need to find a way to keep the census work in independent Canadian hands. The Government itself should be doing the work. In the past the Government has been capable of handling the job. If you cannot do the job, it is likely because you are planning to gather more information than necessary, in which case “trim your sails”.

Do not be so naive as to think that I, for one, will provide data to Lockheed, even if under threat of going to jail for failure to comply with census requirements.

Please tell me

(1) how awarding the contract for Canadian census work to Lockheed Martin helps to strengthen the Canadian economy.

(2) how awarding this contract to Lockheed helps to develop Canadian expertise and confidence, and therefore business potential.

(3) how much money Lockheed Martin contributes to the Liberal party and its members.

By my observation, by hiring Lockheed to do the Canadian census you:

1) Send jobs, profits and tax revenues outside Canada. Parent companies are known to benefit substantially by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries (Canada in this case).

2) Make the statement that we can’t do the job ourselves; other people can do it better.

3) Add to our dependency on the United States.

Thank-you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,   Sandra Finley

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

SUPPORTING MATERIAL

Industry Minister Allan Rock has awarded U.S. military company Lockheed Martin the contract to prepare a 2005 test run of the next Canadian census. Lockheed Martin, which manufactures ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction, is also a prime candidate to receive a contract to do the entire Canadian census in 2006.

Vive le Canada.ca has created a form that allows users to send an email to Industry Minister Allan Rock and oppose giving Lockheed Martin the contract for the Canadian census in 2006. A sample email is provided, and users can edit it if they like. Vive le Canada.ca is also threatening a boycott of the census should Lockheed Martin get the contract.

To participate in the action, visit:  (link no longer valid)

It only takes 15 seconds to make a difference. Let’s stop the Americanization of the Canadian census!

Sincerely,

Susan Thompson and Vive le Canada.ca

For more information:

U.S. Defence Contractor to Count Canadian Heads (Oct. 9)  TEXT BELOW   (link no longer valid)

Federal government acknowledges U.S. defence firm doing Canada’s census

(Oct. 9) TEXT BELOW

Census at risk if U.S. firm in on it, critics say   

Census deal “shocks” citizens

U.S. defence contractor to count Canadian heads

Canadian Press

UPDATED AT 8:51 PM EDT Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003

Ottawa — An American military contractor will carry out most or part of the next Canadian census, the NDP said Thursday — a charge the federal government didn’t deny.

Lockheed-Martin produces ballistic missile-defence systems, advanced gun systems, land attack missiles — and now they’ll help Ottawa compile information about Canadians, New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie told the House of Commons.

The U.S.-based multinational company will work on the 2006 census, Mr. Blaikie said.

He called it his worst nightmare — a U.S. defence contractor getting detailed information on Canada — and asked the government to confirm that a contract had been signed.

Industry Minister Allan Rock refused to answer the question directly, saying only that Statistics Canada will ensure a thorough census.

Mr. Blaikie said such a contract would raise serious privacy issues such as confidential data being stored outside the country.

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

canada news

Thursday, Oct 09, 2003

Federal government acknowledges U.S.-based defence firm doing Canada’s census

OTTAWA (CP) – They make land-attack missiles, ballistic-missile defence systems, and now this U.S.-based military manufacturer will help produce Canada’s next census.

Lockheed Martin has been hired to help the federal government gather information about Canadians for the 2006 census, Industry Minister Allan Rock acknowledged Thursday.

He said there was nothing to worry about. “I assume they have expertise that will enable them to perform the contract,” Rock said outside the House of Commons. “Canadians will be involved in the performance of the work because it’s a Canadian subsidiary that will be doing it.”

Best known as a munitions and aeronautics manufacturer, the Colorado company has a Canadian subsidiary based in Kanata, Ont.

The company produces computer information systems and is actively involved in data management.

Rock didn’t specify how Lockheed Martin would contribute to the census, which every five years compiles and publishes data on Canadian residents.

However, one opposition critic said he had a few details – and said he finds the idea chilling.

“This goes even deeper than anything I would have imagined in my worst nightmare,” said New Democrat MP Bill Blaikie, who raised the issue in the Commons.

“Which wing of the Pentagon is this information going to be stored in?”

Blaikie said the company has been awarded a contract to help Statistics Canada prepare a 2005 test run of the census and is a prime candidate to receive a contract to do the entire census the next year.

Rock said free-trade rules and globalization automatically make Lockheed Martin a potential candidate for federal contracts.

“The whole bidding process is cut by the WTO and NAFTA (agreement), which requires that non-Canadian firms get to bid as well,” Rock said.

“The bidding process was carried on in accordance with Public Works rules and I assume the lowest bidder, for the best price, for the best quality got the job.”

He said he’s sure that the people involved in the decision were fully aware of Lockheed Martin’s role in weapons production. Details on the company’s products are listed on the company website, along with the corporate slogan: “We never forget who we’re working for!”

Eighty per cent of Lockheed Martin’s business is with the U.S. military and American government agencies.

Blaikie said the census contract would raise serious privacy issues such as confidential data being stored outside the country.

Canada has been buying aircraft from the company since 1939.

Officials from Lockheed Martin and Statistics Canada were not immediately available for comment.

© The Canadian Press, 2003

2003-10-30 The War Business: Squeezing a Profit from the Wreckage in Iraq. Democracy Now

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Oct 302003
 

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/30/the_war_business_squeezing_a_profit

 

We speak with leading scholar and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire Chalmers Johnson about reconstruction in Iraq and profiting from empire. [includes transcript]

 

 

Chalmers Johnson, leading scholar of Asia and US-Asian relations and author of “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” in his latest article writes:

“Munitions making and war profiteering have supplanted the energy and telecommunications deals pioneered by Enron and WorldCom in the late 1990s as the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”

Johnson concludes, “This is the future. When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it.”

•Chalmers Johnson, a leading scholar of Asia and US-Asian relations and the founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute. He is the author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. His next book, The Sorrows of Empire will be published by Metropolitan Books in January. His latest article titled “The War Business: Squeezing a Profit from the Wreckage in Iraq” appears in the November issue of Harpers magazine.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the reconstruction in Iraq, in his latest article, [Chalmers] Johnson writes, quote, “Munitions making and war profiteering have supplanted the energy and telecommunications deals pioneered by Enron and Worldcom in the late 1990’s as the most efficient means for well-connected capitalists to engorge themselves at the public trough.”

Johnson goes on to talk about how the U.S. trains militaries in 70% of the world’s nations, and the historical parallels of profiting from empire. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chalmers Johnson.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us.

You start with a quote from President Dwight Eisenhower, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Dwight Eisenhower says ìWe must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.î

So what’s happening?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: The two most famous generals we’ve ever had as presidents, George Washington first and then Eisenhower, both warned about the enormous dangers to liberty of a large standing army, of a huge vested interest in the armed forces.

What’s happened today, of course, is simply the — Well the profits of the largest arms manufacturing company, Lockheed-Martin, last year went up 47%.

When you start making that much money, you know you’re going to get more war. It is virtually out of control.

There is no real system of oversight.

You must remember that since the Manhattan project during World War II, the 40% of the defense budget, all of the intelligence budgets are secret.

They’re so-called black budgets.

That means it is really impossible for anyone to do oversight on it, including members of Congress.

And now with two wars, as we enter the new millennium, it’s become enormously profitable. About one-third of the money being spent on Iraq, by one estimate from the “Washington Post,” is going into private hands in one way or another.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the private military contractors?

CHALMERS JOHNSON: It’s a business that’s developed, above all, in the 1990’s. It was Cheney’s idea when he was Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration — that allegedly, to save money, they were going to start privatizing numerous activities in the armed forces that, until then, were performed by soldiers on active duty.

This — He sent out a contract to the Brown & Root division of Halliburton — a very famous old company that bankrolled the lives of Lyndon Johnson and many other famous Texas politicians.

He gave a contract to Brown & Root to estimate how they might start privatizing the various activities in the armed forces. Then he turned around and gave Brown & Root the contract to carry out their plan and as he left the government at the end of the Bush administration, Cheney went on a couple of years late to become the president of Halliburton, which is the company that owns Brown & Root.

Basically it means today that a soldier in the armed forces doesn’t have any of those experiences that were present there in World War II or Korean or Vietnamese wars.

People don’t do guard duty. They don’t clean up the barracks. They don’t clean the latrines. They don’t do kitchen police, so-called K.P.

That’s all done for them by private contractors. It is extremely lucrative and the way the contracts are written, profits are guaranteed. It is impossible to lose on these things.

Perhaps the greatest example is camp Bondsteel in Kosovo in the Balkans, which is the most expensive base that we’ve built since the Vietnam war. It was built entirely by Brown & Root.

It is today operated for the government by Brown & Root, just as are the bases in Kyrzakstan, in Turkey, and many other places of that sort. It is a huge growing business.

Then there is also the other world of really mercenary organizations, like Vinnell, DynCorp, NPRI. These are retired military officers, normally from the special forces, who have gone into business supplying training, above all training, but in many cases, logistics operations.

The Vinnell corporation, for example, has been hired by the U.S. government now for well over a decade to train the Saudi National Guard. We have the people supplying the defense to President Karzai in Afghanistan.

This is an explosive growth of privatization in the armed forces.

Now Cheney originally argued, so did Rumsfeld before he became Secretary of Defense, that this was to save money. There is no evidence that it saves money. It just goes quickly into private hands.

There is ample evidence from Iraq right now that the money could have been more efficiently spent, had it not been subcontracted to Halliburton and to Bechtel and things of that sort — if instead it had been turned over to an Iraqi government.

AMY GOODMAN: It is interesting.

You end the piece by talking about the lack of rigors of the marketplace and without them, only the profit remains — the biggest of all munitions companies, Lockheed-Martin corporation playing an important behind the scenes role in developing support for Bush’s war with Iraq.

CHALMERS JOHNSON: Yes, they did.

They played a very influential role in various organizations. It looked like they were simply public interest, public education organizations, but which had long advocated a war with Iraq ever since the — 1991, the first war with Iraq.

It has been to their — War is the business.

What I mean when I say it’s not private enterprise, it is much more like state socialism. You have only one customer. The customer is not particularly interested in getting the best possible use of his money. He is much more interested in simply getting the contract filled.

Moreover, there is a huge circulation of elites today in the sense that most of the operating positions, appointed positions in the pentagon today are executives from the military industrial complex, whereas by contrast, any number of the high officials in these companies are retired high-ranking American military officers.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, Chalmers Johnson, his piece appears in this month’s “Harper’s,” called “The War Business; Squeezing a Profit From the Wreckage in Iraq.”

Chalmers Johnson’s piece ends: “This is the future. When war becomes the most profitable course of action, we can certainly expect more of it.”

2003-04-03 Great Sand Hills (o&g): “Power through Canada’s back door.” NDP & Sask Party. Political Contributions.

 Corruption, Oil & Gas  No Responses »
Apr 032003
 

. . .   influence-peddling, The problem is the political system and it CAN be fixed!

 

RELATED:

 

Premise:  a well-designed system has built-in safeguards against abuse.  Separation of legislative, judicial functions, etc. in a democracy serves this purpose.  Another example is accounting systems which can be poorly, or well, designed to protect against fraudulent activity.

 

Observe the intimate dance between the oil and gas industry and politics through the Great Sand Hills example.  It is somewhat misleading:  the ROOT problem is not limited to the present Government, as one might conclude.

Correspondence during the Piapot re-zoning (summer 2002):  “I (Sandra) do not know how effective the opposition Sask Party will be in this effort.   In conversation with an emminent Reginian I am told that a partner from a Regina law firm was part of a Sask Party fund-raising committee that went to Calgary.  They met with “the oil and gas industry and who should be sitting in the front row but Dwayne Lingenfelter”.   (Lingenfelter, Deputy Premier Sask, NDP Government)

When I questioned the Sask Party,  I was told that it was a fund-raising dinner and they have no control over who buys the tickets to the dinner (it wasn’t solely for the oil & gas industry – – ??).

The article below, Power through Canada’s back door by Gillian Steward, tells the same story.   I have another documentation of the Sask Party going to Alberta to raise money at a $300 a plate dinner in the oil patch.  I can’t find it at the moment,  but  this captures it all:  Saskatchewan Party received millions in donations from Alberta companies (Oil and Gas in particular). CBC

It seems that we have both the NDP and the Sask Party courting the oil and gas companies in Calgary.  Shouldn’t be surprised.  It only confirms my conviction that Saskatchewan  needs to be like some other jurisdictions and limit contributions to political parties to private individuals.   That won’t fix a corrupted system, but it might at least help.

UPDATE:   The Sask Party won the 2007 Election.

———

Jan. 7/03,  I came across a newspaper article about the Sask Party’s connection to the o&g industry:

From the Winnipeg Free Press:

Power through Canada’s back door
Sask Party Night at the Calgary Petroleum Club

Sep 22, 2002   by  GILLIAN STEWARD

 

” … let me take you to a fascinating fund-raiser held last March at the Calgary Petroleum Club.

Elwin Hermanson, former Reform MP and now leader of the Saskatchewan Party, was the guest of honour. It was throne speech day in Regina, but Hermanson left as soon as he could and chartered a plane to Calgary. Wearing a smartly tailored navy suit and a bright Alberta Tory-blue tie, he looked every bit the grinning, wide-eyed farmboy who can’t quite believe he’s been admitted to the inner sanctum of the oilpatch. The sumptuous oak paneling, the million-dollar art collection, the crystal chandeliers all speak of a club that is very picky about who it lets in the door.

About 175 diners, or the corporations they work for, each paid $250 to be here. There’s Bud McCaig, chairman of Trimac Corporation, key fund-raiser for the Alberta Tories and one of the most powerful backroom boys in Alberta politics. Gerry Maier, former president of TransCanada Pipelines is on hand. So is Dick Wilson, communications czar for Alberta Energy Company (later renamed Encana after merging with PanCanadian to create the largest independent oil and gas producer in the world).

Preston Manning takes a seat at Hermanson’s table. At the next table sits Jim Dinning, the former Alberta finance minister who masterminded the Klein cutbacks and is expected to take a shot at the premiership himself some day soon. Meanwhile, he’s a senior executive with TransAlta Corp. and is busy raising money for Paul Martin. Former Tory MP Lee Richardson is also seated in the inner circle. As the faithful pour the wine and pass the bread, Cliff Fryers takes to the podium to welcome them. He’s a lawyer, former chief-of-staff for Manning and co-chair of the committee that has organized this fund-raiser. Fryers jokes about making a “clean sweep” of Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Then he urges everyone in the room to stand behind Hermanson once he gets elected premier “because, as we can see with Gordon Campbell in B.C., it’s tough going at the beginning.”

 

Then the other co-chair, John Zaozirny, strides to the podium. A former Lougheed protg and energy minister, Zaozirny is a lawyer’s lawyer who has made a career of being a shareholder and corporate director of oil and gas companies. During the past year he’s also been busy advising and fund-raising for the Gordon Campbell Liberals in B.C.

Zaozirny asks everyone born in Saskatchewan to raise their hands. Lots of hands go up. Then it’s time for grace. Veteran stockbroker Scott McCreath jogs up to the podium, and this is the way he begins his prayer: “Thank you Lord for giving us the freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want…” None of the mostly-white, mostly-male crowd seems taken aback by the tone of the prayer.

There are two very important “trophy heads “here as well. Sitting at a front-row table is Dwain Lingenfelter, former NDP deputy premier of Saskatchewan, now a senior officer with oilpatch heavyweight Nexen (formerly CanOxy). Beside him is Doug Anguish, former NDP MP and Saskatchewan energy minister, who left the public sector after Renaissance Energy made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

When Hermanson takes to the podium, almost the first thing he does is introduce Lingenfelter and Anguish to the crowd. He refers to them as former Saskatchewan cabinet ministers, never mentions the NDP — doesn’t have to — and says how pleased he is to have them there. Jim Dinning leads a round of applause for the grinning converts.

 

Hermanson gives a speech which includes all the neo-conservative nuggets. He promises to cut taxes in Saskatchewan — corporate, small business and personal, stop expansion of Crown corporations that compete with the private sector and stop growing government. He also promises to lower oil royalties and “streamline” environmental regulations. When he finishes, people ask for more detail. What about Saskatchewan’s eroding tax base? What about the NDP civil service — how will he prevent it from undermining his agenda? Then someone puts in a good word for Saskatchewan Crown corporations. Hisses and boos rise from the crowd. Hermanson says the big Crown utilities — SaskTel, Sask Power, SaskEnergy — “are too important to the economy of Saskatchewan to be put on the sales block, but we can’t keep them the way they are either.”

 

As the fund-raiser winds down, emcee John Zaozirny takes to the podium again and is soon expressing his glee at the thought of “Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan — three business running governments.” What was that? Just in case everyone hasn’t understood, he says it again: “business running governments.”

Now, it was just a fund-raiser, not a founding convention for a political party. But in both Alberta and B.C., opposition parties have been almost wiped off the map. The Saskatchewan Party could indeed topple the beleaguered NDP within the year.

 

…  For the sake of democracy this country needs a variety of strong, broadly based political parties. But if what I saw at the Petroleum Club last March is any indication, that’s not likely to happen soon. Instead, we have a united right/centre/left that’s content to play power games behind closed doors — power games that will pay them rich dividends long before before any residual benefits trickle down to the rest of us.

 

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based author and journalist who was also a visiting professor at the University of Regina’s School of Journalism earlier this year. ”

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

SANDRA SPEAKING:

I don’t like “left” and “right” labels – sometimes I’m one, sometimes the other.  I don’t know Gillian Steward.  In case some people will stereotype her input on the basis of being “leftist”, let’s look at what Andrew Coyne (to some a “rightest”) has to say:

(Status:  this is off the Internet, no ability to identify who submitted it.  I am awaiting a reply from Andrew to confirm his authorship.  Because of Jan 10th deadline (tomorrow) I don’t want to hold off sending this.)

 

2001:  Andrew Coyne wrote about the topic of political contributions recently. He notes that, “the corporations that are most closely regulated by the federal government were among the biggest contributors to the Liberals. Bombardier, recipient of millions of federal dollars [including the $1.2 billion in loans that the government just gave to Northwest Airlines so that they could turn around and buy jets from Bombardier] over the years contributed $100,502.

    “But the most fascinating fact of all is that the rest of us continue to put up with this.  We do not have elections in this country.  We have auctions. Why do you suppose these large corporations have decided to fork over so much of their shareholders’ money? Why, in such disproportionate numbers, to the governing party?

    “People who defend this sort of thing often say that corporations who give large sums of money to the people who regulate them are just trying to ‘support the democratic process.’ ”

All of this is the result of the government expanding its scope far beyond what any government should do, namely protection of citizens’ rights and national defense (both of which are true public goods, which is to say that by the simple fact that the government is protecting one citizen, it is by definition protecting all citizens).

The tax code, of course, is the main culprit. Governments have put into place a high tax regime (but also provide plenty of loopholes for their lawyer friends to figure out and charge for) in order to raise tons of money to spend on social programs. Governments also have complicated tax laws on the books that charge corporations different amounts of tax depending upon whether money is raised via equity or debt, and whether it is paid out as a dividend or a capital gain, etc, etc.

And, the government also charges different industries different tax rates, too, like for example when Paul Martin lowered the corporate tax rate but neglected to extend the rate reduction to energy companies, too, which some think has to do with the fact that the energy sector is located square in the middle of Western (ie, non Liberal voting) Canada.

So with all of this chicanery written into the tax code, corporations pay the big bucks to the politicians in order to have themselves exempted from (or at least have the harm to them reduced) the prevailing tax rates and regulatory rigamaroll.

 

This point is made, too, by Coyne, “you might not expect any big favours if you do not contribute.  You might not even expect any severe retribution if you don’t. But you can hardly expect your reticence won’t be noticed, and remembered in those moments when you might once have hoped to be given the benefit of the doubt. This is a small country.  Perhaps nothing overt is said, but can you really take that chance?”

 

——

I shake my head along with Coyne:  “But the most fascinating fact of all is that the rest of us continue to put up with this.  We do not have elections in this country.  We have auctions.”

 

It is through naivete, failure to assume responsibility for our own governance, or through failure to think, that one would NOT insist that political contributions be limited to individuals.  (It has the added benefit of leveling the playing field for “alternate” political parties that are not in a position to court the centres of power and influence, whatever those may be (they aren’t ONLY corporate interests).

 

THE PROBLEM IS THE EXISTING SYSTEM:  favours can be bought and sold.  You can turf out a political party but that won’t solve the problem, as the article by Gillian Steward clearly demonstrates.  In time the same corruption will again surface – it’s under-the-surface just waiting to bubble up.

THE SYSTEM HAS TO CHANGE.  The difficulty with change is that no political party in power will enact legislation to cut off a major source of its funding and access to influence when out-of-office (unless the quality of political leadership suddenly changes.)  It is why we citizens will.

The Integrity Legislation we develop needs, not so much to define what constitutes acceptable behavior in Government, but to establish the built-in safeguards against corruption.  The “public trough” creates great centralized temptation as a source for personal or institutional gain.

Other people have come to the same conclusion:  we require a political system based on financial contributions from individuals.  Contributions from all entities, other than individuals, need to be outlawed.

2003-03-29 Great Sand Hills (o&g): Whose influence will be peddled at Energy Conference? Yours?!

 Corruption, Oil & Gas  No Responses »
Mar 292003
 

RELATED:   2003-04-03   Great Sand Hills (o&g): Sask Party Role. Political Contributions.

 

From earlier email you will recall the coming Energy Conference, April 2nd in Regina.

 

Many of the names are the same as in the GSH (Great Sand Hills) debacle:  Clayton Woitas, Profico Energy was at the press conference (last summer) with Ron Clark (President SaskEnergy) that announced the questionable “new” gas reserves at Shackleton adjacent to the GSH,  Burlington Resources,  Minister of Industry & Resource Developmt (now Cline instead of Lautermilch), Husky Energy (the newspapers had said that the o&g companies would be making an announcement on the same day as SaskEnergy.  They did not,  Husky was one of the 3 companies;  Nexen is right in there and so on.

 

It would be good to have citizen watchdogs to oversee the schmoozing that will go on at the pitchfork fondue, casino and comedien.  But the price tag is $850.00 so I, for one, won’t be going!

Perhaps there will be media people in attendance.  I wonder if they’d notice someone who just sat in to listen?!

For new people:  see the newspaper article (Winnipeg Free Press, Gillian Steward) that gives an idea of the relationship between the petroleum industry and the politicians.

 

First, the information on the Energy Conference:    (link no longer valid)

 

Wednesday, April 2nd and Thursday, April 3rd, 2003 Delta Trade and Convention Centre

 

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2003

 

Morning: Explore Saskatchewan

 

7:00 – 8:30 Registration

 

8:30 – 8:40 Chairman’s Opening Welcome

 

James Baker, J.P. Baker Management Inc., Conference Chair 8:45 – 9:00 Opening Remarks

 

The Honourable Eric Cline, Minister of Saskatchewan Industry and Resources

9:00 – 9:15 Review of Saskatchewan Energy Sector

 

James Baker, J.P. Baker Management Inc., Conference Chair

 

A summary of production and activity statistics, to answer the question of why energy is driving our economy. 9:15 – 10:30 Oil Sector Review

 

Husky Energy, David Long, General Manager, Heavy Oil

 

EnCana Corporation, TBA

 

Provident Energy Trust, Randy Findlay, President

 

KERN Partners, Pentti Karkkainen, Principal Partner

 

With many substantial, active oil companies in Saskatchewan, it is important to examine why they are doing business in the province. This presentation will look at exactly that, taking a close look at their activities and impacts. 10:30 – 10:50 Nutrition Break

 

10:50 – 12:00 Natural Gas Review

 

Profico Energy Management Ltd., Clayton Woitas, President

 

Apache Canada Ltd., Floyd Price, President

 

Burlington Resources, Brian Moreland, VP South Business Unit

 

Government of the Northwest Territories, Robert Marshall, Senior Pipeline Advisor

 

Presentations by leaders in the Natural Gas industry will examine current activities, where the industry is headed, and why these leaders are choosing to stay and do business in Saskatchewan. Current partners will discuss the investor perspective. 12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Speaker

 

The Honourable Lorne Calvert Premier of Saskatchewan Introduced by Hal Kvisle, President & CEO, TransCanada Pipelines Afternoon: Our Technology

 

1:30 – 3:00 Explore our Technology

 

Moderator: David Barnard, President University of Regina

 

Green House Gas Technology Centre, Malcolm Wilson, Director Energy and Environment

 

Saskatchewan Research Council, Dr. Laurier Schramm, President & CEO

 

Petroleum Technology Research Centre, Frank Proto, Chairman

 

Natural Resources Canada, Bruce Stewart, Director of CANMET

 

A look at Saskatchewan’s emerging oil and gas research centres and how they can assist the industry. 3:00 – 3:20 Bus transportation to Regina Research Park

 

3:45 Tour the Green House Gas Emissions Technology Centre and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre

 

5:00 Pitch Fork Fondue BBQ

 

The Terrace, 10 Research Drive, Regina Research Park 9:00 Casino Regina/Show Lounge, featuring Comedian Brent Butt

 

 

Thursday, April 3rd, 2003 Morning: Future Energy

 

8:30 – 10:00 Alternative Energy

 

Moderator: Paul Martin, Paul Martin Communications

 

Wind: Enbridge, Chuck Szmurlo, VP Planning and Business Development

 

Micro Turbines: SaskEnergy, Dean Reeve, Executive VP

 

Ethanol: Saskatchewan Agrivision, Lionel La Belle

 

Nuclear: Cameco Corporation, Jamie McIntyre, Director Sustainable Development and Corporate Relations

 

Luscar Ltd., Bob Bell, Vice President, Marketing

 

How companies are pursuing alternative energy opportunities in Saskatchewan in a post-Kyoto world. 10:00 – 10:20 Nutrition Break

 

10:20 – 12:00 Heavy Oil: Production and Upgrading

 

Moderator: Rich Kerr, Chief of Engineering, Global Operations, Nexen Canada Ltd.

 

Nexen Canada Ltd., Rich Kerr, Chief of Engineering, Global Operations

 

Colt Engineering, Steve Kresnyak, Director

 

Niven Fischer, Alf Fischer, Principal

 

Airborne Pollution Control, Murray Mortson, COO

 

Petrovera Resources, Domenic Torriero, VP Geology & Geophysics

 

A close look at heavy oil production, and presentations on emerging upgrading technologies and their impact on heavy oil production in the province. 12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Presentation by Canadian Light Source Inc., featuring the Synchrotron Project at the University of Saskatchewan.

 

Rob Slinger, Director, Business Development, will explore the potential of the $175 million Synchrotron for applied energy research. Afternoon:

Stakerholders, Working Together

 

1:30 – 3:30 Stakeholders: Working Together

 

Moderator: Frank Proto, Chairman, Petroleum Technology Research Centre

 

SaskPower, John Wright, President & CEO

 

Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM), Ken Engel, Executive Director and David Schnell, Reeve RM Browning

 

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), David Pryce, VP Western Canadian Operations

 

Small Explorers & Producers Association of Canada (SEPAC), George Fink, President, Bonterra Energy

 

Wrap-up, Q&A: James Baker

 

Each of these industry organizations will make presentations relative to their business in Saskatchewan. As a group, they will engage delegates in discussion including an open Q&A session giving you the opportunity to share your insights and hear other opinions.

 

2002-12-09 What happens when farm leaders meet agri-business? Winnipeg Free Press, Professor Arthur Schafer

 Corruption  No Responses »
Dec 092002
 

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 What happens when farm leaders meet agri-business?

(Monday, Dec. 9, 2002 — CropChoice news) —

ARTHUR SCHAFER, Winnipeg Free Press, 12/08/02: Main Street, Moose Jaw, is a long way from Wall Street, New York City. And the Manitoba Canola Growers Association doesn’t have a lot in common with Merrill Lynch Securities.

Nevertheless, the ethical issue currently dominating the attention of corporate America — conflict of interest — is now stirring controversy across the Prairie provinces. It has come to light that a number of Western farm leaders *have financial ties to the multinational chemical giant Monsanto. Because these leaders are accepting money and travel from Monsanto at the same time they serve as board members of leading farm organizations, they have been accused of being in a conflict-of-interest situation.

* [Reader inserted.  Except for Dave Sefton formerly of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, all the other Monsanto panel members  initially exposed by CBC as having signed the agreement, besides being involved in many different organizations have at least one common element to all of them. Each of them is involved with the Western Canadian Wheat Growers association, in many cases having held positions at the national or provincial executive level.  ]

First, some background to this story. Monsanto is spending a lot of money to persuade the federal government that it should license genetically modified (GM) wheat. A big part of Monsanto’s campaign hinges on persuading western farmers to support the introduction of GM wheat to Prairie agriculture. This is proving to be a tough sell. Many western wheat farmers fear that licensing GM, or “Roundup Ready” wheat would destroy Canada’s most valuable wheat, export markets. Europeans, for example, won’t touch the stuff. Since there’s no safe and sure way to segregate GM wheat from conventional wheat, all Canadian wheat runs the risk of being banned from Europe.

Understandably, feelings on this issue are passionate. There’s a lot at stake.

Some Manitoba farmer leaders, such as Ernie Sirski and his wife, have accepted Monsanto-funded travel (Winnipeg Free Press, Dec. 14). The Sirskis were treated to an all-expenses-paid trip to Spain last year to attend the World Congress on Conservation Agriculture. Mr. Sirski is president of the Manitoba Canola Growers’ Association. Another board member *is a paid member of Monsanto’s grower advisory panel on Roundup Ready Wheat. He is paid $150 per day to advise Monsanto on how to win the support of his fellow farmers for the introduction of GM wheat. The Monsanto Roundup Ready wheat panel has four members from each Prairie province — all receiving similar benefits.

[*Reader Insertion:  Director and 2002 director candidate Bruce Dalgarno as well as  previous MCGA director Max Polon, now director on Seed Growers Association.]

Not surprisingly, the beneficiaries see nothing morally troubling about the situation. Mr. Sirski, for example, is quoted as saying: “It would take more than a trip to Spain to prostitute myself for a chemical company.”

In thinking about how best to respond to this issue, Canadian farmers could study not only the crisis of confidence now plaguing Wall Street, but also the record of the Canadian medical community, which is awash in such conflict-of-interest issues. ‘Big Pharma’ spends more than $20,000 annually per Canadian physician on gifts, including free meals, money to attend educational sessions, travel and consulting fees.

I have lectured across Canada on the ethics of doctors accepting gifts from drug companies. Interestingly, I have never met a doctor who admitted that he or she had been influenced in any way by drug-company generosity. When confronted on the issue, they invariably reply, as did Mr. Sirski: “I can’t be bought for… (fill in the blank: a fancy dinner, laptop computer, Caribbean holiday, whatever).”

Are doctors and farmers incorruptible in the objectivity of their judgment, as they insist? Or, could it be that the drug and chemical companies recognize something fundamental about human nature?

This is a rhetorical question. What drug and chemical companies understand is that much of social life is based on reciprocity. The need to return kindness for kindness, favour for favour, benefit for benefit, is a basic motivator in virtually every human society. It behooves us, therefore, to reflect upon the fact that every dollar of the millions that the drug companies invest in gifts to physicians and hospitals — and every dollar that chemical and food companies invest in gifts to universities, farm organizations and individual farmers — is viewed by the companies as an important part of their corporate strategy. They are buying goodwill. They are buying influence with people who have decision-making power.

To put this point in another way, every gift and payment from agri-businesses to farmers and their organizations comes with strings attached. Strings that are sometimes as heavy as an iron chain, even when the recipients don’t recognize that their chain is being jerked.

All farm-organization directors have an obligation to put the interests of their members first. They have a “fiduciary duty” to exercise their judgment impartially and objectively in the best interest of members. Money, however, has a tendency to influence people’s judgment. So, when board members accept money or other benefits from a private corporation (such as Monsanto) about whose products they must officially make evaluative judgments, no one can be certain that their judgment is not being influenced by their vested interest. They may bend over backwards not to be influenced, and sometimes they will succeed. Nevertheless, because human motivation is often complex, there is always a risk that this conflict-of-interest situation will result in a violation of their moral duty.

Farm leaders who accept benefits from agri-business have acquired a “vested interest” that has the potential to conflict with their duty to put the interest of their membership first. Consciously or unconsciously, their judgment may be skewed. With the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandal in the U.S., we saw that accountants’ conflicts of interest led to disastrous consequences for shareholders and employees. With the Olivieri scandal at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, we saw that when hospitals and universities solicit donations from drug companies, they can too easily lose sight of their primary duty, which is to protect research integrity and patient safety.

Farmers are discovering that they had better protect the independence and integrity of their own organizations, or they too could face disastrous consequences.

Professor Arthur Schafer is Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba. schafer@cc.umanitoba.ca

2002-11-14 Dentist Richard Fischer, testimony to Congress, etc. 2002-2004-2008.

 Mercury poisoning, dental amalgams. See also Vaccinations.  No Responses »
Nov 142002
 

Grant writes:  “This is a good site”.   

The text below is “Testimony before Congress” given in 2002 by dentist Richard D. Fischer.   Go to the website for 2004  TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON HUMAN RIGHTS & WELLNESS U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES and other information.

http://www.evergreen8.com/testimony/

Richard D. Fischer, D.D.S.,
F.A.G.D., F.I.A.O.M.T.
4222 Evergreen Lane
Annandale, VA 22003
Telephone: (703) 256-4441
Fax: (703) 354-1631

——————————————————————————–

Testimony Before Congress
November 14, 2002

Dental amalgam (“silver”) fillings contribute more mercury to the body burden in humans that all other sources (dietary, air, water, vaccines, etc.) combined.[1,2,3] These fillings contain 50% mercury – which is more neurotoxic than lead, cadmium, or even arsenic.

To put this in perspective, the amount of mercury contained in one average size filling exceeds the U.S. E.P.A. standard for human exposure for over 100 years. Put in other terms, it takes only ½ gram of mercury (the amount in one filling) to contaminate all fish in a 10 acre lake.[4]

Mercury vapor escapes from dental amalgam fillings and is readily absorbed into the body. It accumulates in all body tissues and has been shown to cause pathophysiology. Many studies have confirmed this. Furthermore, in the case of pregnant women with amalgam fillings, the mercury readily passes from her bloodstream through the placental barrier and accumulates to even higher levels in the developing fetus’ organs than it does in the mother’s. Mercury from dental amalgam has also been shown to concentrate in mother’s milk, providing not only a prenatal, but a perinatal and a postnatal exposure[5] for the developing child, whose immune system and central nervous system are exquisitely vulnerable to this poison.

Scrap amalgam mercury, that unused portion of the filling material remaining after the filling is placed into a tooth, must by law be handled as a toxic waste disposal hazard.[6] It cannot be thrown in the trash, buried in the ground or incinerated. It must be stored in an air-tight vessel until properly disposed of. Yet some will justify storing this same mixture in peoples’ mouths just inches from the brainstem and declare it harmless!

Governments of other countries (Canada, Germany, Sweden, France, Norway and the United Kingdom) have place restrictions and/or issued advisories against the use of mercury in dental fillings – particularly in children and pregnant women.

In addition to the direct mercury exposure to humans from dental fillings, there exists a significant secondary route of exposure from dental offices. Published research shows that between 14% and 75% of the mercury found in municipal waste waters originate from dental offices. Mercury in this form ultimately finds its way into our rivers, lakes, bays and oceans where it undergoes a bioconversion by bacteria into methyl mercury – the form which commonly contaminates fish and shellfish. In this form, when eaten 90-100% of the mercury is absorbed. It was this compound which caused the tragedy in Japan’s Minimata Bay in the 1970’s when hundreds of people were poisoned and many died from eating mercury contaminated fish.

In conclusion, there is no scientific debate over the following facts regarding mercury from dental fillings.

Mercury is more toxic than lead, cadmium or even arsenic
Mercury escapes from dental amalgam fillings continuously as a vapor
74-100% of inhaled mercury vapor is absorbed into the human body
Inhaled mercury vapor from dental fillings accumulates in the body to levels which cause pathophysiology

Respectfully submitted,

Richard D. Fischer, D.D.S., F.A.G.D.
Past President, International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology

References:

World Health Organization (WHO) Environmental Health Criteria 118 document on inorganic mercury.

Aposhian, et. al., FASEB J. 6:2472-2476, 1992.

Clarkson & Friberg – Biological Monitoring of Toxic Metals. Plenum Press, N.Y., 1988.

Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI Technical Brief: “Mercury in the Environment,” 1993: and EPRI Journal, April, 1990.

Vimy, et. al., Maternal – fetal distribution of mercury (203 Hg) released from dental amalgam fillings. American Journal of Physiology 258:R939-45. April 1990.

Council on Dental Materials, Instruments and Equipment. Recommendations in dental mercury hygiene. 1984 JADA. 109:617-9, October, 1984.

AVERAGE FETAL/INFANT ABSORBED DOSES OF MERCURY
(A TIME LINE)  

(CLICK on  http://www.evergreen8.com/testimony/   to view the graph.)

*Contributed from Mothers Absorbed Doses Transferred to Fetus via Placenta

References for data on graph:

“Exposure to mercury in Canada: a multimedia analysis” Richardson, et. al., Water Air and Soil Pollution, 80:21-30, 1995.

World Health Organization (WHO) Environmental Health Criteria 118 document (EHC118) on inorganic mercury, 1991.

Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) online, National Center for Environmental Assessment, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Physicians’ Desk Reference, 53rd Edition, 1999, Medical Economics Company, Inc.

2002-01-01 Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution, Washington Post (PCB’s, Anniston, Alabama. “No one was ever told”)

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Culture and Ethics, Health, March Against Bayer-Monsanto, Rule of Law, Sustainability, Water  No Responses »
Jan 012002
 

Published on Tuesday, January 01, 2002

By the Washington Post

Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution

 

PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told

 

 

By Michael Grunwald

 

ANNISTON, Ala. — On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it “Alabama clay” and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized. They didn’t know their dirt and yards and bass and kids — along with the acrid air they breathed — were all contaminated with chemicals. They didn’t know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.

 

Now they know. They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

 

In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided “there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges.” In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from “slightly tumorigenic” to “does not appear to be carcinogenic.”

 

Monsanto enjoyed a lucrative four-decade monopoly on PCB production in the United States, and battled to protect that monopoly long after PCBs were confirmed as a global pollutant. “We can’t afford to lose one dollar of business,” one internal memo concluded.

 

Lastmonth, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered General Electric Co. to spend $460 million to dredge PCBs it had dumped into the Hudson River in the past, perhaps the Bush administration’s boldest environmental action to date. The decision was bitterly opposed by the company, but hailed by national conservation groups and many prominent and prosperous residents of the picturesque Hudson River Valley.

 

In Anniston, far from the national spotlight, the sins of the past are being addressed in a very different way. Here, Monsanto and its corporate successors have avoided a regulatory crackdown, spending just $40 million on cleanup efforts so far. But they have spent $80 million more on legal settlements, and another lawsuit by 3,600 plaintiffs — one of every nine city residents — is scheduled for trial next Monday. David Carpenter, an environmental health professor at the State University of New York at Albany, has been a leading advocate of the EPA’s plan to dredge the Hudson, but he says the PCB problems in Anniston are much worse.

 

“I’m looking out my window at the Hudson right now, but the reality is that the people who live around the Monsanto plant have higher PCB levels than any residential population I’ve ever seen,” said Carpenter, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Anniston. “They’re 10 times higher than the people around the Hudson.”

 

The Anniston lawsuits have uncovered a voluminous paper trail, revealing an unusually detailed story of secret corporate machinations in the era before strict environmental regulations and right-to-know laws. The documents — obtained by The Washington Post from plaintiffs’ attorneys and the Environmental Working Group, a chemical industry watchdog — date as far back as the 1930s, but they expose actions with consequences that are still unfolding today.

 

Officials at Solutia Inc., the name given to Monsanto’s chemical operations after they were spun off into a separate company in 1997, acknowledge that Monsanto made mistakes. But they also said that for years, PCBs were hailed for preventing fires and explosions in electrical equipment. Monsanto did stop making PCBs in 1977, two years before a nationwide ban took effect. And the current scientific consensus that PCBs are harmful, especially to the environment, masks serious disputes over just how harmful they are to people.

 

Today, the old plant off Monsanto Road here makes a chemical used in Tylenol. It has not reported a toxic release in four years. Robert Kaley, the environmental affairs director for Solutia who also serves as the PCB expert for the American Chemistry Council, said it is unfair to judge the company’s behavior from the 1930s through 1970s by modern standards.

 

“Did we do some things we wouldn’t do today? Of course. But that’s a little piece of a big story,” he said. “If you put it all in context, I think we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”

 

But Monsanto’s uncertain legacy is as embedded in west Anniston’s psyche as it is in the town’s dirt. The EPA and the World Health Organization classify PCBs as “probable carcinogens,” and while no one has determined whether the people in Anniston are sicker than average, Solutia has opposed proposals for comprehensive health studies as unnecessary. And it has not apologized for any of its contamination or deception.

 

In the absence of data, local residents seem to believe the worst. The stories linger: The cancer cluster up the hill. The guy who burned the soles off his boots while walking on Monsanto’s landfill. The dog that died after a sip from Snow Creek, the long-abused drainage ditch that runs from the Monsanto plant through the heart of west Anniston’s cinder-block cottages and shotgun houses. Sylvester Harris, 63, an undertaker who lived across the street from the plant, said he always thought he was burying too many young children.

 

“I knew something was wrong around here,” he said.

 

Opal Scruggs, 65, has spent her entire life in west Anniston, the last few decades in a cottage in back of a Waffle House behind the plant. But in recent years, Monsanto has bought and demolished about 100 PCB-tainted homes and mom-and-pop businesses nearby, turning her neighborhood into a virtual ghost town. Now she has elevated PCB levels in her blood — along with Harris and many of their neighbors — and she believes she’s a “walking time bomb.”

 

“Monsanto did a job on this city,” she said. “They thought we were stupid and illiterate people, so nobody would notice what happens to us.”

 

The Model City

 

Anniston was born at the height of the Industrial Revolution as a mineral-rich company town controlled by the Woodstock Iron Works, off-limits to all but company employees. It was named in 1879 for the foundry owner’s wife — Annie’s Town — but it was nicknamed “The Model City of the South” because it was supposed to be a kind of industrial utopia, a centrally planned rebuke to the North’s slums after the Civil War. The company would provide the workers’ cottages, the general store, the church, the schools. It would take care of the community.

 

Anniston retains its Model City slogan to this day, but its paternalistic social experiment was quickly abandoned. It soon developed into a heavy-industry boomtown, dominated by foundries and factories with 24-hour smokestacks. In 1929, one of those factories began manufacturing polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

 

Now that PCBs are considered “probable” human carcinogens by the EPA and the World Health Organization, it is easy to forget that they were once known as miracle chemicals. They are unusually nonflammable, and conduct heat without conducting electricity. Many safety codes once mandated the use of PCBs as insulation in transformers and other electrical equipment. They also were used in paints, newsprint, carbon paper, deep-fat fryers, adhesives, even bread wrappers. The American public had no idea of the downside of PCBs until the late 1960s.

 

Monsanto did. Shortly after buying the 70-acre plant at the foot of Coldwater Mountain in 1935, the company learned that PCBs, in the doublenegative of one company memo, “cannot be considered non-toxic.” A 1937 Harvard study was the first to find that prolonged exposure could cause liver damage and a rash called chloracne. Monsanto then hired the scientist who led the study as a consultant, and company memos began acknowledging the “systemic toxic effects” of Aroclors, the brand name for PCBs. Monsanto also began warning its industrial customers to protect their workers from Aroclors by requiring showers after every shift, providing them with clean work clothes every day and keeping fumes away from factory floors.

 

One Aroclor manual reveals that “in the early days of development,” workers at the Anniston plant had developed chloracne and liver problems. In February 1950, when workers fell ill at a customer’s Indiana factory, Monsanto’s medical director, Emmett Kelly, immediately “suspected the possibility that the Aroclor fumes may have caused liver damage.”

 

Two years later, Monsanto signed an agreement with the U.S. Public Health Service to label Aroclors: “Avoid repeated contact with the skin and inhalation of the fumes and dusts.” The company also warned its industrial customers about ecological risks: “If the material is discharged in large concentrations it will adversely affect . . . aquatic life in the stream.” But it did not warn its neighbors. “It is our desire to comply with the necessary regulations, but to comply with the minimum,” an official wrote.

 

In 1998, a former Anniston plant manager, William Papageorge, was asked in a deposition whether Monsanto officials ever shared their data about PCB hazards with the community.

 

“Why would they?” he replied.

 

In the fall of 1966, Monsanto hired a Mississippi State University biologist named Denzel Ferguson to conduct some studies around its Anniston plant. Ferguson, who died in 1998, arrived with tanks full of bluegill fish, which he caged in cloth containers and submerged at various points along nearby creeks. This is what he reported to Monsanto about the results in Snow Creek: “All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10 seconds and all were dead in 3 1/2 minutes.”

 

“It was like dunking the fish in battery acid,” recalled George Murphy, who was one of Ferguson’s graduate students at the time and is now chairman of Middle Tennessee State University’s biology department.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” said Mack Finley, another former Ferguson grad student, now an aquatic biologist at Austin Peay State University. “Their skin would literally slough off, like a blood blister on the bottom of your foot.”

 

The problem, Ferguson concluded, was the “extremely toxic” wastewater flowing directly from the Monsanto plant into Snow Creek, and then into the larger Choccolocco Creek, where he noted similar “die-offs.” The outflow, he calculated, “would probably kill fish when diluted 1,000 times or so.” He warned Monsanto: “Since this is a surface stream that passes through residential areas, it may represent a potential source of danger to children.” He urged Monsanto to clean up Snow Creek, and to stop dumping untreated waste there.

 

Monsanto did not do that — even though the warnings continued.

 

In early 1967, a group of Swedish scientists demonstrated publicly that PCBs were a threat to the global environment. The Swedes identified traces of PCBs throughout the food chain: in fish, birds, pine needles, even their children’s hair. They proved that PCBs are persistent — which, as one lawyer drawled in court last spring, “is nothing but a fancy word for ‘won’t go away.’ ” But Monsanto’s primary response was to prepare for a media war.

 

“Please let me know if there is anything I can do . . . so that we may make sure ourAroclor business is not affected by this evil publicity,” a Monsanto official wrote Kelly, the company medical director.

 

The first thing Monsanto’s board did, in November 1967, was approve a $2.9 million expansion of Aroclors operations in Anniston and Sauget, Ill. The vote was unanimous.

 

Records show that the Anniston plant did act to reduce its mercury releases after the Snow Creek fish kills. But it did not try to reduce PCB releases, even though the Anniston plant was leaking 50,000 pounds of PCBs into Snow Creek every year, while burying more than 1 million pounds of PCB-laced waste in its antiquated landfills. (By contrast, GE has been ordered to dredge 150,000 pounds of PCBs from the Hudson.) Jack Matson, a Pennsylvania State University environmental engineering professor who has consulted for Monsanto, concluded in a report for the Anniston plaintiffs that the company failed to observe even basic industry practices here. It had no catch basins, settling ponds or carbon filters to clean its wastewater. It washed spills straight into its sewers.

 

It was only in December 1968 — after PCBs had been discovered in California wildlife, setting off a furor in the United States — that Monsanto officials even began to write memos about controlling PCBs. “It only seems a matter of time before the regulatory agencies will be looking down our throats,” one warned. A consultant scolded Monsanto to stop denying problems and start cleaning up: “The evidence regarding PCB effects on environmental quality is sufficiently substantial, widespread and alarming to require immediate corrective action.”

 

Another memo — labeled C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-T-I-A-L, with each letter underlined twice — said the company was finally thinking about limiting releases of Aroclors. But the memo did not go so far as to propose a cleanup — “only action preparatory to actual cleanup.”

 

“We should begin to protect ourselves,” it said.

 

The Company Committee

 

In September 1969, Monsanto appointed an Aroclors Ad Hoc Committee to address the controversies swirling around its PCB monopoly, which was worth $22 million a year in sales. According to minutes of the first meeting, the committee had only two formal objectives: “Permit continued sales and profits” and “Protect image of . . . the Corporation.”

 

But the members agreed that the situation looked bleak. PCBs had been found across the nation in fish, oysters and even bald eagles. They had been identified in milk in Georgia and Maryland. They were implicated in a major shrimp kill in Florida. Their status as a serious pollutant, the committee concluded, was “certain.”

 

“Subject is snowballing,” one member jotted in his notes. “Where do we go from here?”

 

One option, as a member put it, was to “sell the hell out of them as long as we can.” Another option was to stop making them immediately. But the committee instead recommended “The Responsible Approach” — phasing out its PCB products, but only once it could develop alternatives.The idea was to maintain “one of Monsanto’s most profitable franchises” as long as possible while taking care to “reduce our exposure in terms of liability.” The committee even drew up graphs charting profits vs. liability over time, and urged more studies to poke holes in the government’s case against PCBs.

 

But the company’s own tests on rats, chickens and even dogs proved discouraging. “The PCBs are exhibiting a greater degree of toxicity than we had anticipated,” reported the committee chairman. Fish tests were worse: “Doses which were believed to be OK produced 100% kill.” The chairman pressured the company’s consultants for more Monsanto-friendly results, but they replied: “We are very sorry that we can’t paint a brighter picture at the present time.”

 

The picture was not bright in Anniston, either. Company studies were finding “ominous” concentrations of PCBs in streams and sediments. In Choccolocco Creek, Monsanto had discovered deformed and lethargic fish with off-the-charts PCB levels, including a blacktail shiner with 37,800 parts per million. The legal maximum was only 5 parts per million. “It is apparent to us that there is a cause-and-effect relationship,” the consultants wrote.

 

At first, the committee members proposed reducing PCB releases to an “absolute minimum.” But then they removed the word “absolute.” They saw no benefit in a unilateral crackdown on Monsanto’s PCBs when Monsanto’s customers were still dumping, too: “It was agreed that until the problems of gross environmental contamination by our customers have been alleviated, there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges.”

 

And before Monsanto even began to phase out its best-selling PCBs, its top customer intervened: General Electric, according to a memo by Papageorge, insisted that it needed to keep buying PCBs to prevent power outages and that the environmental threat was still “questionable.” Monsanto agreed to slow down its plan, and kept making PCBs until 1977, although only for closely monitored industrial uses.

 

And what, Kaley asks, is wrong with that? Corporations, after all, have obligations to their shareholders, and the federal law banning the manufacture of PCBs did not take effect until 1979. Monsanto’s critics, Kaley says, do not understand capitalism.

 

“Look, this was a good product,” Kaley said. “Did we try to save it as long as we could? Absolutely. Was the writing on the wall when we stopped producing it? Sure. But we did stop.”

 

The Reluctant Regulators

 

By May 1970, PCBs were a hot topic in the national media. Members of Congress were calling for hearings. It seemed like only a matter of time before regulators would notice the river of PCBs spewing out of the Anniston plant. “This would shut us down depending on what plants or animals they choose to find harmed,” the committee had warned.

 

So Monsanto decided to inform the Alabama Water Improvement Commission (AWIC) on its own that PCBs were entering Snow Creek. And AWIC helped the company keep its toxic secrets.

 

According to a company memo, AWIC’s technical director, Joe Crockett, had been “totally unaware of published information concerning Aroclors.” The Monsanto executives assured him that everything was under control, and Crockett, who is now deceased, said he appreciated their forthright approach. “Give no statements or publications which would bring the situation to the public’s attention,” he told them, according to the memo.

 

“In summary . . . the full cooperation of the AWIC on a confidential basis can be anticipated,” the memo concluded.

 

That summer, Crockett again came to Monsanto’s rescue after the federal Food and Drug Administration found PCB-tainted fish in Choccolocco Creek. (There were no fish — or any other aquatic life — in Snow Creek.) Monsanto’s managers told him not to worry, saying they hoped to reduce PCB emissions to 0.1 pounds per day by September.

 

“Crockett will try to handle the problem quietly without release of the information to the public at this time,” announced a memo marked CONFIDENTIAL: F.Y.I. AND DESTROY. Crockett explained that if word leaked out, the state would be forced to ban fishing in Choccolocco Creek and a popular lake downstream to ensure public safety.

 

Instead, the public kept fishing. But Monsanto’s daily PCB losses, after dipping from a high of 250 pounds to a low of 16 pounds, ballooned to 88 pounds — 880 times its goal.

 

“There is extreme reluctance to report even relatively low emission figures because the information could be subpoenaed and used against us in legal actions,” wrote an executive at Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis. “Obviously, having to report these gross losses multiplies, enormously, our problems because the figures would appear to indicate lack of control. . . . Is there anything more that can be done to get the losses down?”

 

There was. The problem had festered for 36 years, but the Anniston managers finally began to act that fall, installing a sump, a carbon bed and a new limestone pit to trap PCBs. And in 1971, facing as much as $1 billion in additional pollution control costs in Anniston, Monsanto shifted all PCB production to its plant in Illinois.

 

Before the year was over, Crockett helped out once more. The Justice Department was considering a lawsuit against Monsanto over PCBs, and the EPA wanted it to dredge Snow Creek. So Crockett set up a meeting between Monsanto and an EPA regulator and helped argue the company’s case. The company’s problems disappeared. One executive noted with relief in a memo that a federal prosecutor had tried but failed to obtain Monsanto’s customer list: “I shudder to think how easily it would have been for someone . . . to start spilling the beans as to whom we have been selling PCB products.”

 

Monsanto’s luck with regulators held in 1983, when the federal Soil Conservation Service found PCBs in Choccolocco Creek, but took no action. In 1985, state authorities found PCB-tainted soils around Snow Creek, but a dispute over cleanup details lingered until a new attorney general named Donald Siegelman took office in 1988. In a letter that April, Monsanto’s Anniston superintendent thanked Siegelman — who is now the state’s Democratic governor — for addressing the Alabama Chemical Association, and meeting Monsanto’s lobbyists for dinner. Then he got to the point: Monsanto wanted to go forward with its own cleanup plan, dredging just a few hundred yards of Snow Creek and its tributaries.

 

The company soon received approval to do just that.

 

A spokesman for Gov. Siegelman noted that in April 2000, he wrote to President Bill Clinton about Anniston’s PCBs, pointing out “the severity of the situation” and requesting federal funding. But several state officials acknowledged that a dozen years earlier, Alabama should have tested a much larger area for PCBs before approving Monsanto’s limited plan.

 

“It’s hard to know how that one slipped through the cracks,” said Stephen Cobb, the state’s hazardous waste chief. “For some reason, no one investigated the larger PCB problem.”

 

The larger problem finally burst into public view in 1993, after a local angler caught deformed largemouth bass in Choccolocco Creek. After studies again detected PCBs, Alabama issued the first advisories against eating fish from the area — 27 years after Monsanto learned about those bluegills sliding out of their skins.

 

By 1996, state officials and plaintiffs’ attorneys were finding astronomical PCB levels in the area: as high as 940 times the federal level of concern in yard soils, 200 times that level in dust inside people’s homes, 2,000 times that level in Monsanto’s drainage ditches. The PCB levels in the air were also too high. And in blood tests, nearly one-third of the residents of the working-class Sweet Valley and Cobbtown neighborhoods near the plant were found to have elevated PCB levels. The communities were declared public health hazards. Near Snow Creek, the state warned, “the increased risk of cancer is estimated to be high.”

 

That’s when Monsanto launched a program to buy and raze contaminated properties, offering early sign-up bonuses and moving expenses as incentives. “Monsanto intends to be a good neighbor — to those who wish to leave, and to those who wish to stay,” its brochures explained.

 

Sally Franklin, a 64-year-old retired mechanic with a girlish voice, decided to stay; she couldn’t afford to buy a new home with the money Monsanto was offering. One spring afternoon, she looked down from her PCB-contaminated home overlooking what used to be Sweet Valley, now just an overgrown field around an incongruous stop sign. So much for good neighbors, she grumbled.

 

“They must not think we know a black cow can give white milk,” she said.

 

The Dredged-Up Past

 

Anniston is not much of a model city anymore. The EPA officials who set up an Anniston satellite office to deal with the PCB problem are now alarmed about widespread lead poisoning as well. The Army is building an incinerator here to burn 2,000 tons of deadly sarin and mustard gas. And the Anniston Star has been questioning Monsanto’s past mercury releases.

 

Duane Higgins runs the Chamber of Commerce here in Calhoun County — motto: “Near Atlanta . . . Near Birmingham . . . Near Perfect” — and like many civic leaders here, he’s sick of headlines about pollution. “I’m tired of paying for the sins of our fathers and grandfathers,” he said. “I don’t see the point of dredging this stuff up.”

 

He meant that literally, too. Local activists want Monsanto to dredge all its PCBs out of Anniston’s creeks and move all its buried PCBs to hazardous-waste landfills. That could cost billions of dollars. But state and EPA officials do not agree that such drastic measures are necessary. They have no evidence that PCBs have escaped from the dumps since Monsanto was required to cap them after a spill in 1996; they believe most of Anniston’s PCBs spread from the creeks during floods. And dredging projects such as the one approved for the Hudson River remain scientifically as well as politically controversial.

 

“There’s a very pervasive problem in Anniston, but so far we haven’t seen a need for those kinds of dramatic actions,” said Wesley Hardegree, an EPA corrective action specialist.

 

Part of the problem is that despite all the publicity, much remains unknown about PCBs. Various animal studies have linked them to various cancers. Other studies suggest possible ties to low IQs, birth defects, thyroid problems, immune problems, diabetes. A federal research summary titled “Do PCBs Affect Human Health?” concluded: “No smoking gun . . . but plenty of bullets on the floor.”

 

But no one has found a link between PCBs and any cancer as definitive as the link between, say, cigarettes and lung cancer. A recent GE-funded study — conducted by the same toxicologist who originally discovered that PCBs cause cancer in rats — found no link to cancer in humans. And some independent scientists remain skeptical of any serious health effects from real-world PCB exposure.

 

Today, Solutia is negotiating a final Anniston cleanup plan; EPA officials say the company has been aggressive in pressing for lower standards but generally cooperative. It employs 85 workers in Anniston, and donates computers and science labs to area schools. Its brochures pledge to “insure environmental safety and health for the community” and to hide nothing from Anniston residents: “You have a right to know, and we have a responsibility to keep you, our valued neighbor, informed.”

 

“We don’t have horns coming out of our head,” said David Cain, the current manager of the Solutia plant in Anniston. “We’re not evil people.”

 

Still, the company’s credibility problems linger in Anniston. A recent company e-mail revealed that even the gifts of computers and labs were part of a new damage-control strategy, along with donations to Siegelman’s inaugural fund: “The strategy calls for significantly increasing . . . community outreach, contributions and political involvement while aggressively seeking . . . to contain media issues regionally.” The company’s critics say little has changed. And they warn that Monsanto, which no longer produces chemicals, is now promising the world that its genetically engineered crops are safe for human consumption.

 

“For years, these guys said PCBs were safe, too,” said Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group, which has been compiling chemical industry documents on the Web. “But there’s obviously a corporate culture of deceiving the public.”

 

On Jan. 7, the two sides will have their day in court. Kaley said his company has nothing to hide.

 

“I’m really pretty proud of what we did,” Kaley said. “Was it perfect? No. Could we be second-guessed? Sure. But I think we mostly did what any company would do, even today.”

 

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

2001-11-05 Welcome, Yankee billions, natural gas. Baseline information.

 Energy  No Responses »
Nov 052001
 

(link no longer valid)

PETROLEUM

November 5, 2001 Issue Full Text

U.S. cash revitalizes Canadians’ urgent search for natural gas

by Mike Byfield

SO far this year, American firms have spent US$17 billion to acquire Canadian petroleum producers. By any standard, this is serious money. For example, Exxon Mobil-the world’s largest petroleum producer outside The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-has an annual capital and exploration budget in the neighbourhood of US$11 billion. The Yankees’ latest corporate trophy was Canadian Hunter Exploration, snapped up in early October for C$3.3 billion by Burlington Resources. In September, two other Canadian flagships-Westcoast Energy and Anderson Exploration-got gobbled by Duke Energy and Devon Energy respectively, at a combined price tag just shy of US$10 billion. American investment is driven by the probability of higher natural gas prices in the near future, a sobering thought for Canadian consumers.

Stephen Rodrigues, a statistician with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says U.S. ownership of the oil and gas industry was more than 70% in the 1970s. The next two decades were dogged by government intervention and low fuel prices, which prompted the Yanks to pull back. In their place flourished a flock of Canadian independents, with names like Chauvco, Berkley and Encal. Some of these firms have now in turn been purchased by foreigners. The CanHunter buy pushes the U.S. stake in the industry back above 50%. Gord Currie, an analyst with Canaccord Capital Corp. in Calgary, believes that the American buyers are anticipating a strong rebound in natural gas prices and hence want a sturdy position in gas-prone western Canada.

Far from weakening the Canadian-owned sector, however, the acquisitions have put millions into the pockets of its most aggressive energy entrepreneurs. These executives are now organizing new companies to get back into the game. A recent example is Duvernay Oil, founded by several principals from Berkley Petroleum. Anadarko Petroleum paid $1.14 billion for Berkley last February. Duvernay has been grubstaked with $66.5 million, including $28 million contributed by the five-member firm’s own executives.

The same story is echoed elsewhere. Last year Renaissance Energy was bought by Hong Kong-controlled Husky for $4 billion. Now Renaissance co-founder Clayton Woitas is running Profico Energy Management, capitalized with $20 million. After Hunt Oil purchased Newport Petroleum for $489 million in 2000, former boss Uldis Upitis invested $22 million in a new outfit named Sentra Resources. These new companies are mostly privately held by professional industry insiders. Their equity will give them several years to develop properties without worryimg.

In the past, many Canadian junior producers raised capital through public share issues. But speculative and institutional investors alike were hammered by low gas prices through much of the 1990s, and have since refused to risk fresh capital on smaller players. Now the junior sector is reviving dramatically in private form, thanks to those American acquisition dollars. “The rate of formation of new companies in this industry is remarkable,” comments Greg Gilbertson, a spokesman for the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB). “Since 1998, 317 new exploration and development firms have registered with us, including 79 between January and September this year.”

After peaking last winter at $12 per gigajoule, Alberta spot prices for natural gas have settled back to less than $3 this fall. Factors dampening prices include plentiful gas in underground storage, moderate weather this summer and slowing industrial demand due to recession and fuel switching. The lower gas price tickles many Canadian oil patchers. “The Americans bought at the peak of the demand cycle,” says the president of one Calgary-based junior. “With gas prices now down again, outfits like Duke and Anadarko will likely cull through their new acquisitions and sell off properties which they consider less attractive. In that case, Canadian juniors will have a good shot at building up their own production all over again. As long as exploration land is available at affordable prices, we’ve always been better at finding oil and gas on our own turf than the big American companies.”

The gas price decline, which is expected to hold bills down through this winter, is obviously good news for consumers. Atco Gas, for instance, just announced that its annualized gas charge will drop from $5.41 per gigajoule to $3.45 in southern Alberta. But the longer term outlook remains fraught with the risk of continental shortages. Canada is producing 6.2 trillion cubic feet per year, a rate that drillers cannot match. The EUB expects Alberta’s gas production to start declining by 2% annually after 2003. Arctic gas, when it eventually becomes available, will cost considerably more.

1999-09-11 British Dental Journal: Epidemiology, Multiple sclerosis, dental caries and amalgam fillings — is there an association?

 Mercury poisoning, dental amalgams. See also Vaccinations.  No Responses »
Sep 111999
 

This epidemiological research contains the same flaw in logic as pointed out to Dr. Jock Murray:

“The majority of the population has mercury amalgams.  That there is “no increase” in mercury in MS patients – –  in comparison with other people in the population – – is to be expected.   It does not argue for a non-causal relationship between mercury amalgams and MS:

The same toxins cause different health outcomes in different people, and they exist in different bodies in different combinations with other environmental toxins.

If most everyone has mercury amalgams, and people react differently to mercury poisoning, then a level of mercury in you may result in disease A, but that same mercury in your neighbor may result in disease B, and so on.  NOT ONE of the disease groups (like MS or alzheimers or whatever) will show an elevated level of mercury, IN COMPARISON with the rest of the population.  The mercury levels can be the same or variable across the population, but with different and/or no disease outcomes.  Not everyone with the same level of mercury will get the particular disease.  So, MS patients may not have elevated mercury readings in comparison with the rest of the population.”

(The preceding is from the posting  2010-12-06  Accumulated, on mercury poisoning. Vaccinations & dental amalgams.  Did the European countries that banned dental amalgams made with mercury bow to uninformed public pressure or to sound science?)

THE BRITISH DENTAL JOURNAL:

http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v187/n5/full/4800254a1.html

Summaries

British Dental Journal 187, 258 (1999)
Published online: 11 September 1999 | doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.2009.436

Epidemiology:�
Multiple sclerosis, dental caries and amalgam fillings — is there an association?

Linda Shaw1

In brief

  • MS patients have more dental caries than age-sex matched controls. This difference is unlikely to be secondary to MS and may be causally associated in some way.
  • Levels of mercury in the body are not higher in MS patients compared with controls suggesting mercury is unlikely to be a causal factor for MS.
  • Levels of mercury in the body were related to the number of teeth filled with mercury.
  • Further research should concentrate on the possible aetiological connection between dental disease and MS.

 

Abstract

Objectives To investigate the association between multiple sclerosis, dental caries, amalgam fillings, body mercury and lead.

Design Matched case-control study.

Setting Leicestershire in the years 1989–1990.

Subjects Thirty-nine females with multiple sclerosis (of recent onset) were matched with 62 controls for age, sex and general practitioner.

Methods Home interview of cases and controls within which there was an assessment of the DMFT index and blood and urine mercury and lead levels.

Results The odds of being a MS case increased multiplicatively by 1.09 (95% CI 1.00,1.18) for every additional unit of DMFT index of dental caries. This represents an odds ratio of 1.213 or a 21% increase in risk of MS in relation to dental caries in this population. There was no difference between cases and controls in the number of amalgam fillings or in body mercury or lead levels. There was a significant correlation between body mercury levels and the number of teeth filled with amalgam (controls: r = +0.430, P = 0.006, cases: r = +0.596, P = 0.001).

Conclusion There was evidence of excess dental caries among MS cases compared with the controls. This finding supports the strong geographical correlation between the two diseases. A further study of this association is recommended.

Introduction

Multiple sclerosis, dental caries and fillings: a case-control studyC. W. McGrother , C. Dugmore , M. J. Phillips , N. T. Raymond , P. Garrick , and W. O. Baird Br Dent J1999;  187: 261–264

Comment

There are occasions when the dental profession groans audibly at yet another media disinformation campaign perhaps linking cancer and Down Syndrome with water fluoridation — or indeed linking multiple sclerosis with amalgam restorations. However, it behoves us all, as scientists, to examine the facts, sift the evidence, and keep an open mind until there is sufficient robust information before we authoritatively advise our patients. Perhaps you remember the publicity of the ‘miracle cures’ reported in patients with multiple sclerosis after having all their amalgam fillings replaced. Perhaps, like me, you thought that MS is a disease which is characterised by remissions and relapses and patients were clutching at straws in the vain attempt to produce a miracle.

This research project investigates the emotive argument in a very scientific approach so that we can produce some evidence-based dentistry as far as MS sufferers are concerned. The subjects and controls were identified according to rigorous criteria but although, there was a response rate of 81% in the MS study group there was a lower 59% response rate in the matched control group. It is, perhaps, important to note that there was a tendency for the MS cases to be relatively disadvantaged in relation to employment and major financial commitments to home and car ownership despite similar levels of educational attainment.

As far as the dental findings were concerned, there was a significant relationship between MS and dental caries with a mean difference of 2.24 carious teeth between MS cases and controls. What is also very important is that there was no significant difference in the number ot teeth filled with amalgam. There was evidence, though, of wholesale replacement of fillings with non-amalgam materials in four of the MS cases.

However, is this cause and effect? The old, old question of which comes first — the chicken or the egg, must come to mind. Should we postulate that the differences in dental caries arose after the onset of MS because of all sorts of compensatory dietary factors, or as a result of its debilitating nature? Or does Streptococcus mutans have an important effect on the activation of the immune mechanism involved in demyelination in MS as well as dental caries?

There are very important conclusions that we can draw from this study. First that there is a correlation between multiple sclerosis and dental caries. Secondly, there is no association between multiple sclerosis and the numbers of amalgam fillings or body mercury. Thirdly, without doubt, we still have many more questions to answer in this field but this research project has furthered our evidence base in advising our patients.

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