Hi everybody:
A few weeks ago I sent you the following message. I am sending it again, substantially revised and edited. I do this because the first version (according to some feed-back I have received) may have been the most widely distributed ever of any of our EMF-L messages. It has been read by many who are not conversant with the EMF subject to the extent that are most readers of this list. I therefore feel the need to "clean-up" the original with an eye to making it more understandable to "outside" readers.
Please, I ask, again distribute this message to those who received it the first time -- so that, if they are saving it for any reason, they may choose to retain this edited version. Also, to all: the "Malfeasance" approach I discuss below IS VALID.... It could be applied to local officials as well as to national.
Cheerio.......THE PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW!!!!!!
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org
......Inertia and Malfeasance.......
........."Now the public will know what the members of the EMF
research community have known for years"......
The speaker who made the above statement was one of thirty or so scientists who were present at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) sponsored EMF/health effects research review project recently completed in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the U.S.A. There, the "working group," a panel of 30 scientists who had been selected by NIEHS to write the final report, agreed to the final draft of a report summarizing more than five years of studies by literally hundreds of researchers worldwide. In the report, the panel voted 19-8 to identify EMF (power frequency electromagnetic fields) as a class 2B carcinogen.
As it happens, I was seated next to that scientist during the final three days of that historic gathering. He (like myself) was not an actual participant on the panel. He was an "observor."
Fortunately, the editor of MicroWave News (MWN) heard the statement and recorded those words in the pages of MWN. I can certainly vouch for the fact that the statement is consistent with some of my conversations with the speaker, Dr. Michael Marron, of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington Virginia.
I also learned that my fellow U.S. Navy seat-mate is an extremely well qualified and knowledgeable expert about EMF, going as far back (in his involvement with the issue) as the 1973 SANGUINE Project -- a U.S. Navy communications project (later abandoned) that is reported in Ellen Sugarman's latest book, "Warning, the electricity around you may be hazardous to your health."
I know of no better commentary or summary for the final results of the five year, $45 million, EMF RAPID research project (as it was designated) than Dr. Marron's pronouncement above. Here it is again, as it appears in MicroWave News:
"Now the public will know what the members of the EMF research community have known for years," commented Dr. Michael Marron of the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, VA. Marron is a member of the EMF Inter agency Advisory Committee, which must submit its own report on the EMF RAPID program to Congress." [MicroWave News, vol XVIII, No. 4; July/August 1998, pp. 5.]
It is, I submit, particularly noteworthy that a person of such unchallengeable qualifications and background in the EMF subject should observe: ...Now the public will know what we "have known for years"......
In other words, "we" (the scientists researching EMF) have known about the bio-effects that account for the "possible" (many still believe "probable") carcinogenic effects of 50 or 60 Hz power line frequency EMFs for a long time!!! Only the public has been kept in the dark!!!
But, Dr Marron, will the public know??? Will the public THIS TIME be given the WHOLE story??? Or, as so many times in the past -- when other equally qualified, equally legitimate scientific panels had reached substantially the same conclusion (As early as 1990, the "working level" scientists at EPA reached the same verdict.) -- will the public once again be cheated of its "right to know" by a government that has ***criminally*** controlled and distorted the flow of EMF information to the public for so long???
Oh, you gasp, surely not "criminally." Yes, the word is "criminally." That is exactly the judgment a good lawyer would seek if pursuing a corporate corrupter of the truth in a similar situation -- corporate CEOs (like the tobacco chieftains) who knowingly misled the public about the safety of their product, or a pharmaceutical official who "knowingly" withholds from the public vital information about tests of his product which show it may be unsafe. Thus withholding information about possible harm to the public to the extent that innocent lives could be lost or innocent children stricken with leukemia.
That is what our government has done! Knowingly.... And, not once, but repeatedly, since at least the 1990 EPA study that was buried by political operatives (not by the scientists who had done the work).....
Any good lawyer would go after "punitive" damages based on the criminal negligence/malfeasance behavior of the officials involved in that case ... and others subsequent to it ... in a history that is full of distortions, withheld and dissembled public information, which (as Ellen Sugarman has written) apparently began with the SANGUINE project, if not earlier. (In the 1960s and early 70s the Soviet Union used EMF against the personnel of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. That information, too, has not been fully revealed to the public or to the families of the embassy people who were exposed.)
In keeping with the conclusion of Dr. Marron (above), I say that the charges against our government -- for keeping information about the bio-effects of EMF from the public ... and obfuscating, dissembling, or distorting the resultant EMF hazards ... that "we" (the insiders) have "known for years" -- should be characterized as: "deliberate and criminal negligence and malfeasance of office....."
Of course, the industries who have a vested interest in the EMF issue are also guilty of dissembling, obfuscating (and sometimes lying) about the EMF realities, too..... But their conduct (motivated by profits and the protection of the value of their company on Wall Street) is, it seems, more acceptable to our "profit driven" society..... Probably, they could not be charged with "criminal" negligence and malfeasance -- only greed.....
* * * * * * *
Well, it will happen again -- just like in the past -- if we allow the same national sense of "inertia" that has governed our actions about the EMF health hazard to date ... to continue in the future....
The brutal reality is that the health and safety of the citizens of the U.S. are still subordinate to a bureaucracy (of RICH health agencies, like the NIH, NCI, NIEHS triumvirate) that has been "staffed" by the same political influences which have for decades guaranteed that 'public interests' in health and safety matters come AFTER the profits of the industry special interest groups, the military, and the international trade concerns which guide the U.S. political/industrial system far more than do the health and safety needs of our citizens....
I'm afraid that I no longer have one scintilla of confidence in a governmental system which FUNCTIONS to ignore or deny the publics health and safety needs when those needs are in conflict with the powerful vested interests who control our government ... at all levels. The record clearly shows that it is not just our legislature or executive branches that have "sold out" to the special interests. The bureaucracies as well are either "staffed" by friends of the big spenders (that's NOT Joe public) or ... they are often intimidated and living only for their retirement and/or the day they will leave the government and go to work for one of the 'big spender' companies....
This will not change unless we 'the people' demand it...... Absent a tidal wave of public indignation that DEMANDS the publication of information which has been withheld for years (as Dr. Marron implicitly observed), the INERTIA of the existing political/bureaucratic system -- a system of big spending political "insiders" who "buy" the bureaucratic machinery of our government as well as the 'hearts' of our legislators -- will continue to deny public protection from the kind of exploitation that has been recorded so far in the EMF story....
A public policy that rightfully should be dedicated to protect the "people" of our democracy (read: oligarchy) and foster the formation of policies that recognize the ubiquitous nature of the looming EMF health hazard will not occur unless we demand it, fight for it, manifest a willingness to "throw out" the political leadership that stands in the way......
Clearly, the ubiquitous looming EMF health hazard is (within the lifetime of my "x generation" children) the most serious single environmental threat to public health and safety that has yet been identified..... All the scientific evidence of this scientific paradigm, the bio-effects of EMF which we have just BEGUN to comprehend, points toward ***two major conclusions*** which were NOT decided by the NIEHS panel that met in Minnesota. They were not even considered.
Yet it is manifestly apparent to "the insiders" that the results of the Minneapolis meeting portend the future acknowledgment -- perhaps SOON in the future -- of the following two additional bio-effects" realities:
(1) It is not the 60 Hz (power line) frequencies, alone, that constitute the health threat of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation. The evidence of EMF research worldwide in many other wave-bands of the electromagnetic spectrum is clearly trying to tell us that ALL "EMF" signals (microwave, RF, etc., of whatever frequency) should be considered suspect!!! The Russians have known for more than twenty years....
(2) The Minneapolis verdict was the "easy," obvious verdict. (As Dr. Marron's statement implies.) Many, if not "most," of the scientists on that panel realize full well that the 'truly appropriate' judgment would have been to define the EMF health threat as a "2A" category carcinogen -- a "probable" carcinogen rather than the "possible" that was decided.
[Note carefully!!! The balloting was conducted in an "open" balloting procedure (where all those who "control" the funding were able to "take note" of how each scientist voted!!!). I believe that if a secret ballot had been allowed (as I suggested on this network some months past), the 2A category ("probable" carcinogen) would have been more likely to have been the resultant "judgment." Failing that, the 2B verdict would have turned out to be even more decisive than the count recorded: 19 to 8. I observed that in all the votes taken there were five "scientists" -- all "tied-in" in some way with the electric industry -- who voted consistently against any finding that would have put EMF in an adverse health category........ Consider how overwhelming the judgment becomes if those five (clearly voting in a conflict of interest situation) were excluded. Instead of 19 to 8, suddenly the ratio is 19 to 3, an overwhelming majority judgment!!!!]
Yes, my fellow Navy Officer and seat-mate at the historic Minneapolis conference, Mike Marron, I agree with you -- it is high time that the PUBLIC should be allowed to know "what we know" ... what we "have known" for a long time.....
Only "the usual" governmental/bureaucratic inertia of the past can now prevent it..... Let us no longer play the "docile citizen" passive role which relies on "the government" to protect "our" interests ... a role that the U.S. government has long since 'abdicated'.....
Let it henceforth be our commitment to ourselves ... that WE are going to INSIST on 'performance' to OUR standards ... and OUR needs ... by legislators (and bureaucrats) who are 'expendable' when they fail to put OUR priorities above the "special interests" of those who have "bought" the system..... The EMF saga is a good place to start......
Cheerio......
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org