Saw
this a few weeks back.
Rep. Waxman and Senator Barbara Boxer released a report this morning that finds significant and widespread ethical violations in human pesticide experiments currently under review by the EPA.
The report finds that these controversial experiments, in which participants were intentionally dosed with toxic pesticides, appear to have routinely violated ethical standards by failing to obtain informed consent, dismissing adverse outcomes, and inflicting harm on human subjects.
In one experiment under EPA review, human subjects were exposed to MITC, a dangerous pesticide closely related to the chemical that killed thousands in Bhopal, India, in 1984. In another, human subjects -- mostly college students and minorities paid $15 per hour -- were placed in a chamber with chloropicrin, an active ingredient in tear gas, for up to one hour at a time for four consecutive days. In some experiments, subjects were instructed to swallow capsules of pesticides with orange juice or water at breakfast [...]
At the urging of pesticide manufacturers, the Bush Administration reversed this moratorium. Although the Administration's first EPA Administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, tried at one point to maintain a moratorium on agency consideration of human pesticide experiments, this effort was abandoned by the Administration after she resigned and a court ruling identified procedural defects in her actions. Under its new permissive policy, EPA has stated that "the Agency is reviewing ... or expects to review" 24 separate human pesticide experiments as part of its "hazard characterization" process. The pesticide manufacturers view EPA consideration of these experiments as central to the industry's efforts to obtain lenient regulatory standards.
You can read the
full report here.
So it's all horrible, and crazy that this is happening. But this couldn't possibly become an electoral issue, could it? Would any Republicans facing reelection be so stupid as to embrace this horrific practice? I thought, "nah".
Guess I was wrong (PDF). Enter Montana Sen. Conrad Burns.
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), chairman of the subcommittee overseeing EPA spending, will likely oppose a provision in the House version of the agency's appropriations bill that bans the agency's use of data from pesticide testing on humans, after EPA and industry lobbied against the House language, a congressional source says.
"We've heard numerous expressions of concern about the House language from the science community, the agency and industry, and we're not likely to follow along," the source says [...]
"CropLife America, the pesticide industry trade group, issued a statement after the House vote, calling on the Senate to `overturn' the provision." Since 2000, Burns has accepted $10,000 from political action committees set up by some of the pesticide industries top producers. In total, Burns has accepted $5,000 from DuPont, $3,000 from the American Crop Protection Association, $1,000 from Bayer Crop Science and $1,000 from Monsanto.
Boggles the mind, I know.
(The DSCC's From the Roots blog has more.)