INCOMING: Oppose EPA Pesticide Tests on Humans

Okay, supposedly we are such a moral people that parents have to be notified of a potential abortion, but not of children (theirs or others) to neurotoxin (pesticide) experimentation? Neurotoxins, BTW, are one of several benefits America gleaned from Nazi scientists (or didn't you know that little fact) and the core of such military weapons as Agent Orange.

Scientists union opposes EPA's pesticide-test plan: "The union representing scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency added its voice yesterday to critics who are protesting the agency's proposed rule for human experimentation in testing pesticides."

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"The pesticide companies want to use this data and be able to sell their pesticides for a whole slew of uses that they're restricted from now, but their track records of ethical violations in what they submit is alarming," said Christenson.

Christenson and other critics say that the portions of the proposed rules that concern them include:

• The inability of EPA scientists to ensure that industry followed ethical guidelines, such as informing test subjects of the potential hazard from the poisons to which they're being exposed.
• The lack of a firm ban on the use of prisoners as test subjects.
• Provisions that would let rules forbidding testing of infants, children and pregnant women to be set aside on the decision of the EPA administrator.

"Also of concern is that the rule would allow testing on children who 'cannot be reasonably consulted,' such as those that are mentally handicapped, does not require parental consent for testing on children who have been neglected or abused, and accepts studies done on children outside of the United States, which may not comply with EPA standards," said Charles Orzehoskie, president of the union's national council of EPA locals.

I just keep wondering when upright moral Americans will start getting their panties bunched from real issues in America, such as the daily sacrifice of ordinary Americans to the behemouth appetite of the agro-chemical and related military industries. You best believe Paris Hilton won't be one of their uninformed test subjects...

The period during which the public can comment on the planned rule ends next week. The deadline for issuing the final rule is the end of January 2006.

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