Subject: Inertia......
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 032811 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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Hi everybody:
......Inertia.......
........."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 those thirty or
so scientists who was present in Minneapolis on the day the EMF RAPID
working group concluded its work by voting to identify EMF (power
frequency electromagnetic fields) as a class 2B carcinogen.
As it happens, I was seated next to that U.S. Navy 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" (again,
like myself).
I did not hear him make the statement quoted above, but fortunately,
Dr. Louis Slesin (Editor of MicroWave News, MWN) did ... and recorded
those words in the pages of MWN.... While I did not personally 'hear'
the statement, I can certainly vouch for the fact that it is consistent
with some of my conversations with the speaker, Dr. Michael Marron,
during those final three days when we were seat-mates at the RAPID
meeting.
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." [p. 47.] That section is well worth
reading.....
I know of no better commentary or summary for the final results of the
EMF RAPID project than Dr. Marron's quoted statement....... Here it is
again, as it appears in MicroWave News, MWN:
"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've known about the bio-effects that account for the
"possible" (many still believe "probable") carcinogenic effects of power
line frequency EMFs for a long time!!! Only the public has been kept in
the dark!!!
But ... 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 scientific panels had reached substantially the same
conclusion (as early as 1990, the "working level" scientists at EPA
reached the same "category 2B" verdict) -- will the public be cheated of
its "right to know" by a government that has ***criminally*** controlled
and distorted the flow of EMF information to the public "at least" over
the past decade???
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 -- a CEO (like
the tobacco chieftains) who lied to the public about the safety of
their product, or a pharmaceutical official who "knowingly" withheld from
the public ... information about possible harm to the extent that innocent
lives were lost and innocent children were stricken with leukemia or other
equally serious maladies.
Our government has done that!!! 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,
when the Soviet Union used EMF against the personnel of the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow in the late 1960s......
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 --
remarkably -- more acceptable to our 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 to date
... to continue.......
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 comes AFTER the profits of the industry special interest
groups, the military, and the international trade considerations.
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 RAPID project. 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
is clearly trying to tell us that ALL "EMF" signals (microwave, RF, etc.,
of whatever frequency) should be considered suspect!!!
(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
-- rather than the "2B" 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 not only have been more likely to
have been the "judgment" -- the 2B verdict would have turned out to be
even more decisive than the count recorded: 21 to 9.....]
Yes, my fellow Navy Officer and seat-mate at the historic Minneapolis
conference, Mike Morran, 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
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html