Subject: Re Guru chastised (Lundquist)(Reuss).
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 121918 -0500
From: Roy Beavers
To: undisclosed-recipients;
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.........This is an quality reponse from Marge Lundquist......
Guru argues with her on one point in her text, marked thus******.....guru....
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Re: Guru chastised (Lundquist)--and a broad discussion]
Date: 1 Sep 00 09:35:12 PDT
From: Marjorie Lundquist
To: creuss@bluewin.ch
CC: guru@emfguru.com
Chris, I am not naive enough to think that everyone who currently supports the
existing standards for protection against RF/MW radiation will change their
minds when new evidence undermines the existing standards. Many will remain
stubbornly unconvinced and unrepentant.
But some people WILL change their minds, over time. It won't happen quickly,
but it will happen (though I don't know how many people will be open-minded
enough to make this change).
It is said that the way scientific revolutions come about is for all the
"establishment" members to die! There is a great deal of truth to this.
People get accustomed to thinking in a certain way, and don't want to change,
no matter what. It is part of human nature, that people behave this way.
In principle, I agree with you that people should be held accountable. In
practice, though, I don't know how you make people accountable who serve on
the ICNIRP, or who are employed by the World Health Organization, or who
belong to any other non-profit organization. Do you sue them? In what court?
And how do you collect the judgment, if you win?
As it happens, I do think that a lawsuit would be appropriate against the
IEEE, because I don't think it should be sponsoring a health standard (because
the IEEE is not a professional society of health or disease prevention
professionals). Such a suit could be filed in a U.S. court, and the judgment
(if any) could be collected without great difficulty.
Whether such a suit ought to be filed is another question. The IEEE got
involved in standard-setting at the request of the U.S. Navy, I think. It is
obvious that there is a potential for a conflict of interest (a whole new
industry -- the wireless telephone industry -- has been created as a result of
IEEE declarations that hand-held cellular phones are safe, and this has meant
lots of good new jobs for electrical engineers). It will soon be obvious (if
it isn't obvious right now) that such a conflict of interest actually does
exist.
One likely consequence of a successful lawsuit against the IEEE would be to
prohibit it from ever institutionally sponsoring a health standard in future.
This might be good, so long as it didn't have the effect of encouraging
electrical engineers to disregard safety concerns.
I can't go along with the idea of a Nuremberg Trials type of treatment -- it
seems too extreme to me -- but I do consider that it is appropriate for the
electrical engineering profession to be held accountable in some way for the
consequences of professional error. And I think it can be demonstrated that
professional error (on the part of electrical engineers) has occurred in the
standard-setting process for ANSI C95.
Other standards-setting organizations (such as the ICNIRP) have used the same
metric (radiation power density) as the IEEE used in ANSI C95, but have set
the safe limit at a different value. But this kind of difference does not
correct the scientific error present in the ANSI standard! The electrical
engineers have been imitated, and the errors they made have been widely spread
in this manner by others outside this profession.
A major question that needs to be addressed is this: on what basis do you
punish people who acted in good faith? I don't know of anybody who set out
deliberately to injure people! [This is why I think it inappropriate to use
the Nuremberg Trials approach here.] Errors were made, mistaken judgments
have been made, and people have been (and are being) injured. But I think the
errors were/are honest errors.
Of course, the errors may also have been careless and negligent. These are
legal issues, and I am not a lawyer, but under U.S. law one can recover for
the consequences of carelessness and negligence. And all professions are held
to high standards of performance, by virtue of being professions, so I think
the best way to "hold people accountable" for any scientific error that makes
existing RF/MW exposure standards unsafe would be to file a lawsuit against
the IEEE here in the USA.
One consequence of a successful lawsuit would be to drive up the cost of
membership in the IEEE. The IEEE's source of income is member dues, so these
would have to go up, to provide the money to pay any judgment. The rise in
IEEE dues, and any negative publicity, might reduce the rate at which people
enter the electrical engineering profession. But I expect that EEs would
simply ask their employers to cover the cost of annual IEEE dues, so in the
final analysis, most of the cost of satisfying the judgment from a successful
lawsuit would probably come from corporations.
Michael Repacholi is a medical doctor. He is one of many who have taken on
faith what the electrical engineers have said is the correct way to measure
exposure to RF/MW radiation, for the purpose of protecting human health.
Government officials all over the world have accepted this, so why should Dr.
Repacholi be expected to recognize an error that others have failed to
recognize? [I am not trying to justify the course of action that Dr.
Repacholi has taken; I am simply showing how a good lawyer would probably try
to defend him.]
********[.....guru comments.... Marge, you are simply being naive in the above
parargraph. You know as well as anybody that Repacholi's knowledge, history,
research activities, proven expertise, etc. do not allow him to use the
"taken on faith" defence (that an ordinary MD 'might' be able to use) as you
suggest above. If anything, his record of access to "inside" information as
well as his own research activity -- **would be likely to add to his culpability
in a court proceding**....!!!!
P.S. Marge, you are not going to be offered a job with WHO -- quit compromising
your otherwise tough-minded good sense on this....... I don't endorse the
"Nuremberg Trial" approach......But I sure as hell think that if we (society)
don't begin to start exacting some **accountability that hurts** in these cases
-- against both, the companies and the individuals -- then we (society) are going
to continue to be **screwed** royally ..... As we were in the tobacco, lead, etc.
cases.....guru......]********
The fact is that society as a whole has made a major error. Politicians,
government employees, academic professionals, corporations, professional
societies -- ALL have participated in creating the problem we face. Many have
uncritically accepted assertions that ought to have been carefully
scrutinized. But it seems to me that the only entity that can clearly,
unquestionably, undeniably be held accountable for careless error and
negligence is the electrical engineering profession via its sponsorship of
ANSI C95. That profession's embodiment is the IEEE.
Nobody else, except electrical engineers, claimed to possess the expertise
with respect to electromagnetic fields that is necessary as a scientific
foundation for establishing an effective standard. (Physicists could have
made such a claim, but they never were asked to get involved, and as a
profession, they never tried to get involved in setting health standards for
exposure to non-ionizing radiation.)
If I am successful in establishing a new profession of bioelectromagnetic
hygiene, then there will be a profession of disease prevention possessing the
knowledge and understanding to address the challenge of establishing a
standard for health protection in a sound scientific manner. When such a
profession is in a position to take on this responsibility, the IEEE can drop
its sponsorship of ANSI C95, which will mean that this standard ceases to
exist. (This would be appropriate, in my judgment, as I don't think ANSI has
any business promulgating health standards; qualified health professionals
should be establishing health standards.)
Of course, none of this gets us past the major problem we face today: we need
effective, genuinely protective health standards NOW -- but the research
needed to develop them hasn't been done. So what do we do?
The only thing we CAN do, right now, is find a POLITICAL answer. This means
we face a battle to win over legislators in the various countries of the
world.
This is why the comments about the political process that Roy Beavers likes to
make are highly pertinent. (I get tired of hearing them over and over again,
but they definitely ARE pertinent!) We will have political solutions long
before we have a scientific solution. We simply have to try to ensure that
our political solutions are consistent with scientific reality, in order to
ensure that our political solutions are truly protective of health. --
Marjorie
==============================================
(Christoph Reuss) wrote:
Marjorie Lundquist wrote:
> When scientific error has been corrected, I think many of the differences
that
> currently exist will begin to melt away, and people who used to be on
opposite
> sides of an issue may find themselves agreeing more often than they
disagree.
> That time is coming rapidly, I think; and when it arrives, all the nasty
> things that people on opposite sides have said about each other will
> constitute an obstacle to the co-operation needed to improve the situation
> quickly. In the future, I would like to be trusted by the people who are
on
> BOTH sides at the present time. -- Marjorie
Too generous of you, Marjorie. Sorry, but these guys deserve a Nuremberg
Trials type of treatment, nothing less. Yup, I say that as an INDEPENDENT.
Chris
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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com