This article is the perfect example of how this country’s Worker’s Compensation system is causing more disability and death than it can ever alleviate. Since employers are, for the most part, immune from liability for injuries to workers, they incur no losses by failing to alter unsafe working conditions. The state acts as their attorney and the injured worker is forced to hire his own counsel, who is paid out of any “award” granted to the worker.

Awards are rarely given without years of delay while workers suffer incredible hardships in the absence of a paycheck and access to most medical providers. If they prevail through extraordinary perseverance, they will “win” the right to earn 2/3 of the wages they formerly enjoyed while acquiring an often painful disability and/or shortened life span. It costs society a fortune – yet agencies isolating dangers in the workplace like NIOSH are powerless to regulate an end to negligence.

How would this story read if employers could be sued for allowing workers continued exposure to known toxins? Ms. Shipley might have written this:

Jan., 2001 – NIOSH advised industry today that certain flavoring chemicals, notably, diacetyl, act upon the respiratory system much like an acid. Thus far, all popcorn and flavoring manufacturers have ceased production of foods utilizing these chemicals and have substituted natural flavors for the culprits which have taken the health and lives of numerous workers to date. “It may raise the price of the evf snack foods somewhat,” an industry leader projected, “but swapping lives for profits earned by using cheap chemicals which are dangerously toxic if inhaled and unknown effects when ingested, is simply a risk our society does not need to take.”

I can dream, can’t I?

Barbara Rubin

WASHINGTON – Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.

The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.

To the Editor,

It is official. Our elected government is transmuted into a board of directors for a publicly funded corporation intent upon transferring all its assets to other, private, corporate entities. Access to truth about our products and services will be filtered through the hands of the OMB on the assumption that such knowledge will alter the purchasing habits of the “employees” (formerly, citizens) and interfere with the retirement plans of the Board members.

See you at the proxy fight scheduled for November of this year.

Censorship has long been tolerated in matters of national security. However, when the business of selling products reaches the level of concern formerly reserved for espionage, we must stop making excuses for a leadership that has effectively disposed of both democracy (freedom to know) and capitalism (freedom of choice in purchasing), all in one proposal.

Consumer ignorance has already been mandated by trade secret laws permitting much information to be deleted from product labels. Industry was afraid consumers with access to total product details might either be alarmed at the many untested/unsafe ingredients in them or might choose to manufacture them in their bathtubs, bypassing all commerce. But savvy citizens are able to ferret out the necessary information via consumer groups and through sheer perseverance.

Now data as to adverse health effects of consumer goods will be censored as well as product ingredients. The public needs to know that in 2000, costs due to drug morbidity and mortality exceeded $170 billion dollars*. An executive and researcher of SmithGlaxoKlein (UK), has admitted that only half of prescription drug users benefit from their medications due to genetic differences alone. Does the product insert tell doctors how to cheaply and effectively test patients for these factors? No, we must buy drugs we cannot afford and harm ourselves before shifting to another possible ‘magic bullet’ for what ails us (likely the adverse effects of something we bought or ate).

The goal is to protect private corporations while the increasingly impoverished and sick “employees” of the USA compete for the thin cushion of publicly funded entitlement programs like unemployment, medicaid, welfare and disability.

Enron seems almost amateurish by comparison. They only had policies of secrecy while our corporation can enact executive orders with the power of law. John Graham will decide what is sold and consumers will fork over the money hoping for the best…and getting the worst.

*References: Ernst and Grizzle, J Am Pharm Assoc, 41 (2), 2001

Barbara Rubin