Greenwire’s Robin Bravender and Amanda Peterka apparently can’t even manage he-said-she-said journalism. EPA said everything was okay and, well, what else matters — especially if you’re a journalist who wants to have access to EPA in the future?
Here is their article (web site | PDF) from the Feb. 6 Greenwire on recent developments in in the ongoing human experiments scandal.
As you read the article, you’ll note that Bravender/Peterka never even approach the central fact in this controversy:
EPA has repeatedly determined, testified and claimed that the air pollutants being tested can cause health effects as extreme as immediate death even at exposure levels far below regulatory levels.
If this fact is true (click here for a summary of EPA’s claims), then EPA has violated every law and regulation issued since World War II for the protection of humans participating in scientific experiments. That is, it is per se illegal to treat people as guinea pigs by exposing them to dangerous substances in non-therapeutic experiments just to see what happens to them. Moreover, this illegality is further compounded by failing to disclose to the subjects the agency-determined health risks of the experiment.
EPA cannot tell the public that airborne particulate matter can cause death within hours even at normal ambient levels but then not make the same disclosure to the study subjects — who will be tested at levels up to 70 times greater than ambient air. Because this disclosure was never made, the required informed consent could not be obtained. This conduct not only violates federal law and regulations, but also state laws — especially in the case of the physicians participating in the experiments. These are civil and even criminal violations of law.
The only way EPA and its researchers do not have these liabilities is if the agency has been lying to the public and Congress about the dangers of the tested pollutants — in which case EPA should have a whole new set of problems, starting with its credibility.
There is no third option. It is one or other other. EPA has lied to someone. Readers of this page know who EPA has lied to — and an honest and competent journalist would likely come to the same conclusion. Even the EPA Inspector General validated our side of the story, a fact apparently lost on Bravender and Peterka.
Bravender and Peterka failed to bring up the scandal’s central issue in their lengthy report — an issue that we first spotlighted when news of the scandal broke in April 2012. Instead, the bulk of their article merely parrots EPA’s lame-ass cover-up excuses. It is unfortunate that they lack the skills and/or integrity to do their jobs properly. Wake us when they decide become journalists rather than EPA mouthpieces — and we will applaud them louder than we denounce them now.
Send your thoughts to Robin Bravender and Amanda Peterka.
That’s why it’s such an incomprehensible act of irresponsibility to allow government to run everything.
Job one for any government is to hold commoners accountable to all laws. Governments holding themselves accountable to any law has always been an extremely low priority. Maybe one of the civil lawsuits will catch. I wouldn’t bet on it. You would have to persuade a government judge that you have standing to sue the government.
As for criminal charges, you would first have to persuade a government prosecutor to take up the cause. That brings us back to where we started. Governments are designed to hold commoners accountable, not government workers.
“and an honest and competent journalist would likely come to the same conclusion.”
There’s the rub – the inability to follow syllogisms. When the NCAA finally lifted sanctions from Penn State we found that a number of University presidents – people with degrees coming out of their ears, pay at a million plus per year, running billion dollar enterprises reacted senselessly to a theory -football culture letting a pedophile free access to children- that makes no sense what so ever. Good Grief!
Surely, this [neo-Nuremburg] issue being in breach of international and national laws, can be the subject of a formal complaint to the FBI , Interpol et al…..
If the US domestic courts cannot rule on a complaint from JS.com on the grounds that JS.com has not been subject to violation of its own rights, someone somewhere must be able to rule on issues of crimes against the people / individuals…
If a JS.com member witnessed a crime against a member of the public and reported this to the police, the report would not be brushed off as a civil issue in which the rights of JS.com were not infringed……
Or is the EPA above all laws, state national and international?