"They shrug at the pleas of workers whose health they destroy in order to save money. They hire experts--physicians and researchers--who purposely misdiagnose industrial diseases as the ordinary diseases of life, write biased reports, and divert research from vital questions. They fight against regulation as unnecessary and cry that it will bring ruination. They ravage the people as they have the land, causing millions to suffer needlessly and hundreds of thousands to die."
The chapter is about the Hawk's Nest tragedy of the 1930's. Hundreds of workers at a Union Carbide mine died from silicosis due to complicity by doctors working for the company. The abuse was covered up for many years by government and corporate thugs.
It was not until 1986 that Martin Cherniack, wrote "Hawk's Nest Incident." Today the corporations not only continue to cover up health threats to humans, but the research industry itself harms humans to increase profits. Human medical research, with no penalties for non compliance with the few laws that exist, is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry.
State and US Legislatures, and executive public officials, act no different than the West Virginia Governor did in 1939 to keep the public from knowing about the harms done in the name of profits or science. "Trust Us, We're Experts," is about the Public relations Industry and it role in keeping facts from the public.
The academic community, the medical research industry and the pharmaceutical industry can censor or slant what gets published in mainstream media outlets. They exploit the harms done to human subjects to promote more taxpayer funding for more abuses.
Potemkin Villages are created by corporate or government agencies to give the appearance of advocacy for humans harmed by medical researchers. In Massachusetts there are Human Rights Commissions, and Commissions on Disabilities. The Cambridge Human Rights Commission gave an award in 2000, to a landlord for not raising rents as much as other landlords. Disabilities Commissioners often express overt bias toward persons with disabilities.
The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) conducts abusive experiments on humans. Not a practice one would expect from an advocate for patients.
When health care providers seek increased funding before the legislatures, they point to discrimination against persons with disabilities. In between funding campaigns the issue of discrimination is never heard.
The care givers benefit from the bias toward their clients. Abusive caregivers are never held accountable due to the bias among oversight agencies.
The same PR firms and medical professionals, who distorted the needs of workers leading them to their deaths by corporate greed in the 1930's, use the same techniques of censorship to lead unknowing humans to needless suffering and deaths today in the name of science.
Roy Bercaw, Editor Watch ENOUGH ROOM L-I-V-E-! Tuesday 4:30 PM ET/ 1:30 PM PT Channel 9 Cambridge Community Television Video streamed (live only) at http://www.cctvcambridge.org Rebroadcast locally Wednesday 9:00 AM Eastern Time PO Box 400297 Cambridge MA 02140 USA roybercaw at hotmail.com -- Marta Russell author, Los Angeles, CA http://disweb.org/ Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract http://www.commoncouragepress.com/russell_ramps.html