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Corporate influence on Science, government and the military

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    • 18 AUG 18

    Spin in the Antipodes: A history of industry involvement in telecommunications health research in Australia (Updated)

    I have asked Lennart Hardell and Martin Walker about Skyhorse Publishing holding copyright for my chapter in “Corporate Ties That Bind”. I am informed that I hold copyright for my chapter and I have added it to my website. It is available at https://www.emfacts.com/download/Chap_16_updated_to_Aug_2018.pdf

    Don Maisch

    ****************************
    Spin in the Antipodes: A history of industry involvement in telecommunications health research in Australia (Updated)

    CHAPTER 16 in CORPORATE TIES THAT BIND:

    An Examination of Corporate Manipulation and Vested Interest in Public Health

    Published 2017

    Excerpts:

    The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself ……….. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, 2007

    As universities turn their scientific laboratories into commercial enterprise zones, and select facility to realize these goals, fewer opportunities will exist in academia for public-interest science – an inestimable loss to society…The roles of those who produce knowledge in academia and those stakeholders who have a financial interest in that knowledge should be kept separate and distinct” …………………Sheldon Krimsky, 2003. SNIP

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    • 11 JUN 18

    The blog of Dariusz Leszczynski: Guest Blog from Steve Weller, Australia

    Below is the next in a series of Guest Blogs on BRHP. The opinions expressed in this Guest Blog are of Steve Weller himself. Publication of these opinions in BRHP does not imply that BRHP automatically agrees with or endorses these opinions. Publication of this, and other guest blogs, facilitates an open debate and free exchange of opinions on wireless technology and health. Guest Blog from Steve Weller

    My name is Steven Weller and I have a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry and microbiology from Monash University. For the past 7 years I have been reviewing and categorizing more than 3000 scientific research papers on non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation (EMR)/Electromagnetic frequencies (EMF). I am one of the founding members of the Oceania Radiofrequency Advisory Association (ORSAA) and also a public representative on the Electromagnetic Energy Reference Group (EMERG) committee established by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). ..SNIP

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    • 04 JUN 18

    Chinese Telcos with ties to the Chinese government now aiming to roll out 5G in Australia

    As reported by the Financial Review, two Chinese telecommunications companies ZTE and, Huawei, with ties to the Chinese government are now tendering to roll out Telstra’s 5G network in Australia, among other things. Considering that 5G is supposed to be the future communications hub will allow the Internet of Things, and a future Australian autonomous vehicle network, etc., is it wise to risk giving the Chinese government a “back door” to controlling all this? China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea should be sufficient to ban these companies altogether from having any role in building Australia’s infrastructure… but then it seems in Australia the Renminbi rules the day. Read on…..

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    • 14 FEB 18

    Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting mislead about research on health effects from electromagnetic fields in new report

    From Mona Nilsson, The Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation, February 8, 2018

    Excerpt:
    In 2017 the Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten) published a report on environmental health issues (Miljöhälsorapport 2017) that included a section on EMF health risks authored by Anders Ahlbom (AA) and Maria Feychting (MF), both professors at the Karolinska Institute. The report from Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting is grossly misleading about the available scientific evidence. SNIP

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    • 08 FEB 18

    What Changed at NTP?

    From Louis Slesin, Microwave News:
    What Changed at NTP?
    Same RF Cancer Data, Different Outlook
    February 7, 2018
    Excerpt:

    Why was the NTP so ambivalent about its cell phone cancer findings at the press conference last Friday when two years ago the same scientific evidence prompted a public health warning?

    Some of the pathology numbers got tweaked since they were first released in 2016, but the changes were minor. It’s the same data set —but with a very different interpretation. The NTP mindset somehow shifted from we need to release this important new health data now to this is “not a high-risk situation.”

    Who or what moved the NTP managers to change their outlook? There’s no shortage of suspects and suspicions. Here are a few making the rounds: SNIP

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    • 31 JAN 18

    ACEBR’s Rodney Croft comes under attack for his misrepresentation of the NTP study.

    Expert Reaction to Rodney Crofts Criticism of the National Toxicology Program Findings

    Dr. Rodney Croft, Director of the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research at the University of Wollongong has stated a “number of criticisms” to the findings of the National Toxicology Program study. His criticisms included his statements “that the rats treated with RF lived longer than the controls…the controls did not have ‘any’ tumours… and the lack of clear dose-response relationships. He concluded that “the NTP report does not provide reason to move from the current scientific consensus that mobile phone-like exposure does not impact health.” Read Rodney Croft’s Reaction to the NTP here.

    January 3, 2018: Dr. Ron Melnick has provided a response to the comments made by Rodney Croft. Read on…
    SNIP

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    • 14 JAN 18

    CTIA asks US Supreme Court to block Berkeley’s cell phone “right to know” ordinance

    Considering how the FCC has totally been taken over by the industry It will be very telling how the Supreme Court rules on this one.
    Don
    ********************
    From Joel M. Moskowitz, Electromagnetic Radiation Safety, Jan 13, 2018

    The CTIA -The Wireless Association has petitioned the United States Supreme Court to hear their case against the City of Berkeley’s cell phone “right to know” ordinance.

    The CTIA argues that the ordinance forces cell-phone retailers to deliver a misleading and controversial message to customers. The city asserts that the message is “literally true”; moreover, the city has a legitimate interest in protecting the health of its residents. SNIP…

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    • 19 DEC 17

    Australia and New Zealand to be test sites for GM insect trials courtesy of DARPA (re-posted)

    In order to make sense of the title of this posting read down to where it is stated where the proposed test sits for this GM technology will be. No sites in the US obviously. After all, if there are any unexpected consequences of releasing GM altered insects in the environment better do it well away from America – and there’s lots of water between America and the Antipodes. But don’t worry, they are also preparing a PR package aimed to “create government and community acceptance”. The main funder of gene drive technology is the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). With virtually unlimited funding imagine what the folks at DARPA can come up with. For the betterment of humanity, as Bill Gates would like us to believe, or for America’s military/corporate complex with global dominance as the real goal?

    Perhaps this will not be such an easy sell in Australia because virtually all Australians know of the ongoing tragedy of the introduction of cane toads, introduced to Australia from Hawaii in 1935 by the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations as an amazing new technique to control the native grey-backed cane beetle. It didn’t work and now the toad is slowly invading much of Northern Australia with great destruction of native species.

    The coming gene drive PR spin by “Emerging Ag” will claim benefits such as controlling mosquito diseases but other not mentioned “benefits” will be to try to develop a Monsanto pesticide resistant bee which will be used to pollinate crops sprayed with the chemicals without dying. After the GM bee has done its job, it’s programmed “termator gene’ will ensure all the GM bees die without leaving offspring, so each year farmers have to purchase a new batch of GM bees if they want to have pollinating dependent crop. Such a development would go a long way to assure global US military and corporate dominance over the world’s food resources.

    The logic being why remove a profitable chemical which happens to be killing bees and other pollinating insects when you can change nature itself, at huge profit but with an unknown long-term cost to humanity

    Read on…

    Don

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    • 15 DEC 17

    FCC repeals net neutrality rules, allowing Internet providers to speed up, slow down or block service for apps and websites

    From the Washington Post

    By Brian Fung, December 14, 2017

    Excerpt

    Federal regulators voted Thursday to allow Internet providers to speed up service for websites they favor — and block or slow down others — in a decision repealing landmark, Obama-era regulations overseeing broadband companies such as AT&T and Verizon.

    The move by the Federal Communications Commission to deregulate the telecom and cable industries was a prominent example of the policy shifts taking place in Washington under President Trump and a major setback for consumer groups, tech companies and Democrats who had lobbied heavily against the decision.

    The 3-2 vote, which was along party lines, enabled the FCC’s Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, to follow through on his promise to repeal the government’s 2015 net neutrality rules, which required Internet providers to treat all websites, large and small, equally. The agency also rejected some of its own authority over the broadband industry in a bid to stymie future FCC officials who might seek to reverse the Republican-led ruling. SNIP

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    • 18 OCT 17

    Huge Amounts of Radiation Won’t Harm You, Pruitt’s EPA Claims

    Scott Pruitt, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), isn’t just going about destroying environmental safeguards; he has now issued a “guideline” document that states that excessive exposure to radiation is safe for human life. That means he’s not only allowing more pollution that can contribute to ill health and degradation of the environment, but he is also putting us at risk when it comes to radiation. According to Bloomberg,

    In the event of a dirty bomb or a nuclear meltdown, emergency responders can safely tolerate radiation levels equivalent to thousands of chest X-rays, the Environmental Protection Agency said in new guidelines that ease off on established safety levels…. SNIP

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    • 29 AUG 17

    Low-Level Effects Hiding in Plain Sight A Reminiscence on Abe Liboff’s 90th Birthday

    Excerpt

    Much of the controversy about the health effects of electromagnetic radiation turns on whether low-level, so-called non-thermal, interactions exist. This is nothing new. The same dispute has been going on for close to 100 years.

    On the occasion of Abe Liboff’s 90th birthday, we look back on two sets of experiments he worked on while he was a fellow at the Naval Medical Research Institute in the 1980’s –as well as some more recent work from Russia and Italy. The results of both experiments were, and still are, nothing short of stunning… SNIP

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    • 27 AUG 17

    Are Corporate Ties Influencing Reuters Science Coverage?

    NOTE: I find it of special interest in the below article the role the Science Media Centre (SMC) has played in spinning science on behalf of its corporate funders. I have written on this previously. See my history of the SMC model of so-called science communication here…

    From EcoWatch
    By Stacy Malkan

    Ever since they classified the world’s most widely used herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a team of international scientists at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research group have been under withering attack by the agrichemical industry and its surrogates. SNIP

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    • 18 AUG 17

    FCC Packs Broadband Advisory Group With Big Telecom Firms, Trade Groups

    When the Federal Communications Commission went looking this year for experts to sit on an advisory committee regarding deployment of high-speed internet, they took the often favoured route and loaded the 30 member panel with corporate executives, trade groups and free-market scholars. More than three out of four seats on the BDAC are filled by business-friendly representatives from the biggest wireless and cable companies such as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp., Sprint Corp., and TDS Telecom. Crown Castle International Corp., the nation’s largest wireless infrastructure company, and Southern Co., the nation’s second-largest utility firm, have representatives on the panel. Also appointed to the panel were broadband experts from conservative think tanks who have been critical of FCC regulations such as the International Center for Law and Economics and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. SNIP

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    • 02 AUG 17

    GM crop moratorium opposition. The SPIN hots up in Australia

    It seems that no matter how convincing the evidence for harm from GM technology is, the often used tactic in contentions issues is to raise doubts over that science or deny it altogether. Take for example the recent ABC Landline TV program on South Australia’s continuing ban on the growing of genetically modified foods (GM). The program gave voice to the concerns of the state’s grain growers who wanted the state government to end the ban when the state GM moratorium expires in 2019. However, Mr. Weatherall, the state premier wants to maintain the state’s GM-free status, arguing that it is more valuable to the state’s farm economy. On the other hand, Wade Dabinett, chairman of Grain Producers South Australia made the astonishing statement; “The State Government’s role is not to regulate on the safety of GM, it’s to grow the economic pie.” Dr Geoff Fincher, emeritus professor from the University of Adelaide who has been involved in the study of GM crops for over 20 years. said; “When you really look hard at the evidence of any serious dangers or harm associated with the technology, proven with rigorous and rigid experimentation, you don’t find that evidence.” Perhaps they should read the new ‘Monsanto Papers’ before making such ill-founded statements. Read on….

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    • 31 JUL 17

    The Poison Papers

    100,000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for Decades — Until Now

    From The Intercept

    Sharon Lerner

    July 27 2017, 12:43 a.m.

    For decades, some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strum’s barn. Creaky, damp, and prowled by the occasional black bear, the listing, 80-year-old structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others.

    As of today, those documents and others that have been collected by environmental activists will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers. Together, the library contains more than 200,000 pages of information and “lays out a 40-year history of deceit and collusion involving the chemical industry and the regulatory agencies that were supposed to be protecting human health and the environment,” said Peter von Stackelberg, a journalist who along with the Center for Media and Democracy and the Bioscience Resource Project helped put the collection online. SNIP

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    • 28 JUL 17

    The Science Inquisition in America

    From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

    Excerpt

    After the Spanish Inquisition arose during the 15th century, it spread across most of Europe. In 1616, the Roman Inquisition judged the Copernican proposition that the Earth moves around the sun “formally heretical” leading to placement of Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres on the Index of Forbidden Books.

    Because he expanded Copernican theories, Galileo was tried by the Inquisition in 1633 and found “vehemently suspect of heresy.” He was forced to recant and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Does any of this sound familiar? The Trump White House currently regards as heresy the idea that human activity has an effect on the 60-mile thick blanket of the Earth’s atmosphere – or that something can be done about it. As a result, our climate is becoming like the weather – everyone talks about it but nobody does anything about it. SNIP

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    • 19 JUN 17

    Monsanto Spin Doctors Target Cancer Scientist In Flawed Reuters Story

    From the Huffington Post by Carey Gillam

    Excerpt

    In a well-orchestrated and highly coordinated media coup, Monsanto Co. and friends this week dropped a bombshell on opponents who are seeking to prove that the company’s beloved Roundup herbicide causes cancer… It was a blockbuster of a story, and was repeated by news organizations around the globe, pushed by press releases from Monsanto-backed organizations and trumpeted by industry allies like the American Chemistry Council…It was also flawed and misleading in a number of critical respects. SNIP

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    • 16 JUN 17

    Government paving the way for 5G and the IoT

    The Australian Government is seeking comments on possible amendments to telecommunications carrier powers and immunities. Titled, “Consultation on possible amendments to telecommunications carrier powers and immunities” this exercise looks suspiciously like preparing the ground for the next generation of wireless technology such as 5G, enabling the Internet of Things (IoT). A Brave New World…

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    • 16 MAY 17

    People don’t trust scientific research when companies are involved

    From The Conversation

    May 8, 2017

    Excerpt

    A soda company sponsoring nutrition research. An oil conglomerate helping fund a climate-related research meeting. Does the public care who’s paying for science?

    In a word, yes. When industry funds science, credibility suffers. And this does not bode well for the types of public-private research partnerships that appear to be becoming more prevalent as government funding for research and development lags.

    The recurring topic of conflict of interest has made headlines in recent weeks. The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has revised its conflict of interest guidelines following questions about whether members of a recent expert panel on GMOs had industry ties or other financial conflicts that were not disclosed in the panel’s final report.

    Our own recent research speaks to how hard it may be for the public to see research as useful when produced with an industry partner, even when that company is just one of several collaborators. SNIP

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    • 06 MAY 17

    Trump orders FDA TV’s to be locked on FOX News (A big win for Rupert Murdock)

    In what may be a backroom deal between Trump and Rupert Murdock, the head of FOX News, the TV’s at the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) research campus are to be locked on the FOX News station.

    CBS News has confirmed an email was sent to researchers at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research responding to apparent efforts to change the channel on internal television screens. The email from “[White Oak] Digital Display” sent on Wednesday, May 3, was sent to inform the researchers of the “reason for the change from CNN to Fox.” White Oak is the name of the FDA’s campus.

    The email goes on to inform employees that the decision came from the Trump administration.
    SNIP….

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