Page 3 of 3 (Page 1, Page 2)
By Mitchel Cohen of The Green Party, August 2001

As head of the Democratic National Committee Brown garnered huge financial contributions from the biotech industry and vigorously promoted their interests. Brown also flacked for the biotech industry's attempts to patent genetically engineered human cells against the opposition of foreign governments:

"Under our laws, as well as those of many other countries, subject matter relating to human cells is patentable and there is no provision for considerations relating to the source of the cells that may be the subject of a patent application."

At the time his plane crashed over war torn Yugoslavia, Brown was accompanying a few dozen high level corporate executives seeking to ferret out "investment opportunities" among the misery there. The conflicts of interest between government and industry are appalling, and dangerous.

From Brown on down, the Clinton administration catered to every outrageous whim of the biotech industry. Much of the government's position on genetic engineering came under the supervision of former Hunter College president Donna Shalala, who was Clinton's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Except for Clinton and Gore, it was Shalala who had final say over these odious policies and corruption. And it is the "progressive" Shalala who let Monsanto and the other corporations get away, literally, with murder.

Take the case of Mickey Kantor, a power broker, former U.S. Trade Representative and trusted Clinton adviser. Kantor became Secretary of Commerce following Ron Brown's death and continued his predecessor's boosterism for biotechnology. In mid 1997, Kantor left his job at Commerce. He was immediately appointed to the Board of Directors of ... the Monsanto Corporation.

Joining officials who changed job assignments from service in government to positions in the biotechnology industry was Marcia Hale. She had been assistant to the President of the United States for intergovernmental affairs. Her new appointment: Senior official for the Monsanto Corporation in coordinating public affairs and corporate strategy in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Also switching sides over the last couple of years were:

L. Val Giddings, who went from being a biotechnology "regulator" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to being the Vice President for Food and Agriculture at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a pro biotech propaganda arm. Giddings, who had represented U.S. government (and, purportedly, the people's) interests at the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Biosafety Protocol, attended the second meeting on the protocol as the representative of the industry;

David W. Beler, former head of Government Affairs for Genentech, Inc., and now chief domestic policy advisor to Al Gore; Linda J. Fisher, former Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Pollution Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, and now Vice President of Government and Public Affairs for Monsanto;

Josh King, former director of production for White House events, and now director of global communications in the Washington, D.C. office of Monsanto;

Terry Medley, former administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) of the US Department of Agriculture, former chair and vice chair of the US Department of Agriculture Biotechnology Council, former member of the US Food and Drug Administration food advisory committee, and now Director of Regulatory and External Affairs of Dupont's Agricultural Enterprise;

William D. Ruckelshaus, former chief administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, now (and for the last 12 years) a member of the board of directors of Monsanto;

Lidia Watrud, former microbial biotechnology researcher at Monsanto, now with the US Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Effects Laboratory, Western Ecology Division; and,

Clayton K. Yeutter, former Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, former US trade representative (who led the US team in negotiating the US Canada Free Trade Agreement and helped launch the Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations), now a member of the board of directors of Mycogen Corporation, whose majority owner is Dow AgroSciences, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

One of the leading shills for Monsanto and a very visible proponent of genetic engineering is former US President Jimmy Carter. And, should any of the legal cases make their way to the Supreme Court they will be argued before Justice Clarence Thomas, among others.

Thomas -- one might remember from Anita Hill's testimony -- began his career as a lawyer for ... Monsanto. And one of the chief witnesses on behalf of Monsanto will be Dr. Louis Sullivan, former head of Health and Human Services and now a paid apologist for the company.

Media & BGH

In February, 1997, two veteran news reporters for Fox TV in Tampa, Florida, were fired for refusing to water down an investigation reporting that rBGH may promote cancer in humans who drink milk from rBGH treated cows. It is the link between rBGH and cancer that Monsanto pressed Fox to remove from the story.

Award winning reporters Steve Wilson and Jane Akre had been hired by WTVT in Tampa to produce a series on rBGH in Florida milk.

After more than a year's work on the rBGH series, and three days before the series was scheduled to air (starting February 24, 1997), Fox TV executives received the first of two letters from lawyers representing Monsanto saying that Monsanto would suffer "enormous damage" if the series ran.

Monsanto's second letter warned of "dire consequences" for Fox if the series aired as it stood. Despite the fact that WTVT had been advertising the series aggressively, the station canceled it at the last moment.

According to documents filed in Florida's Circuit Court (13th Circuit), Fox lawyers then tried to water down the series, offering to pay the two reporters if they would leave the station and keep mum about Fox's censorship of their work.

The reporters refused Fox's offer, and on April 2, 1998, filed their own lawsuit against WTVT. The Wilson/Akre lawsuit charged WTVT with violating its license from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by demanding that the reporters include known falsehoods in their rBGH series.

The reporters also charged WTVT with violating Florida's "whistle blower" law, and that Fox ordered them to remove all mention of "cancer," changing it to "human health effects" whatever that may be.

After a five week trial and six hours of deliberation which ended August 18, 2000, a Florida state court jury unanimously determined that Fox "acted intentionally and deliberately to falsify or distort the plaintiffs' news reporting on BGH."

In that decision, the jury also found that Jane Acre's threat to blow the whistle on Fox's misconduct to the FCC was the sole reason for the termination... and the jury awarded awarded $425,000 in damages which makes her eligible to apply for reimbursement for all court costs, expenses and legal fees.

The whistle blowing journalists, twice refused Fox offers of big money deals to keep quiet about what they knew, filed their landmark lawsuit April 2, 1998 and survived three Fox efforts to have their case summarily dismissed.

It is the first time journalists have used a whistleblower law to seek a legal remedy for being fired by refusing to distort the news. See, "Milk, rBGH, and Cancer," Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly #593, April 9, 1998.

What Can We Do?

1) Demand mandatory labeling of all dairy products derived from rBGH cows. Fight for legislation banning rBGH dairy products and all genetically engineered foods.

2) Throw the bums out of office. But our fight cannot be limited to the electoral arena or we'll lose. We need to leaflet stores and target them for more militant action if they continue to stock dairy products derived from rBGH cows.

If they don't respond, organize picket lines at the stores. Make "No rBGH" part of the powerful unionization campaign of immigrant workers now underway at local markets. (Leaflet the WORKERS on the picket lines, too!)

3) Bring up this issue at every opportunity. Circulate petitions against rBGH at PTA and Community School Board meetings. Get your friends to carry them in school and around the neighborhood. Confront candidates as they run for elected office.

4) Every college has some connection to pharmaceutical corporations and biotechnological research and development. Demand an end to patents on life: Eliminating patents takes the profits out of genetic engineering.

We'll then see which scientists will continue to do their "research" on behalf of the public good and not suck at the udders of Washington cash cows injected with genetically engineered hormones.

Pharmaceutical corporations and biotechnological research and development facilities provide sitting targets, just as ROTC buildings and Department of Defense research and recruitment once did. Every college now has some connection to them.

We need to begin a similar campaign against the privatization of our universities and colleges, and especially against their collaboration with pharmaceutical and biotech corporations.

5) Hold contests for the best parody of the "Got Milk?" advertisements. Put up posters and "improve" existing ones. Organize your building, school, workplace and neighborhood.

Remember: In every danger there also resides opportunity, if only we learn to look for it and develop it correctly.

The issue of rBGH in milk is so straightforward that it is an ideal place from which to launch a much greater campaign against the genetic engineering of foods, vaccines and medicines, privatization of knowledge through "intellectual property rights," patenting of synthesized genetic sequences for private profit, the consolidation and concentration of farmland, who controls our food?, mistreatment of animals, the growing domination by corporations and, in general, the system of exploitation that rules our lives.

GaryNull's Natural Living

Related Articles:

Many People are Already Taking IGF-1

The Mystery in Your Milk

More Reasons To Avoid Milk

Milk and the Cancer Connection

Hazards of Genetically Engineered Food

The Dairy Industry Self Destructs

Suppressing Dissent in Science With GM Foods

For More Information about rBGH:

ActionGreens: c/o Mitchel Cohen, 2652 Cropsey Avenue, #7H, Brooklyn, NY 11214, mitchelcohen@mindspring.com.

North East Resistance Against Genetic Engineering (NERAGE): nerage@sover.net.

Campaign for Safe Food: c/o Ronnie Cummins, 860 Highway 61, Little Morais, MN 55614. (218) 226 4155; alliance@mr.net; http://www.purefood.org.

Save Organic Standards (SOS): 638 E. 6th St., NYC 10009. (212) 529 9720; sos ny@mindspring.com.

Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet: 40 West 20th St., 9th floor, NYC 10011, (212) 242 0010.

Food & Water: RR 1, Box 68D, Walden, VT 05873, 1 800 EAT SAFE; foodandwater@igc.apc.org; Fax: (802) 563 3310. foodandwater@igc.apc.org.

Just Food, & Green Guerrillas: 625 Broadway, #9C, NYC 10012. (212) 674 8124.

Council for Responsible Genetics: 5 Upland Rd., Suite 3, Cambridge, MA 02140. (617) 868 0870; crg@esential.org; http://www.essential.org/crg.

The Edmonds Institute: c/o Beth Burrows, 20319 92nd Ave. West, Edmonds, WA 98020, (425) 775 5383; fax: (425) 670 8410; (206) 670 8410; beb@igc.apc.org.

Greens/Green Party USA: PO Box 1134, Lawrence, MA 01842 [there will be a new Chicago national office for GPUSA beginning in September 2001], (978) 682 4353; gpusa@igc.apc.org, www.greens.org.

RAFI: Rural Advancement Foundation International: 110 Osborne St., Suite 202, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3L 1Y5 Canada. (204) 453 5259; rafi@rafi.org

Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly: c/o Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403, erf@rachel.clark.net.

The Humane Farming Association: PO Box 3577, San Rafael, CA 94912.

Greenpeace/Toxic Trade Update: 1436 U St. NW, Washington, DC 20009.

Student Environmental Action Coalition: PO Box 1168, Chapel Hill, NC 27514 1168.

The Ram's Horn: PO Box 3028, Mission, British Columbia V2V 4J3 Canada. (604) 820 4270; kneen@web.net.

Women's Environmental Network, 87 Worship St., London EC2A 2BE, England. (44) 171 247 3327; WENUK@gn.apc.org.

See also "Genetically Engineering the New World Order," by Mitchel Cohen, an indepth analysis of genetic engineering, the World Bank/IMF and the new colonialism; and articles by Robert Lederman on Eugenics, posted to the archives of sprayno@yahoogroups.com.

And, pick up a copy of "Redesigning Life: The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering", edited by Brian Tokar and published by Zec Press, distributed in the US by St. Martin's, where all of these arguments are developed in full detail.