From Una St.Clair
To all people interested in the safety of children in schools –
Please find attached Submission to Langley School District, together with question letter and Statement of Accountability. If you wish copies of attachments, please e-mail me and I will forward those to you separately. I will be presenting this to the Langley School Board tonight, May 19, at approximately 7:30 p.m.
Una St.Clair-Moniz
Director, Citizens for Safe Technology
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- Philippe Kaltenbach, mayor of Clamart (France), "is fed up with the Orange relay antennas . . .he puts them out of action"
- Notices to the public from the Town Council: The Precautionary Principle (pdf).
- All Next-up News:
www.next-up.org/Newsoftheworld/2009.php
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Dear Dr. Martin (Member of Parliament):
Please find attached a letter to Ms. Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada. It is a follow-up to the letter Sharon Noble wrote a few days ago. With all the notoriety that Health Canada has been bombarded by recently, it would appear that now it is safe for you to join the chorus. You won't be leading the charge, as we hoped and as you promised, but any visible involvement on your part would be much appreciated.
If I am in error and you have been involved, then please forgive my poor eyesight. Blame it on your talent for deep cover.
Respectfully,
Dennis Noble
Ms. Sheila Fraser 2009-05-19
Auditor General of Canada
Office of the Auditor General of Canada
240 Sparks Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G6
Dear Ms. Fraser:
My wife, Sharon Noble, wrote to you recently documenting the funding by the wireless industry of scientific studies used by Health Canada to prove the viability of Safety Code 6. The evidence in that letter was part of a petition (#255) that we sent to you in June, 2008. Please allow me to assume that the evidence of industry funding is irrefutable. I say this because, in answer to this very charge that my wife and I made in our petition to you, Health Canada responded:
"The fact that some studies are either directly or indirectly funded, in whole or in part, from the wireless industry ... does not constitute a valid reason to dismiss these findings ...."
So the connection is admitted. But did it influence its policies and practises? Health Canada says that evidence of the one is not proof of the other. The scientific community suggests otherwise:
"Analysis of 124 oncology clinical trials showed that those with a conflict of interest – either direct industry funding or an author's declaration of financial relationships – were more than twice as likely to find significantly improved patient survival..." Industry Ties Predict Outcome in Cancer Research; John Gever, Senior Editor. MedPage Today, May 11, 2009.
"96 per cent of supportive authors had financial relationships with the manufacturers ... as compared to 60 per cent of the neutral authors and 37 per cent of the critical authors." Conflict of Interest in the Debate Over Calcium-Channel; Stelfox, Chua, O'Rourke, Detsky. New England Journal of Medicine, January, 1998.
"More than 82% of device trials funded by industry reported results [which] favored the new therapy, versus 50% of the device trials funded by not-for-profit..." Trial Results Favor Sponsors – Who Would Have Guessed?; Peggy Peck, Managing Editor, MedPage Today, May 16, 2006.
"Articles sponsored exclusively by food/drink companies were 4 to 8 times more likely to have conclusions favourable to the financial interests of the sponsoring company than articles which were not sponsored by the food/drink companies."
Relationship Between Funding Source and Conclusion Among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles; Lesser, Ebberling, Goozner, Wypiji, Ludwig; PLOS Medicine (Public Library of Science), January 7, 2007 issue.
"When businesses, rather than other groups, sponsor medical research at hospitals and colleges, the outcomes are 3.6 times more likely to favour the company involved." Scope and Impact of Financial Conflict of Interest in Biomedical Research; Bekelman, Yan, McPhil, Gross, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), 2003
The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that corporations' attempts to advance their interests are so well known that they attempt to hide their funding. "In fact, much of the knowledge available to investigators about industry-funded activities has come through documents only made available in the discovery process of litigation." "The asbestos Industry's Assault of Science and Society", a paper presented at the Center for Science in the Public Interest Conference; B. Castleman, 2003, as reported in Corporate Funding and Conflicts on Interest; Pachter, Fox, Zimbardo, Antonuccio; American Psychologist, December, 2007.
I could go on citing studies of this sort. The numbers are legion. Surely it is enough to make the point that industry funding corrupts. In fact, it is the most troubling issue confronting science today. The question is, then: to what degree has Health Canada succumbed?
Health Canada argues that just because "some" studies are funded by the wireless industry, it doesn't mean that they should be discounted. Let's look at Health Canada's definition of "some":
I asked Health Canada's James McNamee for examples of the credible, peer-reviewed scientific studies that Health Canada uses to support its contention that Safety Code 6 is safe. He sent me 20, as I documented in that 20+ paged petition (#255). Of those 20, 18 were published in journals that were funded by the telecommunications industry. Now, if I were to extrapolate, that would mean 90% of the studies that Health Canada considers credible are industry funded. A little inflated, you might suggest. And I would agree...because Health Canada needs only 51% of industry supported studies to rationalize its weight-of-evidence approach.
It's a highly suspect approach because it clearly makes the point that the quality of scientific studies is less important than the quantity of those studies. And then, to add to the offense, it openly and arrogantly stuffs the ballot box.
For Health Canada to argue that it is impervious to the blandishments of special interests stretches the bounds of belief beyond the breaking point. By its policies and practices, Health Canada has shown that it is far more interested in following the mandate of Industry Canada in its support of business than its own mandate of protecting the health and well-being of the Canadian people.
Health Canada is saying, in effect, sure we cheat. And we don't care who knows it because nobody's going to do anything about it.
Is that right, Ms. Fraser? Is no one in Ottawa going to do anything about it? Do the corporations and their sycophants really own Canada?
Ms. Fraser, Health Canada has to undergo a thorough housecleaning. From the top to the bottom. You are in a position to do that housecleaning. The question is, are you up to it?
Respectfully.
Dennis Noble
818 Bexhill Place
Victoria, B.C. V9C 3V5
