Industry Influence on Occupational and

[Guest guest]

Industry Influence on Occupational and

Environmental Public Health

JAMES HUFF, PHD

http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1301_Huff.pdf

Traditional covert influence of industry on occupational

and environmental health (OEH) policies has

turned brazenly overt in the last several years. More

than ever before the OEH community is witnessing the

perverse influence and increasing control by industry

interests. Government has failed to support independent,

public health-oriented practitioners and their

organizations, instead joining many corporate endeavors

to discourage efforts to protect the health of workers

and the community. Scientists and clinicians must

unite scientifically, politically, and practically for the

betterment of public health and common good. Working

together is the only way public health professionals

can withstand the power and pressure of industry. Until

public health is removed from politics and the influence

of corporate money, real progress will be difficult

to achieve and past achievements will be lost. Key words:

industry influence; government policy; worker health;

science and politics; science manipulation.

INT J OCCUP ENVIRON HEALTH 2007;13:107–117

Currently, governmental health agencies charged

with protecting workers and the environment

appear to have changed course and now work

with and condone unhealthy worker and environmental

practices. Health agencies should not consort with

purveyors of environmental damage and occupational

health hazards. Government's role has changed insidiously

over the years from that of watchdog and protector.

This leaves environmental scientists in a terribly

difficult position. In a landmark special issue.....

[Guest guest]

There is no body of systematic criminal environmental

law to deal effectively with systemic environmental

criminality, not in the United States or in any country.

And that, not the enhancement of hazy anti-corporation

movements, should be the focus of our attention.

http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1301_Huff.pdf

Sheldon s sees a far more complex problem.9

He counters that corporations are creatures of government.

Even when their capital is privately controlled,

their behavior is not. Their failures are collapses of governance,

including the governance of individual behavior,

or what he calls " the acceptances " and their consequences.

He gives some compelling examples:

• Tort litigation and civil penalties, when successful,

typically tax workers and stockholders with no monetary

or career effect on the executives and directors who

consciously exchange money for death and disease.

• " Market " strategies are essentially unchallenged in

public health policy exchanges, e.g., that pollution

`credits' and similar devices result in unnecessary pollution

and in averaging, not decreasing, unnecessary

death and disease. The perpetrators receive as rewards

full professorships in our leading schools of public

health, instead of prison terms.

• " Ethicists " rationalize the use of children, the

impoverished, and the homeless in unnecessary drug,

pesticide, and chemical experimentation, and government

committees propose in the Federal Register protocols

for such use. The moral sense of a normal person

identifies conspiracy and acts of homicide. Schools of

public health make their textbooks required reading.

• Public health practitioners focus on the morally

empty structure and inadequate rules of subject consent,

but not the moral mission of NIH requirements

for their grants, placing their own financial well being

above human life.

• Public health professionals debate the glorification

of their toxicological and epidemiologic disciplines,

as merits of " precautionary principles, " but

ignore implementation through the distributive injustice

of fallacious methods of cost–benefit analysis.

There is no body of systematic criminal environmental

law to deal effectively with systemic environmental

criminality, not in the United States or in any country.

And that, not the enhancement of hazy anti-corporation

movements, should be the focus of our attention.

--- In , " tigerpaw2c " <tigerpaw2c@...>

wrote:

>

> Industry Influence on Occupational and

> Environmental Public Health

>

> JAMES HUFF, PHD

>

> http://www.ijoeh.com/pfds/IJOEH_1301_Huff.pdf

>

[Guest guest]

There's a really good article at this URL that explains a lot about

why this is happening, at least with government agencies in the United

States:

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/washington/30rules.html

Read the article...

[Guest guest]

I don't think corporations are so much creatures of governments as

much as governments (these days) are creatures created by

corporations.

The corporations are international in scope and I think that they

increasingly really do (as a group) control individual governments

and the governments handle people-related things for the corporations.