The Troubling Story of Dr. Shafey

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Collateral Damage In The Pesticide Wars

The Troubling Story of Dr. Shafey

Charman is an investigative journalist specializing in agriculture,

health and the environment.

Chances are, you know someone who has contracted an unexplained disease: a

young, healthy woman who gets breast or ovarian cancer, or an otherwise

energetic person who suddenly develops chronic fatigue syndrome, chemical

sensitivity, multiple allergies, or fibromyalgia.

Most people assume public health officials are working diligently to solve

these mysterious afflictions. But the troubling story of Dr. Shafey

demonstrates how government agencies sometimes conspire to protect the

interests of influential industries rather than the public they are

entrusted to serve.

In February 1998, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) hired Dr. Shafey

to track pesticide-related heath problems. Although pesticide usage in

Florida is comparatively high, cases of pesticide poisoning have been

woefully underreported there for years.

In Shafey, Florida got both credentials and enthusiasm. An epidemiologist,

he has a PhD from Berkeley in Medical Anthropology. After being hired, he

traveled the Sunshine state investigating complaints. He uncovered

previously unrecognized pesticide exposure routes. He worked to educate

physicians on how to diagnose health problems caused by pesticides --

something barely covered in medical school. He wrote recommendations for

protecting the public health based on the data he compiled.

Initially Shafey's hard work paid off. He was honored with appreciation

awards by state and county health departments for " professional, caring and

compassionate " service. And he earned the respect of diverse communities:

colleagues, academics, farm workers, and ordinary citizens.

Yet two years after Shafey began his job, he was fired and forcibly removed

from his office in Tallahassee after allegedly overcharging his department

$12.50 on a travel reimbursement claim.

Shafey claims he was harassed and ultimately sacked for resisting pressure

from his supervisors to present results more pleasing to powerful

agriculture interests. He is suing the Florida health department and two of

his former bosses for wrongful dismissal under whistleblower statutes as

well as for infringement of his First Amendment rights.

Department policy prevents commenting on pending litigation, says

spokesperson Bill Parizek, so Florida health department staff could not

answer questions about Shafey or his lawsuit.

Shafey's star began its meteoric descent after he refused to alter his

recommendation against spraying urban areas with malathion to control an

agricultural pest. Malathion is a widely used organophosphate insecticide, a

nerve agent (like many pesticides) of the same chemical family as sarin gas.

After analyzing medical reports and interviewing patients, Shafey concluded

the spraying was making people sick.

Florida deployed malathion against an outbreak of Mediterranean fruit fly,

or medfly, long considered horticultural enemy number one. The females lay

their eggs in about 250 different crops. The medfly is an invasive species,

neither established nor tolerated in the U.S. or Japan. An outbreak results

in quarantines that prevent growers from selling fresh produce in either

country.

A medfly outbreak hit Florida in 1997-1998, during which eradication efforts

subjected more than a million people, mainly from Tampa to Sarasota, to

malathion spraying. Call it collateral damage in the pesticide wars. Public

outrage over the spraying led to the passage of a state law in early 1998

mandating the health department to set up a citizen complaint and referral

hotline. The law also requires the department to verify complaints, educate

health care professionals and refer patients to doctors who know how to

treat chemical poisonings. Shafey joined the department soon after the law

took effect.

Stripped

One of Shafey's first investigations began after medflies were found in an

abandoned orange grove in April 1998 in Umatilla, a rural town in central

Florida's citrus country. A medfly emergency was declared in Lake and n

counties. After the area was sprayed, the county health department received

14 complaints.

Some of those complaints came from Charmaine Kaiser, now 36, her fiancé

Dennis , 38, and the six children in their combined family. Kaiser

says authorities were supposed to notify residents door-to-door before

spraying so that people would stay inside, but that didn't happen. " The

helicopters were right above, not very high up, and they sprayed our house.

I ran out to get the kids who were playing outside, and we all got coated, "

she says.

Immediately after the spraying, Kaiser, who works for a local pediatrician,

says her family and a lot of neighbors were very ill with long bouts of

flu-like symptoms. " Two or three weeks later, I remember we were all

vomiting, " adds. " I was just lying on the couch, and every one of

us had a bucket or something by us. It was horrible. " Since the spraying,

says he has been hospitalized twice a year for pneumonia, and

Kaiser and her kids still suffer from respiratory complaints.

A few weeks after the spraying, more medflies were found in densely

populated Manatee County, just south of Tampa on the west coast, and another

emergency was declared. Shafey says throughout the duration of spraying

there, the health department received dozens of complaints daily, eventually

totaling 199.

By October 1998 Shafey had confirmed 123 cases of illness related to the

spraying, a finding that was later published in the U.S. Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention's Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.

The same month Shafey wrote the report that he and colleagues say led to

reprisals against him: a draft on the health effects of the medfly

eradication program recommending that the department prevent aerial spraying

in non-agricultural areas. The final medfly report FDOH issued was stripped

of both Shafey's recommendation and his name.

Pressured

Shafey says he was pressured for months by his supervisors to change his

recommendation and conform to health department policy that was much less

aggressive about documenting cases of pesticide poisoning than he was. In

early December 1999, he says his boss, , suggested Shafey

consider money and politics as driving forces behind the way the department

treated health issues involving pesticides, and that if Shafey could not

" bend " to accommodate FDOH policy, he should leave. denied the

conversation, both in e-mail to Shafey copied to his boss and later in court

documents.

Shafey's boss suggested he consider money and politics as driving forces

behind the way the department treated health issues.

wasn't the only one who stood in Shafey's way. For more than a year,

department lawyers had denied him access to worker's compensation data that

would have helped him protect workers against future poisonings. Eventually,

the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in

Washington intervened on Shafey's behalf and sent a letter to Sharon Heber,

the head of Shafey's division, urging her to help get the worker's comp

data. Three days later, she asked the department's Inspector General to

investigate a business trip that Shafey took the month before to see if he

had submitted a fraudulent travel claim.

Shafey had gone to Immokalee to investigate a methyl bromide spill at an

agricultural chemical supply house that injured about 40 people. Heber

suspected Shafey had traveled out of the way at the state's expense for his

own benefit. Though Shafey flew to Miami, which was farther from his

destination than other places, the inspector-general's report acknowledged

Shafey saved the state $47.11 because he had no hotel expenses.

The inspector-general did conclude Shafey defrauded the department $12.50 on

his next trip to the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual

conference in Chicago, where he presented his medfly data. The

inspector-general said he should have claimed reimbursement for

three-quarters of a day's per diem instead of a full day when he returned to

Tallahassee, a charge Shafey disputes.

Over the next month, Shafey's responsibilities diminished, according to

health department correspondence. A cornerstone of the pesticide

surveillance program is to categorize to what extent medical complaints are

likely linked to pesticide exposure. Despite protests from NIOSH, which

funds Florida's pesticide poisoning tracking program, took the

classification task away from Shafey.

Something Really Underhanded

On March 1, 2000 Shafey was presented with a detailed letter informing him

that the department was considering firing him on March 13 for falsifying a

travel claim and conduct unbecoming a public employee. The second charge

stemmed from some emails Shafey sent to several colleagues at various state

and federal agencies questioning whether the state's use of potassium

chloride to execute prisoners by lethal injection was a misuse of

pesticides, because the chemical was not registered for that use.

Although tensions had been rising between Shafey and his supervisors, he was

surprised and upset by the move to fire him. At the time, state employees

who were not political appointees were protected from being sacked for

policy differences with management, so Shafey thought his job was secure.

Incidentally, that changed on July 1, 2001, when Florida Governor Jeb Bush's

plan to remove career service protection for Florida state workers went into

effect, throwing nearly 17,000 positions -- including the one Shafey

occupied -- into " at will employment. " Now any state worker who refused to

bow to the kind of pressure Shafey was subjected to can be fired without

cause.

After he received the termination letter, there was an incident during which

Shafey says provoked him. Shafey closed his office door on

and admits to calling him " a low life " and " a piece of shit. "

The next day Shafey was told he could no longer come into work pending an

investigation of the " door slamming incident " the previous day. Shafey

denies that he slammed the door but just closed it while was on the

other side. " Anything I did at that point was blown all out of proportion, "

he says. " I think they were afraid I'd go postal, because they knew they

were doing something really underhanded. " He was instructed to go home and

wait to be called in.

On his last day Shafey was told to come in immediately to meet with Heber

(Shafey's division head) even though his lawyer could not be present under

such short notice. Shafey went in and was told he was terminated immediately

without any right to appeal because he used abusive language and created an

" emergency condition. " Then the sheriff was called to escort him out.

Burying the Controversy

The Farmworker Association of Florida viewed Shafey's ouster as a major

setback to their efforts to address pesticide issues on behalf of the

state's 400,000-plus farm workers. Tirso Moreno, the association's executive

director, says Florida's pesticide safety regulations are too lax to protect

workers, and the few laws on the books are not enforced, so pesticide

poisonings are rampant.

Aside from dealing with acute symptoms associated with individual exposures,

Moreno says his community seems to have unusually high rates of birth

defects, skin problems, respiratory complaints, and autoimmune diseases,

like lupus.

Dr. Mohammed Abou-Donia, a professor at Duke University, says it's likely

that pesticide exposures are responsible for the health problems of Florida

farm workers, but proving it is fraught with pitfalls. Since there is no way

to measure all of the pesticides and other contaminants that people are

exposed to, it is impossible to link exposures of particular chemicals back

to chronic health problems. " We're put to such high standards of

toxicological proof, that you can't meet it, " says n Moses, MD,

director of the pesticide education center.

The Farmworker Association has been trying to get FDOH to help for years,

but until Shafey showed up, he says nobody took their concerns seriously.

" When we had workers who had a problem, we always called him, " Moreno says.

" We don't feel that way now. And since his firing, we haven't expected much

from FDOH. "

Public health colleagues have also expressed regret at Shafey's dismissal.

University of Florida health professors e and Joan Flocks wrote

in a letter to former Health Secretary , that Shafey brought

" courage and objectivity " to the often controversial and heated public

debate surrounding pesticide use, and they urged the department to reinstate

him. The American Public Health Association publicized Shafey's ordeal in a

Fall 2000 newsletter of its Occupational Health and Safety Section, and

concluded that his tenacity in carrying out his public health duties led to

reprisal against him. The International Society for Environmental

Epidemiology, a professional organization representing more than 800

environmental scientists, endorsed Shafey's medfly spraying conclusions and

said his termination " appears highly irregular. "

Soon after his sacking, Shafey sued FDOH for wrongful dismissal seeking

reinstatement and damages under whistleblower provisions. Such legal actions

tend to take time, and Shafey's case is no exception. His first hitch was a

report by Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspector Dennis

on whether Shafey's complaint was justified. concluded in

July 2000 that the department did not retaliate against Shafey, although he

talked only to the Florida health department and never tried to interview

Shafey. After repeated attempts, could not be reached for comment.

Florida has pursued a concrete wall defense. Using a newly popular tactic,

the state has invoked -- and the court has accepted -- a " sovereign

immunity " defense, which basically says that states are immune from legal

action by individuals. Though the doctrine was articulated more than a

century ago, recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings have given states new power

to use it, explains Kohn, a lawyer representing the National

Whistleblower Center. He calls it " a critical assault " on public health and

environmental defense.

Meanwhile, before the sovereign immunity decision Shafey amended his

complaint to name Sharon Heber and individually. Shafey has

also filed another action claiming Heber, , former Secretary ,

and Governor Jeb Bush violated his constitutional rights to free speech and

due process of the law.

On November 1, 2001 the court ruled that Shafey's case can proceed.

Meanwhile, Shafey's attorney of Henrichsen Siegel

laments the uphill trudge: " We've been waging this battle for one and a half

years now, and we haven't been able to have any discovery yet in the case. I

think it speaks volumes about the merits of Dr. Shafey's case and the fact

that the state has done so much to try to avoid sitting down and talking

about this situation. "

Harassment of public interest-minded health officials, scientists and

technical experts is widespread and rising, says DeVany, chair of the

Industrial Hygiene Association's Social Concerns Committee. " There's a lot

of pressure being put on people to modify, soften their tone, or hedge their

reports to say something is possible instead of 'here's the evidence that it

happened,' " she says. " We're talking about an increased acceptance of

unethical behavior -- about supervisors and managers putting pressure on

their technical professionals to perform unethical acts. "

De Vany characterizes this phenomenon as " the good corporate soldier

syndrome. " But the increasing allegiance to corporate interests among public

health officials does little to help Florida farm workers or the Charmaine

Kaisers, Dennis s, and other victims among us.

Published: Jan 07 2002