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Hamish
Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 333
Location: PRC
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 Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 2:17 am Post subject: And now for something completely different...about SARS |
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In the face of rabid criticism of the government of China's pace as it has released information about SARS, and some of the heated language about how poorly the Chinese have handled this situation, I am posting an article which illustrates that Western countries have sometimes behaved in much the same way. I do so, not to excuse the Chinese, but to defuse the vitriol that some of us have expressed toward China which, after all, could well have learned to act as some say it has by watching mine (the US) and other governments.
I�ll look for examples of transgressions by my country as well. Perhaps the reader might know of one in theirs?
Regards,
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Profit madness the link to Mad Cow horror
The Spark 14 November 2000
�With over 80 people dead from mad cow disease people in Britain have every reason to be worried about food safety. They are justifiably angry too. Angry at the government and establishment scientists who misled them and gave categorical assurances that British beef was safe, when there were clear signs that it was not. The brain disease variant CJD, caused by eating �mad cow� beef may end up taking thousands of lives; it is not yet clear how many people are affected but at the moment the number of deaths is doubling every year.
An inquiry into how the British government and its scientific advisers handled the crisis has released a damning report. It found:
* � That the Government and scientists delayed or mismanaged key research.
� BSE (mad cow disease) appeared by chance in the 1970s and vital research showing it was a new disease was withheld.
� Ministers and officials used apparently reassuring scientific conclusions to claim unequivocally that British beef was safe.
� There were failures in the way scientists and government departments passed information to the public and each other. Measures meant to stop the spread of BSE were inadequate and misconceived.
False assurances
The scientists who uncritically accepted that BSE could not cross the species barrier and spread to humans were singled out by the inquiry for special criticism. They gave the public false confidence and also bred complacency in British slaughterhouses which for many years did not take proper measures to stop contaminated meat entering the food chain. Just a peppercorn-sized portion of affected meat can pass BSE from one cow to another. According to the report science was mismanaged, misused, misinterpreted and miscommunicated to the general public. (New Scientist 4 November 2000).
These damning criticisms should be kept in mind. Today there are establishment scientists who are carelessly declaring genetically modified foods safe. They disregard the fact that gene technology in food is a qualitative leap and the long-term effects are not known. There is terribly inadequate testing of the safety of gene foods for humans before they are pushed on the public. Just a few weeks of tests are all that are legally required, compared with 5-years for medicines. When public health is potentially at risk there should be a great deal of caution exercised, not blithe assurances which have no scientific validity. There are a significant number of scientists who are not prostituted to big money who warn that gene foods are a potential time-bomb.
Will the lessons be learned?
That is the lesson of the mad cow tragedy. Now there are outbreaks of BSE in France, Germany and Switzerland. There are signs that in these countries the public are also being fed the line �don�t panic, everything is under control�. What is the controlling factor? Money. The British Conservative Government was more concerned about �protecting� beef markets for British farmers than placing public health in the number one position. Little wonder when the nature of the system is profit hunger. Profits come first.
The giant biotech multinationals pushing gene foods have thousands of scientists in their pay and have tried to present the argument as science versus superstition. The BSE debacle shows that the real battle is �corporate science� versus critical science. The unequivocal stance of the Workers� Party of New Zealand has been: gene foods should be banned. The risk they pose is potentially too great, and their advantages negligible. The British beef saga illustrates the dangers of a profit-driven attitude to public health all too starkly. |
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Hamish
Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 333
Location: PRC
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 2:44 am Post subject: |
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This is a recent article about US policy regarding atomic fallout. Many of my countrymen, myself included, think our country has been remiss in the way it has handled the health problems associated with testing huge weapons in the atmosphere.
Regards,
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Fallout likely caused 15,000 deaths Study links nuclear tests to cancer cases
By Peter Eisler
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON -- Radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests across the globe probably caused at least 15,000 cancer deaths in U.S. residents born after 1951, according to data from an unreleased federal study.
The study, coupled with findings from previous government investigations, suggests that 20,000 non-fatal cancers -- and possibly many more -- also can be tied to fallout from aboveground weapons tests.
The study shows that far more fallout than previously known reached the USA from nuclear tests in the former Soviet Union and on several Pacific islands used for U.S. and British exercises. It also finds that fallout from scores of U.S. trials at the Nevada Test Site spread substantial amounts of radioactivity across broad swaths of the country. When fallout from all tests, domestic and foreign, is taken together, no U.S. resident born after 1951 escaped exposure, the study says.
The study is the government's first effort to assess the nationwide effects of all forms of radiation from the hundreds of aboveground nuclear blasts detonated worldwide before such testing was banned in 1963. The cancer estimates add a new human toll to the Cold War and raise profound public policy questions, including whether the government should do cancer screenings in high-fallout areas.
USA TODAY obtained portions of the study, which was supposed to be finished more than a year ago.
''There should be no more waiting,'' says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who pushed the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct the study in 1998. ''People are still waiting for real communication on their exposure risks and steps they can take.''
The study's estimates of radiation dispersal are based on complex computer analyses of weather patterns, population trends and other data that can help gauge public exposure to fallout from aboveground nuclear tests.
The cancer figures are a general nationwide estimate -- there is no way to link specific cases to fallout. The study does not assess cancer risks in other countries.
The data show that global fallout blanketed much of the USA, with heavy pockets in Iowa, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Fallout from the Nevada tests settled more in the mountain and Midwest states, including Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri.
The study measures exposure to an array of fallout elements based on county of residence, birth date and factors such as consumption of foods that absorb fallout.
It concludes that about 22,000 cancers, half of them fatal, probably occurred from external exposure to radioactive fallout. Those could include everything from melanoma to breast cancer.
The study attributes thousands of additional cancers to internal radiation exposure, such as inhalation or eating tainted food. Those cancers include at least 550 fatal leukemias and about 2,500 thyroid cancer deaths.
Nuclear weapons powers ''owe the world a real accounting of what they did to its health,'' says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. ''The U.S. has been the only honest country so far.'' |
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hubei_canuk
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 240
Location: hubei china
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 4:14 am Post subject: ............ |
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........
Last edited by hubei_canuk on Thu Apr 24, 2003 8:49 am; edited 1 time in total |
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taiwan boy
Joined: 11 Feb 2003
Posts: 99
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 5:42 am Post subject: Re: Western World complicity |
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| hubei_canuk wrote: |
How about the WESTERN coverup of SARS?
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I searched the western news media at that time.
Nothing.
Why?...
ANSWER: Since china didn't admit it, the western governments and reporters decide not to hurt business and trade relations by mentioning it or making accusations to the Chinese goverment.
If we went to the offices of the Western news wires and Government Health Departments you will find they knew back in January. How about getting some subpoenas and checking their files? |
The real answer is because the media generally likes to report facts not unsubstantiated rumours. Perhaps if someone had latched on to the story and sent a smart investigative reporter off to Guangzhou in search of the truth in December last year the situation might be different now. But that didn't happen. |
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hubei_canuk
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 240
Location: hubei china
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 6:02 am Post subject: ........ |
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....
Last edited by hubei_canuk on Thu Apr 24, 2003 8:54 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Egas
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 6:15 am Post subject: |
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I doubt very much there was a cover-up of any deliberate nature, at least initially. What the governments did not predict was that in a country where 20 000 people die of pneumonia EACH MONTH, a particular strain of pneumoni would create mass panic after killing just a few dozen people. To explain that you have got to look at the active role of the media in focussing on SARS, the lies of the government in not coming clean once the ball started rolling, and then all this continuing to snowball. The cycle goes something like this:
A handful of people die of SARS. Media begins to focus on it. People panic. Goverment panics and doesn't want to reveal the full extent of it, as an attempt to reduce panic. Media says government is lying. People panic more. Government panics more and admits more of the truth. People panic even more. Media goes into a frenzy. People panic more. Government panics more and closes schools... |
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chinasyndrome
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
Posts: 673
Location: In the clutches of the Red Dragon. Erm...China
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 6:52 am Post subject: Re: Rumors Facts and Cowardice |
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[quote="hubei_canuk"]
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| The Western Governments are guilty of this as well. They didn't want to offend China. They also deserve that they got SARS because the were complicit and failed to act. |
The western governments don't have SARS - their everyday citizens are the ones catching it, and it's difficult to see how ordinary people going about their daily lives 'deserve' it. I hope that wasn't what you meant. Behind every f*** up governments create, there are innocent people who get jammed up as a result. |
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Hamish
Joined: 20 Mar 2003
Posts: 333
Location: PRC
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 7:11 am Post subject: |
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The Times of London just sent me this.
Regards,
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World News
April 23, 2003
Scientists find there is no quick cure for Sars
By James Doran in Toronto and Oliver Wright
SCIENTISTS searching for a cure for severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) have suffered a setback after finding that the virus blamed for the potentially fatal disease was not present in most patients taken ill.
The World Health Organisation announced last week that the corona virus � responsible for the common cold � was at the root of the epidemic of a virulent strain of pneumonia. But Dr Frank Plummer, scientific director of the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, refuted the claim yesterday afterweeks of intensive research into the disease that has killed 14 people in Toronto.
�Only 40 per cent of the people with what we call Sars have the corona virus. We have found no other virus but the connection between Sars and corona is actually very weak,� he said.
A WHO spokesman said that it was aware of the Canadian findings and was investigating. Dick Thompson, for the WHO, said that in previous tests carried out for the organisation the corona virus had been present in 90 per cent of all cases. �For now, we stand by our view that the corona virus is the cause, but what we need to investigate is why we have this anomaly in Canada,� he said. �One possibility is that it has been present in all the cases but is simply not being picked up at the time of testing. All the cases in Canada came from one infected person. We need to see if the virus has mutated.�
On April 16, Dr Klaus Stohr, of the WHO, released the results of a series of experiments on monkeys infected with Sars. �We can now say with all confidence that the causative agent of Sars is the corona virus first detected in Hong Kong on March 21,� he said. But Dr Marc-Andr� Beaulieu, senior medical adviser with Health Canada, said that all scientists and government departments working on Sars should now be �more prudent�.
The announcement by Canadian officials came as researchers in British Columbia claimed to be doing a trial of a test for Sars on patients with suspected or probable symptoms of the disease. The researchers said that they were making progress and hoped to have a test available to the public within weeks.
But Dr Beaulieu said: �In order to develop a good diagnostic test you have to have a clear definition of the cause. For us this means we now have to be more prudent. We are saying that we would prefer to have a much more clear understanding of what causes the disease.�
The revelations from Health Canada coincided with an emergency meeting between Canadian health officials and senior officials from the American Centres for Disease Control. American officials have become increasingly worried about the spread of Sars over the US-Canadian border. Travellers to Toronto are being asked to monitor their health while in the city and during the ten days after their return.
* A Briton may have died from the virus after returning to Wales from a holiday in Thailand. Tests are being conducted to see if a 33-year-old man who died at his home in Pontypridd, South Wales, had the virus.
Staff at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, in Llantrisant, are taking steps to prevent any spread of the contagious disease if the result is positive. |
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taiwan boy
Joined: 11 Feb 2003
Posts: 99
Location: China
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 11:01 am Post subject: Re: Rumors Facts and Cowardice |
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| hubei_canuk wrote: |
| They didn't even REPORT the rumour. |
that's right. Good journalist don't report rumours. Good editors don't allow rumors into their newspapers. Can you imagine what would happen if every single rumour that went around got reported?
What would an editor do if a reporter filed the following story?
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Deadly virus rumour
There are rumours going around Guangdong that a deadly virus causing pneumonia is spreading in the province. Ten people are rumoured to have died and the price of vinegar has sky-rocketed. This newspaper contacted several hospitals in the province and none of them could confirm an increase in the number of cases of pneumonia. An official from the Department of Health said he knew nothing of any epidemic. Although we cannot confirm the facts this newspaper thought it was very important to report this rumour. |
Any decent editor would throw it in the bin and tell the reporter to stop wasting their time!!! |
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kimo
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 668
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 1:16 pm Post subject: It was reported somewhat |
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Sorry can't remember the dates but I did read in the western media, maybe on Yahoo, about some type of pneumonia in Guangdong. As well, Roger, I think, reported it here on Dave's, and he may have also reported what I specifically remember reading that a couple poisoned themselves with some vinegar and coal concoction they were smoking their home with.
Obviously, at that time, the authorities were not concerned, thinking, or hoping that it would blow over. Don't think the western press covered anything up as was already observed above. |
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