http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1998Q4/dogs.html
The Junkyard Dogs of Science
by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
For the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), the "phthalate
issue" (pronounced "THAL ate"😉 is just another "scare as
usual"--another media fire needing to be extinguished.
The issue has been simmering for several years, but it reached a flash
point in the United States in November 1998 when the environmental
group Greenpeace issued a report showing that soft vinyl children's
toys contain significant levels of toxic chemicals--up to 41 percent
by weight. Greenpeace warned that children may ingest the chemicals,
known as phthalates, if they put the toys in their mouths. "When
children suck and chew on soft vinyl toys, it is similar to squeezing
a sponge. Water comes out of a sponge, just as these toxic softeners
can leach out of a toy," explained Joe Di Gangi, the author of the
Greenpeace report.
Greenpeace was not alone on the issue. Health authorities in several
other countries, including Austria, Denmark and Sweden, had already
issued regulations banning phthalates. Similar measures were under
consideration, along with warning advisories to parents and requests
for retailers to voluntarily recall vinyl toys, in half a dozen other
European countries and Canada.
ACSH responded to the "scare" the way it has responded on many similar
past occasions, by announcing that it was forming a committee to study
the question, headed by former U.S. Surgeon-General Dr. C. Everett
Koop.
"Dr. Koop will oversee the blue ribbon committee's work and ensure
that the most qualified scientists are recruited to look at the
science on phthalates," said ACSH president Elizabeth Whelan. "We know
that people want to hear from independent scientists and physicians on
important safety issues. The committee's report will provide an
authoritative point of view on the safety of phthalates in vinyl
products."
Most people who read the news probably concluded that ACSH--described
in numerous stories as a "health advocacy group"--was some sort of
impartial consumer organization that could be expected to look
seriously at the issue. Some reports noted vaguely that ACSH "gets
some funding from industry." Overall, however, the media did such a
thorough job of obscuring ACSH's identity as an industry front group
that Plastics News, an industry trade publication, mistakenly credited
ACSH for beginning the "barrage" against the plastics industry over
the phthalate issue.
In fact, ACSH is anything but a critic of industry. Since its founding
in 1978, it has actively courted industry support, offering itself as
an off-the-shelf, available-on-demand source of "sound scientific
expertise" in defense of virtually every form and type of industrial
pollution known to the 20th century.
Following the Money
For public consumption, ACSH calls itself "a science-based, public
health group that is directed by a board of 300 leading physicians and
scientists . . . providing mainstream, peer reviewed scientific
information to American consumers."
When appealing to industry, ACSH uses a different pitch. A revealing
reference crops up, for example, in the minutes of a March 16, 1978
meeting of the board of directors of the Manufacturing Chemists'
Association (today known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association).
Written in the same month that ACSH began operating, the minutes
record an appeal by MCA director William J. Driver, who noted that
Whelan had founded "a tax-exempt organization composed of scientists
whose viewpoints are more similar to those of business than
dissimilar. . . . ACSH is being pinched for funds, but in the interest
of independence and credibility will not accept support from any
chemical company or any company which could even remotely be concerned
with the aims of the council."
Notwithstanding this desire to make ACSH appear independent, Driver
added that "Dr. Whelan would be happy to hear from" MCA members who
"are interested in the work of the council and know of possible
sources of funds."
Shortly after its founding, ACSH abandoned even the appearance of
independent funding. In a 1997 interview, Whelan explained that she
was already being called a "paid liar for industry," so she figured
she might as well go ahead and take industry money without
restrictions.
Today, some 40 percent of ACSH's $1.5 million annual budget is
supplied directly by industry, including a long list of food, drug and
chemical companies that have a vested interest in supporting Whelan's
message.
Stacking the Deck
ACSH claims to be an "independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization"
that adds "reason and balance to debates about public health issues."
Whatever "balance" means, however, it definitely doesn't mean
ideological neutrality. ACSH is unabashedly right-wing and
pro-industry. Whelan makes no bones about her political leanings,
describing herself as a lifelong conservative who is "more libertarian
than Republican." ACSH's board of directors is also heavily stacked
with right-wing ideologues.
Take, for example, ACSH board chairman A. Alan Moghissi. A former
official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Moghissi
characterizes environmentalism as a belief that "members of endangered
species deserve protection and that, because there are billions of
humans, humanity does not qualify for protection."
As an "expert on risk assessment," Moghissi appears regularly on
rosters of industry-supported "expert panels" that work to undermine
environmental regulations. He serves on the advisory board of numerous
anti-environmental organizations and right-wing "think tanks,"
including the American Policy Center's "EPA Watch," the Committee for
a Constructive Tomorrow, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition,
and the National Wilderness Institute, a "wise use" anti-environmental
organization that calls for abolition of the Endangered Species Act.
In 1990, Moghissi served on a panel created by the far-right
Competitive Enterprise Institute, in league with Consumer Alert and
the National Consumer Coalition to challenge the EPA's policy
requiring asbestos removal from schools and other public buildings.
Moghissi also chairs the Science Advisory Committee of the
Environmental Issues Council (EIC), which was established in 1993 by
industry trade associations including the Association of American Farm
Bureaus, the Association of General Contractors, the National
Cattleman's Association, the American Pulpwood Association, the
Natural Gas Supply Association, the United States Business and
Industrial Council, the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), as
well as the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
The purpose of the EIC was to serve as a "new ally against
ill-conceived environmental regulation" according to Petroleum
Independent, an IPAA trade publication. "The industries represented
face common problems," it explained. "The spotted owl might seem to be
an active threat only to the timber industry but is in actuality a
direct threat to agriculture, mining and virtually any land user. In
addition to the Endangered Species Act, all industries are seriously
threatened by federal policies regarding wetlands, hazardous waste,
and a multitude of other environmental issues."
Other members of the ACSH board of directors include:
Attorney Jerald Hill, a former long-time president of the Landmark
Legal Foundation, which appears in the Heritage Foundation's list of
conservative "resource organizations." A recipient of funding from
right-wing gazillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, Landmark has a $1
million annual budget and a reputation as a "conservative's American
Civil Liberties Union." It has filed lawsuits against labor unions and
school desegregation and has fought for legislation that would allow
parents to direct public education funding toward their children's
private schools. (Whitewater special investigator Kenneth Starr also
has ties to Landmark, which has focused heavily in recent years on
hyping the Clintongate scandals.)
Fredric Steinberg of Mainstreet Health Care, a private HMO in Atlanta,
Georgia, who regards Canada's single-payer healthcare system as "the
socialized road to medical oblivion."
Henry Miller, a former FDA official now at the Hoover Institution, who
regularly grinds an ax against what he considers the FDA's
"extraordinarily burdensome regulations" regarding genetically
engineered foods and new drugs. In 1996, Miller also editorialized
against the FDA's proposal to regulate tobacco. "The FDA's
anti-tobacco initiative . . . has not been without its own costs to
American consumers and taxpayers," he stated, describing FDA
commissioner David Kessler as "personally consumed by this single
issue."
In addition to the board of directors, ACSH also has a 300-member
"board of scientific and policy members." As journalist Beatrice Trum
Hunter observes, however, "Many of the advisory board members from
academia serve in departments of food science and technology, mainly
supported by the generosity of commercial food interests."
Other advisors include familiar names from the list of "usual
suspects" who appear regularly as scientific experts in a variety of
anti-environmental, pro-industry forums: Dennis Avery, Michael Gough,
Patrick J. Michaels, Stephen Safe, and S. Fred Singer, to name a few.
Several, including Floy Lilley and J. Gordon Edwards, as well as
Moghissi, have written articles for 21st Century and Technology, a
publication affiliated with lunatic-fringe conspiracy theorist Lyndon
LaRouche.
PR Connections
The 17-member ACSH board of directors also includes representatives
from two PR and advertising firms: Albert Nickel of Lyons Lavey Nickel
Swift (their motto: "We change perceptions"😉, and Lorraine Thelian of
Ketchum Communications.
Some 40 percent of ACSH's
$1.5 million annual budget
is supplied directly by industry,
including a long list of food, drug
and chemical companies that
have a vested interest in
supporting Whelan's message.
Thelian is a Ketchum senior partner and director of its Washington, DC
office, which handles the bulk of the firm's "environmental PR work"
on behalf of clients including Dow Chemical, the Aspirin Foundation of
America, Bristol Myers Squibb, the American Automobile Manufacturers
Association, the Consumer Aerosol Products Council, the National
Pharmaceutical Council, the North American Insulation Manufacturers
Association, and the American Industrial Health Council, another
industry-funded group that lobbies against what it considers
"excessive" regulation of carcinogens. Ketchum boasts that the D.C.
office "has dealt with issues ranging from regulation of toxins,
global climate change, electricity deregulation, nuclear energy,
product and chemical contamination, and agricultural chemicals and
Superfund sites, to name but a few."
In 1994, for example, Ketchum's DC office worked on behalf of Dow and
the Chlorine Chemistry Council to round up scientists who would
challenge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 1994 report on
the health effects of dioxin. Even before the report was released,
Ketchum swung into action with a 30-city PR blitz designed to undercut
press coverage for the EPA report. "We identified a number of
independent scientists and took them on the road" to meet with
journalists, academics, political leaders and local health officials,
Mark Schannon, an associate director of Ketchum's Washington office,
said. "Basically what we're trying to do is assure that industry's
voice is heard by people who make policy decisions both here and
around the country," Schannon said.
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