December, 21 2017, 02:30pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Neil Gormley, Staff Attorney, Earthjustice, (202) 797-5239, ngormley@earthjustice.orgÂ
Daveon Coleman, Press Secretary, Earthjustice, (608) 216-4648, dcoleman@earthjustice.org
Michael Burger, Volunteer Attorney, Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, (212) 854-2372, mburger@law.columbia.edu
Susan J. Kraham, Senior Staff Attorney, Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, 212 854-4291, skraha@law.columbia.edu
Tiffany Challe, Communications Associate, CELC/Sabin Center, (212) 854-0594, tc2868@columbia.eduÂ
Doctors and Scientists Challenge Removal of EPA Science Advisers
Illegal Policy Undermines Integrity of Science and Threatens Public Health.
WASHINGTON
Today, a coalition of doctors, scientists, and professional groups are filing a lawsuit challenging EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's attempt to remove highly qualified, independent scientists from advisory committees that ensure the integrity of science at the agency. EPA advisory committees provide crucial scientific and technical information to inform EPA decisions and review the scientific accuracy of EPA findings across a wide range of agency programs. Under a new policy, Pruitt is removing publicly funded scientists from the committees and replacing them with advocates for the polluting industries EPA is charged with regulating.
The parties to the suit are Physicians for Social Responsibility, National Hispanic Medical Association, and the International Society for Children's Health and Environment, on behalf of their members, and Professor Edward Avol, represented by the public-interest law firm Earthjustice, together with independent scientists Dr. Robyn Wilson and Dr. Joseph Arvai, represented by the Columbia Environmental Law Clinic, Morningside Heights Legal Services at Columbia Law School.
"If we can't do this work, we can't protect public health," said Deborah Cory-Slechta, a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a Professor of Environmental Medicine, Pediatrics, and Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Cory-Slechta conducts research to better understand the harmful effects of air pollution on the brain. Because she is a current member of the EPA Chemical Assessment Advisory Committee, the new policy makes her ineligible for EPA research grants.
"We're standing up to protect scientific integrity because Hispanic health care professionals and the communities they serve need a strong, effective EPA to safeguard their health," said Dr. Elena Rios, President of the National Hispanic Medical Association. "Scott Pruitt should not be allowed to use selective science to undermine critical health protections."
"EPA's effort to purge independent scientists from its advisory committees has harmful implications for the nation's health," said Physicians for Social Responsibility program director Barbara Gottlieb. "Losing top-flight academic researchers, and replacing them with industry-dependent voices, will undermine actions to protect us from toxic pollutants and life-threatening climate change. If EPA won't abandon this harmful approach, we're happy to take them to court."
"Publicly funded researchers who have devoted their professional lives to understanding these issues help EPA make the best use of limited resources, address gaps in scientific understanding, and leverage the best peer-reviewed research," said Professor Ed Avol of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, who joined the organizations' lawsuit as an affected individual. "It's discouraging to see that the Administrator of the very agency charged with protecting the public's environmental health doesn't value those researchers' participation."
"They're claiming the academic scientists and doctors are biased and then replacing them with industry representatives," said Earthjustice attorney Neil Gormley, the lead attorney on the case. "The hypocrisy is kind of stunning."
"This new directive by the Administrator is unnecessary, at best, and an explicit attack on science-informed policy, at worst," said Dr. Robyn Wilson, an Associate Professor of Risk Analysis and Decision Science in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at the Ohio State University. Wilson joined the lawsuit as one of the members of the Science Advisory Board forcibly removed as a result of the Directive. "There are already procedures in place to avoid a potential conflict-of-interest among advisory board members, which makes this latest effort seem to be more about stacking the board with members who will support the new Administration's deregulatory agenda."
"This is a classic case of the fox setting up shop in the henhouse," said Dr. Joseph Arvai, a former member of the EPA's Chartered Science Advisory Board. Dr. Arvai, who joined the suit as an affected individual, is the Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the School for Environment & Sustainability, and the Ross School of Business, at the University of Michigan. "The Pruitt directive unfairly and unlawfully bars some of the nation's leading environmental and health scientists from providing science advice to the EPA; at the same time, it allows scientists from EPA-regulated companies and industries, as well junk scientists hired by their lobbyists, to rubber stamp rules and regulations that will compromise human and environmental health across the United States. Enough is enough."
"Scott Pruitt's directive is entirely unprecedented," said Michael Burger, a volunteer attorney with the Columbia Environmental Law Clinic and Executive Director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. "Government agencies have relied on scientific experts serving as advisors and consultants for more than 50 years. Nobody before now has ever thought to ban all scientists receiving grants of any kind from an agency from serving in any way on its advisory committees. That's because it makes no sense."
The complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia explains that Pruitt's new policy is an illegal attempt to override federal ethics rules and that it is arbitrarily biased in favor of polluting industries. If it's allowed to remain in effect, the policy will undermine the integrity of EPA science and introduce pro-polluter bias into agency decisions and programs.
The complaint asks the Court to declare the policy unlawful and arbitrary and throw it out. It also asks the Court to prohibit EPA from removing any more scientists under the policy and direct EPA to reinstate the scientists who were disqualified.
The publicly funded scientists being removed by Pruitt are experts and leaders in their fields of study, including cancer, children's health, asthma and other respiratory diseases, epidemiology, the hazards posed by chemicals in the home, and risk analysis and decision science. Over several years of distinguished service, they have helped ensure that EPA makes decisions based on scientific merit and not on politics.
Pruitt's chosen replacements appear handpicked to put the interests of polluting industries ahead of sound science, public health, and the environment. Virtually all of them have financial connections to polluting industries, hold pro-pollution views that are outside the scientific mainstream, or both. Specifically, of Pruitt's 18 new appointees to the EPA Science Advisory Board,
- 7 currently draw paychecks from polluting industries;
- 4 more have a history of taking money from polluters; and
- 5 more have a history of echoing the talking points of industrial polluters and rejecting mainstream science.
One of Pruitt's appointees to the Science Advisory Board, Robert Phalen, claims that air pollution is good for children and that "modern air is a little too clean for optimum health." Michael Honeycutt, another Pruitt appointee, denies the overwhelming scientific evidence that smog causes asthma and has suggested that more smog would be a "health benefit." As a regulator in Texas, he has opposed stricter limits on mercury and arsenic releases, and actually weakened state protections for benzene, a widespread and extremely potent carcinogen. Honeycutt will now chair the Science Advisory Board.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460LATEST NEWS
UN Panel Says IDF Appears Set on 'Physical Destruction of Palestinian Children'
"Children in Gaza can no longer wait, as each passing minute risks another child dying of hunger as the world looks on," said the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Mar 22, 2024
A United Nations panel said Thursday that the Israeli military's siege of Gaza appears "calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinian children," pointing to the growing number of kids starving to death as Israel obstructs the delivery of humanitarian aid.
"They are cut off from food, even crumbs are not easy to find," the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a statement. "A little girl wept in front of the BBC's camera, crying, 'I miss bread.' The occupying power has blocked or severely restricted food and other life-essential supplies and aid."
At least 27 children have died of malnutrition or dehydration in recent weeks, a toll that the U.N. panel said is "likely to be significantly higher" and is "set to rise" as Israel's blockade and attacks on aid convoys continue. An alarming analysis released earlier this week by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that Gaza's entire population—roughly half of which is children—is "facing high levels of acute food insecurity."
"Children in Gaza can no longer wait, as each passing minute risks another child dying of hunger as the world looks on," the U.N. committee said.
Children are also at high risk from ongoing Israeli bombings, which have inflicted immense physical and psychological suffering on Gaza's children. Israel's military has killed more than 13,000 children in the territory since October 7, a figure that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) called "astronomically horrifying." Save the Children estimated that between October and January, an average of more than 10 children per day in Gaza lost one or both of their legs due to Israeli attacks.
"I think these numbers that we're seeing out of Gaza are just staggering," Catherine Russell, UNICEF's executive director, said earlier this week. "We haven't seen that rate of death among children in almost any other conflict in the world."
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child #UNCRC delivers its strongest statement. Gaza: Halt the war now to save children from dying of imminent famine. #childrensrights @lexpsy pic.twitter.com/uXHtxonlVz
— UNChildRights (@UNChildRights1) March 21, 2024
The U.N. panel on children's rights called attention to the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) January ruling ordering the Israeli government to "enable the provision" of humanitarian aid and do everything in its power to prevent acts of genocide—directives that Israel has been accused of systematically violating.
"Since the ICJ order on 26 January, and as of 19 March, an average of over 108 Palestinians have been killed and another 178 injured every day in Gaza, and children are amongst them," the committee said Thursday. "The looming invasion of Rafah will take the fragile situation to the breaking point, putting the lives of 600,000 children at immediate risk, and will rapidly reach the tipping point of famine."
"While reiterating its calls for the remaining children held hostage to be released immediately," the panel added, "the committee also calls on all parties, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire to protect hundreds of thousands of innocent children's lives."
The statement came as the United States, Israel's chief arms supplier, proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate cease-fire" and a hostage deal. The U.S. has repeatedly stonewalled and vetoed cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council in recent months even as its top officials, including President Joe Biden, have expressed concerns about the grisly civilian death toll in Gaza.
In a scathing op-ed for The Guardian on Thursday, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor wrote that "the international human rights architecture is creaking under the weight of the hypocrisy of countries who profess support for a rules-based order yet continue to provide weapons to Israel that kill more innocent Palestinians."
"There exist no moral arguments," wrote Lawlor, "that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Everyone in the World Needs to See This': Footage Shows IDF Drone Killing Gazans
"There is no way they could have been considered combatants," said one writer and analyst. "This is unreal."
Mar 21, 2024
Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month.
Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.
While Al Jazeera deemed footage "too graphic" to be included on its daily live blog covering the war, a clip of it quickly spread on social media, where critics of the Israel Defense Forces operation expressed outrage.
"OUTRAGEOUS even after months of outrages," declared Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer. "This video shows an Israeli military drone literally stalking four unarmed civilians posing no threat and eliminating them one after the other!!!"
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka's U.S. policy fellow, said: "This is among the worst footage I've seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal."
Note: The following video contains graphic images.
Assal Rad, an author with a Ph.D. in Middle East history, said: "Have we ever seen so many war crimes take place right before our eyes? Any country still providing weapons and aid to Israel is complicit in these crimes."
Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden asserted that "everyone in the world needs to see this. Note that this footage permits no room for 'it was a mistake,' showing repeated, specifically targeted strikes on the unarmed and even wounded."
"The sort of behavior the ICJ explicitly forbid in the genocide ruling against Israel," added Snowden, referencing the International Court of Justice's preliminary order in January for an ongoing case led by South Africa.
Since the ruling, rights groups around the world have accused Israel of ignoring the ICJ order by continuing to bomb and starve people across Gaza. The mounting casualties—at least 31,988 killed and 74,188 wounded—have elevated demands for the U.S. government to end arms transfers to Israel.
The United States gives its Middle East ally $3.8 billion in annual military aid and since the Israeli assault was launched in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7, the Biden administration has sought $14.3 billion more while bypassing Congress to send more weapons. U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin face a genocide complicity case in federal court.
While the Biden administration has repeatedly vetoed and opposed cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly, Nate Evans, a spokesperson for Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., confirmed Thursday that the United States plans to unveil a new one on Friday.
The resolution will "unequivocally support ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at securing an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, which would get hostages released and help enable a surge in humanitarian aid," Evans told Al Jazeera. "This resolution is an opportunity for the council to speak with one voice to support the diplomacy happening on the ground and pressure Hamas to accept the deal on the table."
Blinken said Thursday that "there's a clear consensus around a number of shared priorities. First, the need for an immediate, sustained cease-fire, with the release of hostages. That would create space to surge more humanitarian assistance, to relieve the suffering of many people, and to build something more enduring."
Keep ReadingShow Less
New CDC Data Reveals 'National Embarrassment' of For-Profit Healthcare
"Our leaders must act to kick insurance companies to the curb and enact Medicare for All now," said one advocate.
Mar 21, 2024
Single-payer advocates on Thursday pointed to new federal life expectancy data—which shows Americans live shorter lives than people in any other major most-developed nation—as the latest proof of the need to enact a Medicare for All-type universal healthcare program.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. life expectancy was 77.5 years in 2022, an increase of 1.1 years from the previous year. The leading U.S. causes of death in 2022 were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, and Covid-19.
The 2022 figures reversed two consecutive years of declining U.S. life expectancy, largely due to Covid-19, which has killed nearly 1.2 million people in the country. However, U.S. life expectancy in 2022 was still below its pre-pandemic high of 78.8 years in 2019.
"Despite spending the most per capita on healthcare, we have a consistently lower life expectancy than our peers in comparably wealthy countries."
"While it is good news that U.S. life expectancy is finally rising again, it is important to remember that despite spending the most per capita on healthcare, we have a consistently lower life expectancy than our peers in comparably wealthy countries with universal healthcare," said Eagan Kemp, the healthcare policy advocate at Public Citizen.
The United States is the only developed nation in the world without guaranteed universal healthcare.
"We must keep making the point that profit-driven healthcare is not only worse for patients—it's a national embarrassment," Kemp added. "Our leaders must act to kick insurance companies to the curb and enact Medicare for All now."
One 2022 study found that more than 338,000 U.S. Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented if the country had a single-payer universal healthcare system like Medicare for All.
While opponents—including U.S. lawmakers who take substantial donations from the for-profit healthcare and insurance industry—often argue that Medicare for All would be too expensive, a 2020 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that such a program would save between $300 billion and $650 billion annually.
The same study found that approximately 68,000 people die each year in the United States because they lack access to healthcare.
Meanwhile, millions of American families face bankruptcy and financial ruin due to healthcare expenses, as the CEOs of 300 major U.S. healthcare companies made $4.5 billion in collective compensation in 2022.
The United States has the lowest life expectancy of any large rich country while spending far more on healthcare than comparable nations. Figures vary by source and year, but according to the 2023 edition of the CIA Factbook, the U.S. ranked 48th in worldwide life expectancy, while 2021 World Bank figures place the U.S. in 59th place globally, between Algeria and Panama.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) last year led more than 120 lawmakers in reintroducing bicameral Medicare for All legislation.
"There is a solution to this health crisis—a popular one that guarantees healthcare to every person as a human right and finally puts people over profits and care over corporations," Jayapal said at the time. "That solution is Medicare for All—everyone in, nobody out."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular