Don’t Drink the Water: Overcoming Complacency in Health Reporting
Alison Rose Levy - March 15, 2008
The media’s selling the Iraq war prompts outrage, yet the typical reporter’s eager acceptance of health reports and spins by the government and vested medical interests passes for “objective science.”
Health investigative journalism is an endangered species. So here’s kudos to the trio of Associated Press reporters, who recently undertook an independent investigation into the contamination of the water supplies by pharmaceutical drugs.
Delving past the official denials and half truths to review water tests or test independently, the AP team found that 41 million Americans drink water contaminated by antidepressants, hormones, heart medications and other prescription and over the counter meds. The substances excreted by those taking them end up in the water supply. Standard water treatment methods don’t remove them.
Millions of people, (down to young children prescribed psychiatric medications) take meds, but those who don’t also imbibe a weird chemical brew. Scientists don’t know how small quantities of a wide variety of agents never intended to be taken together interact in our bodies, or among themselves, where unintended toxic synergies can result.
Do those chemicals really find their way into us?
In Bill Moyers’ 2001 PBS special Trade Secrets, testing revealed that Moyers had a eighty-four different chemicals in his bodily tissues. But until mass use drives down testing costs, few can afford similar tests.
What we don’t know could be hurting us but don’t count on reading all about it.
Unlike Moyers and the AP team, health coverage rarely probes the interconnection between personal and environmental health.
Instead the media purveys the latest research finding as “objective proof,” overlooking the vested interests that typically pay for the research, and quickly bury studies that don’t support the sponsor’s intended product claims.
Scrutiny is called for. In a number of federal regulatory agencies with oversight on food and health, so-called public servants regularly traipse to and fro the industries they supposedly regulate.
For example, aspartame, a known neurotoxin, gained FDA approval when Donald Rumsfeld (then Chairman of Searle, the aspartame patent holder) reportedly played a role in the appointment of Reagan’s FDA commissioner. Soon after breaking a tie at the panel that approved aspartame, this commissioner left the FDA, going on to serve as the PR czar for the companies producing aspartame.
Few journalists face up to a compromised policy context. Nevertheless, it shapes what's regulated, what's studied, how it's studied, what's regarded as "proof" in a study, what's stamped as "safe," and what's targeted as "dangerous," and what makes it on to a label and into our bodies, food supply, water supply, and the earth.
Instead of navigating this complex context, the health media either proffers “health tips” or offers information uncritically as if it descended from a scientific ivory tower, untainted by economic interest.
All of these factors will meet in addressing the widespread contamination of the water supply.
As researchers attempt to get their hands around the problem, standard health science research may prove inadequate. Our current research model developed to target substances patentable as drugs, not to explore the complexity of the human organism and the multiple influences (biochemical, psychological, and spiritual) upon it. Targeting only a single agent (as either cause or treatment) overlooks three factors:
A. Biochemical individuality, which causes people to react differently to various agents.
B. Multi-factorial impacts, in which multiple agents act together synergistically, or in unpredictable ways, beyond the limits of single agent testing to identify.
C. Environmental impacts
If many factors act in synergy to produce harm, testing only one, as we commonly do “proves” nothing. Although each individual drug in our water supply is considered “safe” for use by some people, researching and isolating a single agent tells us nothing about the real health dangers of environmental contamination by multiple agents. We need to reassess the assumption that the earth and its creatures, including us, have infinite capacity to dilute whatever we dump.
“The chemical stress that’s put on any organism is the result of minute stresses of a multitude of chemicals,” says Christopher Daughton, the EPA’s chief of environmental chemistry in a recent article in Chemical and Engineering News on the impact of drugs in water on wildlife, which has resulted in the feminization of certain species of fish, whose males now bear eggs.
It’s the job of health reporting to connect the dots on some of these sad realities, and their attendant risk to human, animal, and global health.
But if instead you next read headlines about a study that refutes any potential health problem from drug contaminated water, don’t forget:
Deniability has a bottom line: the hefty price tags for the clean-up and health harm. Unless well-informed people call for a collective accounting for health risks and impacts, individuals will be forced to dig into their own pockets to cover the damages. Those interested in collective health journalism and action can sign up at: www.health-journalist.com
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Posted by Alison Rose Levy at March 15, 2008 09:00 AM
Comments
1. Posted by
Richard Thomas ∞Φ
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on
March 15, 2008 03:53 PM
I was listening to Obama several weeks ago now; and he said that he is not for disease care. He is for the preventative approach which means he supports universal health in conjunction with the ability to provide health care to the “few” that might need it. This dramatically reduces the cost burden of disease on the US taxpayer and companies paying health insurance.
Basically to US businesses the adoption of disease prevention and orthomolecular remediation results in a $4,000 yearly savings per employee through the reduction of insurance premiums. Which means corporate America actually has one positive plus coming from Obama, a $4,000 per head cost reduction.
But it doesn’t stop there the preventative approach combined with nutritional and biochemical enhancement can result in a 35% increase in corporate productivity and enhanced cognitive capability.
There may actually be a couple more multipliers not even taken into consideration yet producing an even greater percentage gain. This national gain in productivity increases GDP. The equation for creating money is supposed to be LOANS = GDP. Loans “money created” should equal the value produced by the economic constituency in the near term future.
The first nation of citizens to transcend disease will have a leading edge advantage in the world economy and the surge in the evolution of their industries and minds will be like nothing humanity has ever witnessed.
2. Posted by
Richard Thomas ∞Φ
on
March 16, 2008 04:28 PM
Who pays for media? Advertisers. Major media companies are more morally corrupt than any politician. They succeed by either making you feel good, all warm and fuzzy, or by scaring the crap out of you and bond you with others with the fear, but not to the things that you should really be afraid of (actually, on the only level, there is nothing ever to be afraid of).
This story won't get much play. Seen any drug company ads lately? It will only get play when the revenue from the story outweighs the revenue from the drug ads.
But then again, we could always blame the municipalities. That's the spin, which is win win. Some associate producer is working on that right now.
'It's not the drug companies fault' Brian Williams will scream.
In a related story: Notice how Hillary is on all the mag covers this week, just like Obama made all the mags last september when it seemed he was done before he was started. Time to switch back. They got the revenue. They made it kinda to close for comfort (their prospective), and it was one of the greatest manhandlings of the general public since Germany and Japan in the 30's, but you didn't really think they were going to screw over the Clintons all the way, did you?
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Recent Comments
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bobby commented on Don’t Drink the Water: Overcoming Complacency in Health Reporting
Who pays for media? Advertisers. Major media
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Richard Thomas ∞Φ commented on Don’t Drink the Water: Overcoming Complacency in Health Reporting
I was listening to Obama several weeks ago now;
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Richard Thomas ∞Φ commented on Don’t Drink the Water: Overcoming Complacency in Health Reporting
Hi Alison,
I love your intentions. Endi
Hi Alison,
I love your intentions. Ending disease (including genetic disease) is achievable now; it is a matter of awareness and application. I have been running an awareness campaign since the late 80’s when I spent a lot of time calling talk radio shows then in the early 90’s the Internet. I have been taking supplements since I was 14 which would be about 31 years and now the effect is noticeable when comparing to others my age even though I have exposed my body to a lot of toxins and stress.
Since I was 14 I have spent a good amount of time studying human biochemistry one of the first indicators that something was not right was when I saw that livestock were being pumped full of vitamins and humans were being told they do not need them. It is obvious that in animals health supports the profit center. In humans the profit center is built on disease which would explain the difference in recommendations. The other notable difference was between military medicine and civilian medicine. A healthy soldier is very important. The dark side of the medical industrial complex was very apparent when I found out that the pharmaceutical industry had used WWII prisoners for human testing which was part of the reason for the concentration camps. It was a war respectful of and driven by corporate influence and greed, not Hitler. They used Hitler as the scapegoat for horrible atrocities committed against humanity by industry, and still being committed in a more subtle way. People tend to favor fictions, the story and beliefs which they benefit from.
There is a great story to be told and a spectacular revelation to be made and a vast amount of intelligence to disseminate to eliminate the unnecessary cost burden on society, disease and in fact enhance the human biochemical machine.
The success of this endeavor to end disease can be guaranteed if the general population is informed and made aware. The impetus, motivation and vehicle to create this awareness can be the business leaders that benefit from healthy productive employees, and lower health care costs. If they are first educated as to the resulting huge increases in profit resulting from establishing this awareness then we have a powerful agent to assist in achieving universal health.
I am a proponent of universal health, not universal health care, the latter involving only the treating of the symptoms of disease. In the Universal Health plan there remains only a small percentage that might require health care which will be easy to provide to anyone that needs it because the volume will be so small.
Better that we depart this world in the sunshine with a hose in the hand watering our garden than a hose in the nose in some inhospitable room.