Other Examples of Controversy
With a seed grant of $25,000 from Alar’s manufacturer, Uniroyal (plus annual donations of roughly $600,000 from the likes of Exxon, Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Mills, and other chemical corporations),2 ACSH got onto the Alar case like a bulldog in 1989 and hasn’t let go since. More than any other organization, Whelan’s ACSH created the false mythology of the “Alar scare.” It was Whelan who coined the phrase “Alar hoax.” If it is true that Beth Whelan almost singlehandedly created the false myth of the “Alar scare,” it is also true that the “Alar scare” created Beth Whelan: “It was the great Alar scare of 1989 that boosted Whelan into the media stratosphere,”3 says Howard Kurtz writing in the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW.
Because she has a sharp tongue and isn’t constrained by the facts, Whelan is very quotable, and the press loves to quote her. For example, she’ll tell you that the National Cancer Institute and the American Medical Association have both “gone on record saying that the use of Alar on apples never posed any risk to the health of either children or adults.”4 Unfortunately, Whelan’s claim is completely false. Neither organization has ever taken an official position on Alar. Whelan made it up. But it sounds convincing, and this audacious style gets her onto the talk shows and into the newspapers where she spins out her false myths, her Libertarian revisions of recent history, and her “humans are special” defense of the chemical industry. It was Whelan who coined the phrase, “Mice are not little men,” meaning chemicals that cause cancer in mere mice should not be of special concern to humans.
To the press, Whelan’s consistent line is that “a virtual consensus” has emerged among scientists that Alar was never a threat to public health.5 However, Whelan has to play fast and loose with the facts to create the appearance of such a “consensus.” In February, 1992, Whelan prepared a memo called “Confidential update on Alar, 3rd year anniversary, quest to interest ’60 Minutes’ in an update.”5 The memo describes Whelan’s efforts to gather statements from the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that Alar was not a problem. When she couldn’t get such statements, she expressed dismay in her memo, “So many professional organizations, including the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society flatly refused to say that the food supply was safe, that pesticide residues in food were not a cause of cancer, that Alar did not pose a risk. … All of this only serves to make consumers worry more. Indeed the original statements we got from NCI and the current statements from ACS play right into the hands of those who seek to convince us that the American food supply is not safe because of the presence of pesticide residues,” Whelan wrote.6
Nevertheless, at her press conference Whelan asserted again that there is a consensus among the world’s scientific experts that Alar is safe for children to eat. And the press repeats these fabrications, thus establishing the enduring false myth of the “Alar scare.”
The philosophy that underpins the false myth of the “Alar scare” seems to be this: Lies that shore up a disintegrating humanist culture are justified. Or perhaps it is much simpler than that: Lies that boost the chemical industry’s bottom line are justified.
WaPo 2010: McCaughey and Death Panels
The Washington Post identified ACSH as “an industry-friendly group whose board member Betsy McCaughey helped set off the “death panels” frenzy” in the 2009 health care reform debate.[7]
The misleading claim that the Affordable Care Act established procedures for doctors to serve on death panels spread widely even though it was thoroughly discredited.[8] The claim also shifted focus away from the way in which many for-profit health insurance companies routinely deny coverage for potentially life-saving medicine or procedures, based on fine print in policies and internal insurance company panels about the expense of a particular course of treatment and the chances the person will get better.[9]
Hypocritical Attack on Dr. Mehmet Oz Over Conflicts of Interest
In April 2015, a group of doctors published a letter calling on Columbia University to remove Dr. Mehmet Oz from the faculty of its College of Physicians and Surgeons, accusing Oz of “disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine,” “baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” and “an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”[10]
Signers on the letter include Gilbert Ross, Acting President and Executive Director of ASCH, and Henry I. Miller, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution (a right-wing think tank physically located on the campus of Stanford University) and a former ASCH board member who was the leading spokesperson in election ads opposing GMO labeling in California (an ad campaign funded through millions of dollars from corporations that manufacture or use GMO products) and helped found a tobacco industry front group, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.[11]
Dr. Oz has denounced this as a smear campaign.
Dr. Oz has his own TV show on NBC, “The Dr. Oz Show,” after becoming a prominent media figure through a series of appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Through that platform, he has repeatedly maintained that the public has a right to know what is in their food and has supported the idea of labeling GMO foods. Other countries have stronger rules than the United States does on GMO products, and many people have raised concerns about some of the GMO products that have been created, particularly products created by Monsanto, an extremely controversial manufacturer.
Dr. Oz was accused of using his show to promote dubious health products in 2014, including facing criticism from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) during a 2014 U.S. Senate hearing examining diet-product ads.[12] McCaskill has received numerous campaign donations from Monsanto employees; Monsanto is located in St. Louis.[13]
ACSH’s Ross said in TV comments criticizing Oz, “I don’t how much of this he actually has a financial interest in, but I would suspect it’s quite a bit.”[12]
That interview with ACSH made no mention of its funding from corporate sources that profit from the products and industries ACSH defends, however,[12] such as GMO crops, fracking, and e-cigarettes (see Funding below for more information).
Nor did the news show mention Ross’ prior involvement in a scheme that defrauded New York’s Medicaid system of $8 million. (Ross lost his medical license in 1995 and received a prison sentence of 46 months, serving 23 months.)[4]
CMD Outlined ACSH Tactics in “Panic Attack”
CMD first described ACSH in its 1994 book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You, about how the corporate PR industry and corporate front groups try to persuade the public to ignore health concerns about corporate products and practices. ACSH is one of the groups discussed in that book by CMD founder John Stauber.
CMD profiled ACSH again in 1998, noting that although ACSH styles itself as a “scientific” organization, it does not carry out any independent primary research. Instead, it specializes in generating media advisories that criticize or praise scientists depending on whether they agree with ACSH’s views. It has mastered the modern media sound byte, issuing a regular stream of news releases with catchy, quotable phrases responding to hot-button environmental issues. To read more, see the page Panic Attack: ACSH Fears Nothing but Fear Itself.
Since then, CMD has written numerous stories about ACSH’s industry ties, including an expose in 2012 about how ACSH was identified by Syngenta as a vehicle for pushing back about concerns about the weedkiller atrazine. Syngenta has funded ACSH (see below). More information about ACSH and Atrazine is available at CMD’s AtrazineExposed.org website.
Sources:
- http://www.truthwiki.org/The_American_Council_on_Science_and_Health/
- https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Council_on_Science_and_Health
