- Congressional Democrats accused the US government environment
body yesterday of opening the door to tests of pesticides on humans that
"appear to routinely violate ethical standards".
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- The Democrats issued a report saying that, since lifting
a moratorium on human testing imposed by the Clinton administration, the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had accepted for review more than
20 studies on the effects on human subjects of "highly hazardous"
poisons and suspected carcinogens.
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- Critics said that by showing its willingness to look
at such studies, the EPA was encouraging pesticide manufacturers to sponsor
more human tests.
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- "We anticipate that these tests are going on now
all over the world, but there's no way of knowing [because the EPA has
not required notification]," said Erik Olson, a lawyer for the National
Resources Defence Council. "We're calling it the wild west. The companies
are doing what they will without clear legal restrictions. That's a recipe
for disaster when the federal government is encouraging them to go ahead
by accepting these tests."
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- Eleven of the studies mentioned in the report were carried
out in Britain, mostly in Edinburgh, in the 1990s. It was unclear last
night whether such studies were still under way.
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- The congressional report was sponsored by Barbara Boxer,
a California senator, and Henry Waxman, a congressman from the same state.
They said it had uncovered "significant and widespread deficiencies"
in 22 human pesticide experiments it reviewed.
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- "In violation of ethical standards, the experiments
appear to have inflicted harm on human subjects, failed to obtain informed
consent, dismissed adverse outcomes and lacked scientific validity,"
the report found. "In many of the experiments, the subjects were instructed
to swallow capsules of toxic pesticides with orange juice or water at breakfast."
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- The "informed consent" forms were often loaded
with jargon, hard to understand or deliberately misleading about potential
health risks. Some studies dismissed unfavourable results. In one test,
all eight subjects became sick after exposure to a pesticide, but in the
report their symptoms were discounted and attributed to "viral illness".
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- Eryn Witcher, the EPA's press secretary issued a statement
last night saying: "The agency values the importance of the scientific
and ethical issues surrounding human studies, which is why the agency is
expediting the process to issue its first-ever regulation on third-party
studies."
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- Critics fear that EPA approval of the human tests could
lead to a relaxation of US standards.
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- The EPA has yet to approve any of the human studies submitted
to it, but its critics argue that simply by showing readiness to assess
the tests in a formal announcement in February, the agency was giving manufacturers
a green light.
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- Lynn Goldman, an EPA assistant administrator under the
Clinton administration, said: "Once you open the door, saying we're
going to look at these studies, it will encourage companies to start testing
again, whether it is in the UK or wherever they can get it down.
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- "They could be doing it in Pakistan or Bangladesh
or anywhere in the world."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2005
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1508654,00.html
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