The Open Boat

Casualties

"I know my parents are trying to shield us younger ones from realizing the horribleness of what is happening. But I am old enough to see, hear, and for the first time in my life, I saw my mom terrified and crying out of control, as she begged to be allowed to make a phone call. I understood something was terribly wrong with the courts. I heard my neighbor talk about his house being burnt to the ground. I tried to listen when I heard my mom on the phone with state officials, I could understand they were not being helpful. I heard the phone ring at 7:30 in the morning, and listened as my mom talked to the EPA officials. I over heard her talking about an order where if she or my dad talked to media or neighbors about the contamination [of their home with high levels of chlordane and heptachlor] they would go to jail. I heard my mom talking with a researcher, telling her someone with the EPA by the name of Layne said ' I wonder what they spray in jails'. I watched as my mom would make numerous phone calls a day, begging the state officials, the government officials, and environmental groups to help. The majority of time it proved to be useless."

Fourteen-year-old girl poisoned
along with family of eight
[read their story]

When I started investigating the problem of chemical sensitivity years ago, and the fact that it was being ignored and mistreated, I thought it would take a long-term concerted effort to uncover the real root of the problem. Instead, I immediately found errors so blatant, so huge, and so numerous - along with a real criminality in fostering and continuing these errors - that the big challenge has been to grasp the enormity of the problem and organize the information in a way that is comprehensible. Every time I have renewed my efforts, I feel like the actor in the proverbial comedy routine who opens the closet door to clean or find something and the closet is so over-loaded he is covered up with all the boxes and packages tumbling out.

That is how I felt again when I started this section on Casualties - people who have died from chemical sensitivity and others who have been gravely injured. The problem is enormous. Only these are not boxes and packages, they are not facts tumbling out, they are real people. People who laughed and had dreams and loved other people, felt joy when the sun shone on their faces and maybe accomplished some important things. And every one of the stories represents about as much human suffering for the victim and their loved ones that one can find in our civilized society.

"The trouble is, there's no practical way to know–before a potentially devastating reaction–just who's in this vulnerable group."

U. S. News and World Report on Dursban
Business & Technology Section - 11/8/99
[read article]

The number of victims is incredible considering the lack of media attention given to the problem and the devastation that it causes. I have highlighted Cindy Duehring on this page and Holy Cross Football Coach Dan Allen, but they are only two of tens-of-thousands, perhaps millions. And every single victim is essentially disposed of separately under the auspices of the conventional medical community.

If you are feeling strong, or if you are one of the health-care providers I have directed to this website, please look at these links:

Deaths from pesticide poisoning.
547 Men, Women and Children will Die today from Pesticide Poisoning

and here:

Injury and Disability from pesticide poisoning.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 25 million people are poisoned by pesticide, worldwide, every year.

And the people featured in the stories in the above links are only a small informally documented portion of the victims.

No one will ever know the true numbers, because pesticide poisoning is not a reportable medical or health event. There is no pesticide illness reporting or education legislation in any state and the federal government does not collect this information and is not expected to take on this function. [read]

The public may think that physicians are proactive about health risks to the general public but they are not. As a group they are completely passive and function only as directed by the establishment. Currently, chemical / pharmaceutical concerns hold the strings in the establishment. Any physician with a real sense of motivation and concern about people's health in our society, who speaks out, is quickly branded as a maverick by the controlling interests. [read]

Victims of chemical injury are kept from the attention of the public by a concerted effort at cover-up in the media.

When the problem does come to light in the media - the victims are painted as 'unworthy'. The coverage of the chemically sensitive in the press is a classic example of the propaganda model that Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky describe in the book Manufacturing Consent:

                The Propaganda Model

"Worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.

Meanwhile, ...we would anticipate outcries that ...the unworthy are treated with excessive and uncritical generosity."

Manufacturing Consent
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
[See Media Section]

This allows for the continuation of public relation fictions by the chemical / pharmaceutical industry. The most insidious fiction which is continually presented to the public is:

There is no evidence of human harm from exposure to (our compound).

Industry routinely claims that synthetic chemicals are safe because there are no reports or evidence of human harm.

This claim is both wrong and misleading. .....there are basically no studies at all.

This information void is the deliberate result of a well-orchestrated chemical industry plan that goes back at least 50 years. The centerpiece of the plan was to escape regulation by making sure that Congress passed no laws that would ever require the chemical industry to perform health and safety testing for the compounds it produces. This campaign was a complete success.

From Chemical Industry Archives
Fiction #2 [read complete]

First [they] came for the **communists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up, because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me... and by that time, there was no one to speak up for anyone.

Martin Niemoeller, Pastor,
German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church

[**The first people disposed of in Nazi Germany were people with tuberculosis]