Previous posts detailed this study as being highly unethical. Households of
babies under
3 months and from 6-12 months were being recruited if they routinely used
pesticides. No thought as to how children and babies, even their parents,
were at risk of neurological or immune system impairment or their family's
foodstuffs contaminated. I did not include the politics at the end of the
article. Comments by the Environmental Working Group:
http://www.ewg.org/issues/humantesting/20041029/statement_20050408.php
Judy Ritchie
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/politics/09pesticides.html?th&emc=th
April 9, 2005
E.P.A. Halts Florida Test on Pesticides
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
ASHINGTON, April 8 - Stephen L. Johnson, the acting administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, said on Friday that he was canceling a
study of the effects of pesticides on infants and babies, a day after two
Democratic senators said they would block his confirmation if the research
continued.
Rich Hood, a spokesman for the agency, acknowledged that Mr. Johnson had
canceled the test because of the objections to his confirmation. "They are
pretty juxtaposed in time, aren't they?" Mr. Hood said. "There is clearly a
connection."
But Mr. Hood said the opposition was not the only reason for the
cancellation.
"Mr. Johnson said in a meeting this morning that, his confirmation aside, he
had come to pose serious questions as to whether or not this study was the
appropriate thing to do," he said.
A recruiting flier for the program, called the Children's Environmental
Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib
and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides
if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for
participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3
months old or 9 to 12 months old, and "spraying pesticides inside your home
routinely."
The study was being paid for in part by the American Chemistry Council, a
trade group that includes pesticide makers.
In an interview on Friday, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, one of two
Democrats who said they would block the confirmation, said the study
amounted to "using infants in my state as guinea pigs."
Mr. Nelson said the study sought to recruit subjects in a poor neighborhood
by offering parents compensation for practices potentially dangerous to
their children.
"If you knew smoking caused cancer," he said, "would you want to have a
study that said, 'Don't do anything, just keep smoking like you are smoking
and we are going to pay you and give you a camcorder so that you can record
all this'? "
Financing from the American Chemistry Council added a dangerous potential
conflict of interest, Mr. Nelson said.
In a statement explaining the cancellation, Mr. Johnson said he first halted
the study last fall "in light of questions about the study design" to
conduct an independent review.
But he attributed the cancellation mainly to mischaracterizations of the
study. Some Democratic critics have portrayed it as deliberately spraying
infants with pesticides.
"E.P.A. senior scientists have briefed me on the impact these
misrepresentations have had on the ability to proceed with the study," Mr.
Johnson said. "E.P.A. must conduct quality, credible research in an
atmosphere absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy."
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