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." *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html