You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February, 2007.
As long as the U.S. system has employers bearing the brunt of soaring health insurance costs (or avoiding them by not offering coverage at all), workers, companies, and even charities will be trying out different approaches to affording healthcare. Here are a few approaches that have made the news recently:
There were a few stories in the news this week related to items from previous Occupational Health News Roundups:
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By David Michaels
This is how it always works. A leading medical journal publishes a study saying a commercial product may be dangerous, perhaps even killing people. The trade association representing the manufacturers quickly attacks the study (preferably in the same news cycle), accusing the scientists of incompetence or worse.
The latest issue of the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) includes a study that links that use of antioxidants (beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E) with increased mortality. The issue was published today. Yesterday, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the diet supplement industry’s trade association, issued a scathing press release, calling the study “muddled” and based on an “unsound scientific approach.”
The press release worked. The press coverage of the JAMA article included the trade association’s disparaging comments. The Washington Post quotes the Council for Responsible Nutrition’s Andrew Shao: “The message to the average consumer is: Don’t pay attention to this. This doesn’t apply to you.”
By Liz Borkowski
Last week, the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP) held a panel discussion on the FDA featuring four former FDA Commissioners. While all of the panelists made a point of saying that there are a lot of wonderful people working at the FDA, they also acknowledged that the agency has some serious issues that must be addressed.
David Kessler, MD (FDA Commissioner from 1990 – 1997) remarked that being at the event was “in some ways very bittersweet.” He reflected:
Mike Hendricks from the Kansas City Star notes in a recent article that all-too-often, trench collapses happen when “work crews take shortcuts because they’re in a hurry or think a trench box interferes with the job they’re doing.”
While it may be true that workers are “cutting corners” to finish the job they are assigned to do, blaming the workers ignores the 800 pound gorilla in the room.
Read the rest of this entry »
The House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by George Miller (D-CA), issued a progress report on MSHA’s implementation of the MINER Act of 2006. The report says implementation by the agency and mining industry of certain provisions of the new law are “proceeding too slowly,” including inadequate application of underground communication and tracking devices. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blog “The Gavel” quickly linked to the report and provides some politico-historical context. For me, the most promising aspect of the report is the Committee and staff’s appreciation for the multitude of other health and safety hazards faced by miners, not just those associated with the tragic disasters in January 2006 at the Sago and Alma mines. Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The handcuffs President Bush recently imposed on regulatory agencies continue to be the focus of public attention. (We’ve compiled a listing of posts on the Executive Order and its nefarious implications). Members of Congress, along with public health and environmental advocates, are now considering legislative approaches to overturning these new requirements.
Media attention is criticial for building political will to address this issue. Robert Pear’s New York Times piece (subscription-only access) drew attention to the Executive Order’s implications, and a now we’re beginning to see articles that examine the specific kinds of agency activities likely to suffer.
This week, two Senate Committees will focus attention on worker safety and health topics. On Wednesday, February 28, Senator Tom Harkin’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS and Education will receive testimony on “Improving Mine Safety: One Year after Sago and Alma.” On Thursday, March 1, Senator Patty Murray’s Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Asbestos: Still Lethal, Still Legal: The Need to Better Protect the Health of American Workers and Their Families.”
Dr. Tony Robbins recent response to my draft on OSHA at 35 makes the important point that economic developments are often more powerful than public health initiatives as determinants of environmental and occupational illness. I agree with his thought that predictive models of exposure might facilitate anticipatory public health strategies rather than our more typical efforts to catch up after the fact. It is with this in mind that we need to focus on forward looking ideas rather than dwelling on the frustration that comes from a close look at worker protection in the OSHA years. Here are three. Read the rest of this entry »
Christopher Thomas needed to make some extra money. The 51-year old welder—also a husband and father of two—had begun work in the GMD Shipyard in Brooklyn Navy Yard about a week before. It was mid-morning on a Saturday—his day off—but Thomas had come into work anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
Pharmaceuticals seem to be a big topic in the blogosphere this week. Roy M. Poses MD at Health Care Renewal has more on the Zyprexa memos – which, if you haven’t been following this issue, reportedly show that manufacturer Eli Lilly suppressed information about this schizophrenia drug’s harmful side effects. Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata reports on the perils of buying drugs online (and, in a post from last week, he worries about the number of people Googling DCA), and Orac at Respectful Insolence delves into the topic of experimental drug availability.
As has been the trend recently, there are also lots of interesting posts related to climate change. Gar Lipow at Gristmill examines emission trading’s mixed record; Juliane Fry at RealClimate explains the least understood component of the climate system; Joel Makower at Two Steps Forward recaps the many steps taken around climate change over the past 50 days; and Tim Lambert at Deltoid fact-checks a Wall Street Journal op-ed on global warming and DDT.
In other news …
By David Michaels
In the issue of Science Magazine on your virtual newsstand today, Don Kennedy has written a powerful editorial entitled “Science, Information, and Power.” (sub required) Dr. Kennedy observes that the confrontation between Congress and the White House over the production and control of science used in regulation is about an issue fundamental to both science and democracy – the president’s claims to exclusive power over knowledge.
Drawing as examples the House Oversight Committee’s hearings on politicization of federal science, along with the recent changes President Bush made in the Executive Order on the workings of regulatory agencies (see here and here and here), Dr. Kennedy writes that the dispute
is about more than whether politics can trump science. At its core, it is a struggle for authority between a presidency wanting control over information so that the public will accept its version of reality, and a Congress insistent on its responsibility to find facts needed to shape national policy.
MSHA’s Assistant Secretary Richard Stickler revealed yesterday the agency’s new procedures for determining whether a work-related death “is to be counted as a reportable death in MSHA’s official statistics.” In my post “Counting (or Not) of Workers’ Deaths,” I pushed Mr. Stickler to share the results of his review of MSHA’s fatality accounting system. After reading the new policy, I’m having one of those “be careful what you wish for” reactions. Read the rest of this entry »
The state of Kentucky has been in the spotlight lately as legislation to protect social workers and mineworkers has failed to live up expectations. The state’s House of Representatives stripped funding from the Boni Bill, named after social worker Boni Frederick, who was killed when she took a child to a final home visit with his mother. The bill’s sponsors hope funding will be restored in conference committee. In the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, Representative Jim Gooch has refused to bring a mine safety bill up for a vote; a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial notes that “Mr. Gooch is in the coal business, building heavy mining equipment.”
The explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery, which killed 15 workers and injured nearly 200 more, is back in the news. (Check Jordan Barab’s Confined Space for more on the disaster.) A Texas appellate court has now ruled that BP chief executive John Browne must testify in a case brought by workers injured in the explosion. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that BP’s internal review into the deadly blast calls for four executives to be fired.
In other recent occupational health news:
By David Michaels
Sometimes reviewing records of past exposures to toxic materials can be pretty dangerous itself. AP carried the story:
Records buried in a landfill used for radioactive waste may be dug up to determine whether cancer-stricken workers from a defunct nuclear-weapons plant qualify for compensation, a federal official said.
At least a dozen pallets of cardboard boxes, six 55-gallon drums and 11 safes containing classified records from the Mound weapons plant in Miamisburg, Ohio, were buried in underground shafts of the landfill at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in 2005.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course. From 1998-2001, I served as Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health for the US Department of Energy (DOE). Following reports that plutonium contamination had been covered up at the uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky, I sent teams of investigators to all the enrichment plants to look at past safety and health practices. At the Paducah facility, the investigators had to don radiation protection suits to pull records out of contaminated barrels. Read the rest of this entry »
The Washington Monthly’s February issue features “Shafted” by Ken Ward, Jr., an article critiquing the Bush Administration’s mine safety policies. The Charleston Gazette reporter provides some interesting historical mine safety facts, such as the 1891 federal law prohibiting the employment of workers younger than age 12, and offers something new when he juxtaposes the Clinton-era versus Bush-era policies. Read the rest of this entry »
By Anthony Robbins
It has been many years, 26 in fact, since I left NIOSH, victim of the Reagan landslide of 1980. It is fair to say that I have spent little time engaged in worker health issues since then. Yet Michael Silverstein’s future oriented document offered surprisingly few new or unexpected insights as it forcefully argued for a better and more effective OSHA. His passion is admirable.
Perhaps I should not have been surprised to read about old hazards, old strategies, and old indictments of those in power. It has always been thus. For a view of worker health and environmental health issues that puts today’s challenges in historical perspective, I strongly urge readers to take up Paul Blanc’s new book, How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace. It reminds us that most of the problems we see in workplaces and the environment in the 21st century have their roots hundreds or even thousands of years back.
By David Michaels
How did the Congress pass legislation that not only cut EPA out of chemical plant safety, but also ensured that the job would be given to the Department of Homeland Security, which has neither the authority nor the commitment to do it right?
The job was done by Philip Perry, general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who is married to Vice President Cheney’s daughter Elizabeth. The sordid details are Art Levine’s new article in the Washington Monthly, “Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-in-Law.”
By David Michaels
The changes President Bush made last month to Executive Order 13422, requiring, among other things, that certain agency guidance documents be reviewed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), within the Office of Management and Budget, has caused a great deal of consternation in the public health community. (We’ve written about it here and here and here.)
Fortunately, the new congress has begun to examine the potential impact of the changes in the regulatory process. Earlier this week, the House Science and Judiciary Committees held back to back hearings on the changes, and heard extensive testimony on the ways these changes will negatively impact public health and environmental protections. We’ll be writing more about the Executive Order soon, but in the meantime, read non-partisan Congressional Research Service’s report to Congress “Changes to the OMB Regulatory Review Process by Executive Order 13422.” The report was thoughtfully posted by the Federation of American Scientists.
By Dick Clapp
This week, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued preliminary health-based guidance to local water companies on levels of perflurooctanoic acid (PFOA) in drinking water (PDF). Based on current knowledge of cancer and non-cancer effects of this chemical, they recommended a limit of 0.04 parts per billion, and they say this will be re-evaluated as additional data becomes available. This is the latest in what will be an on-going process of research and regulation of this ubiquitous and persistent bioaccumulative toxin. The saga that has been unfolding is summarized in a PFOA case study on the SKAPP website, and a series of health studies are underway in Parkersburg, West Virginia, that will be reported over the next two years.
Matt Madia at Reg Watch and Ian Hart at Integrity of Science report on the two House hearings held last week on how the new executive order will affect regulatory agencies. (See our take on the Science & Technology Committee’s hearing here.)
In climate change blogging, Jim Hoggan at DeSmogBlog is critical of Canada’s climate policy, but applauds a new policy statement from British Columbia; Matthew C. Nisbet at Framing Science has some advice on framing the issue; and Gavin at Real Climate invokes the popular TV show CSI to explain how paleo-climate research fits into our understanding of current changes.
Elsewhere in the blogosphere …
By David Michaels
Here at the Pump Handle, we’ve been trying to follow up some of the issues that Confined Space covered better than anyone else. One of these is chemical plant security. Many chemical plants are filled with explosive or toxic substances, making them appealing targets for terrorists. Congress considered bills to force chemical companies to take meaningful protective measures, but, as Confined Space readers will remember (see here and here for a refresher), these efforts were blocked by the now-deposed Republican leadership of the House and Senate. Instead, a rider giving the chemical industry a pass on most substantive requirements was slipped into a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill. The EPA was cut out of the picture.
DHS has now started its work and folks who live near chemical plants can rest easy. According to spokesperson Russ Knocke (quoted in a terrific article by Bill Walsh in the New Orleans Times-Picayune), DHS has decided not to require “inherently safer technology” because it doesn’t want to tell chemical companies how to operate. Seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
Since today is Valentine’s Day, it’s worth remembering the conditions that floral workers have to deal with. The Associated Press reports on the Colombian flower industry, where workers are exposed to heavy doses of pesticides, and current efforts to reduce those hazards.
In other recent occupational health news:
by Susan F. Wood
Yesterday’s hearing (Feb 13, 2007) before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee was amazing in several ways. What struck me was the willingness of senior FDA physician-scientists (who have recently left FDA) to speak publicly about their concerns about the ignoring of safety and efficacy data quality when there is an apparent push for approval. The specific product they were talking about is Ketek, an antibiotic that has had much written about it including on the Pumphandle. The specific issues identified have to to with the use of non-inferiority studies to assess efficacy, significant safety concerns being overlooked when Ketek was approved for conditions such as sinusitus, and the reality of serious fraud during the safety trials that was not revealed to the advisory committee. Read the rest of this entry »
The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports that the State of West Virginia has added another worker’s name to the list of 2006 workplace fatality victims. In the State’s coal mining industry alone, 25 workers lost their lives last year. Read the rest of this entry »
By Liz Borkowski
Earlier today, the House of Respresentatives Committee on Science and Technology held a hearing on President Bush’s amendements to Executive Order 12866, and three of the witnesses painted a dismal picture of regulation under these new rules. (The fourth, William Kovacs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, suggested that small businesses are drowning under regulations and the new requirements are needed to stem the tide.) David Michaels and Celeste Monforton have also written here about why this new order is problematic.
Bush’s amended executive order is the latest version of an EO that President Reagan first issued and President Clinton amended. It’s controversial because it gives the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which is part of the executive branch, additional authority over activities of regulatory agencies, including the EPA, FDA, OSHA, and USDA. It also creates new requirements for the agencies – including an analysis of “market failures” – and subjects more of their work to these requirements. The witnesses at today’s hearings emphasized that the overall effect of the EO would be to make it extremely difficult for already overstretched agencies to do their jobs.
Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” - Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1914)
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Lisa B. Jackson, Commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has just issued a tough new standard for removing chromium 6 (a powerful lung carcinogen) from soil.
Three years ago, the same newspaper’s Alexander Lane wrote a series of articles (reprinted here and here) reporting how chromium companies Maxus Energy (formerly Diamond Shamrock), Honeywell (which took over Allied Chemical) and PPG Industries left massive soil contamination in Jersey City and Bayonne and then hired product defense consultants to convince the state government that chromium 6 was simply not so dangerous.
By Celeste Monforton
Last month, David Michaels wrote about a newly amended executive order from President Bush that gives the executive branch (through the Office of Management & Budget) more control over the work of federal agencies. This order seems designed to constrain the regulatory activities of federal agencies like EPA, FDA, and OSHA in fulfilling their Congressionally mandated duties – protecting us from hazards in our air, food, and workplaces. It places additional burdens on agencies attempting to issue new regulations or guidance, and it gives the OMB more authority over the agencies’ rulemaking. (For more details, see OMB Watch’s analysis.)
Members of Congress also seem to be concerned about this move to place more regulatory power with the executive branch. Tomorrow, the House Committee on Science & Technology will hold a hearing entitled “Amending Executive Order 12866: Good Governance or Regulatory Usurpation?“
The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled today in favor of the United Steelworkers and MSHA in their efforts to protect underground miners from diesel particulate matter (DPM). The mining industry plaintiffs have claimed for years that MSHA’s 2001 DPM health standard was neither scientifically valid nor feasible, but the three-judge panel denied the firms’ request to review MSHA’s rule. In a decision written by Judge David B. Sentelle, the court said “we can find nothing in the administrative record that would justify second-guessing the agency’s conclusions.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO) announced today that deceased Montana miner Les Skramstad has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Alan Reinstein Memorial Award in honor of his “unwavering commitment to justice and asbestos disease awareness.” In spite of his own lengthy battle with asbestosis and mesothelioma, Les remained a true hero– devoted to protecting others from the hazards of asbestos.
Read more about his life and journey here.
In addition to writing about the IPCC report itself, bloggers are dissecting the media and public responses to it. RealClimate wonders why the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board still has its head buried in the sand; Matthew C. Nisbet at Framing Science thought the report should have made more of a splash than it did; and David Roberts at Gristmill notes that there were some good print stories about the report, but public engagement on the issue is lacking.
Meanwhile, the US Congress is still holding hearings about political interference into the work of U.S. government scientists. Ian Hart at Integrity of Science highlights the testimony of Dr. Peter Gleick at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s hearing on Climate Change Research and Science Integrity; Gleick pronounced misuse of science and attacks on scientists to be pervasive and recommended several changes. Chris Mooney at The Intersection has some comments on that hearing, too, and also on the House Science and Technology Hearing on the IPCC report.
On other topics … Read the rest of this entry »
by Susan F. Wood, PhD
On Wednesday Feb 21 at 3:00, the project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy at GWU School of Public Health and Health Services is hosting what hopefully will be a very exciting afternoon. Former Commissioners of the FDA will gather to discuss the future of FDA, bringing their experience and priorities together for an unscripted public conversation. FDA faces many challenges - some new, some old - but we need new ideas to help shape the upcoming legislative proposals that Congress will be taking up this year. Hearing from several former commissioners, including David Kessler, Jane Henney, Don Kennedy, Frank Young and hopefully Mark McClellan will bring focus to the critical functioning of FDA.
This ”Conversation with FDA Commissioners” is open to the public and the press and will be webcast the next day on Kaisernetwork.org. It will be held from 3:00-5:00 on Wednesday, Feb. 21 at the Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21st St. NW, Washington, DC 20052. If you would like to attend rsvp to Janet at eohjip@gwumc.edu .
The following day, an invitation only workshop of former FDA leaders, scientists, and legal experts will gather to discuss issues of how to improve the use of science at the FDA, the impact of resources, and independance.
With PDUFA reauthorization just around the corner, new but limited initiatives underway on drug safety, ongoing problems with food safety, and a host of other FDA issues, now is the time to get new ideas on the table. (Background on this issues is available on SKAPP’s website.) Hopefully these efforts will add to the conversation.
Susan Wood is Research Professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, where she is part of the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy (SKAPP).
By David A. Sonnenfeld
It is rare that public health professionals, labor advocates, community activists, and university scholars come together at one place and time to discuss the past, present, and future of health and environmental challenges of a major industrial sector. It is even rarer that we manage to sustain a years-long collaboration in analyzing, documenting, and discussing such challenges, resulting in the publication of a peer-reviewed handbook for workers and advocates focused on that sector. Yet that is exactly what has been accomplished with last year’s publication of Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006).
Facing growing public concern about global warming, the US Chamber of Commerce is setting up another yet front group to oppose regulations that will limit greenhouse gases. The Chamber has tentatively named the new group the Institute for Energy Security, Competitiveness and American Jobs. It will be bankrolled by oil companies, electric utilities and automakers, who are expected to pony up about $20 million, according to Jeffrey Birnbaum of the Washington Post. It makes perfect sense, of course. General Motors, Ford, ExxonMobil, and the other corporations that sell products to the public do not want to be labeled as promoters of global warming, but they want to protect their own parochial interests over all else, no matter what the consequences.
By Joel Tickner
The European Union (EU) recently issued new regulations requiring chemical firms to develop health and environmental data on chemicals used to make everyday products and provide reasonable assurances of safety. What a novel concept. The sad truth is that it is. Despite the fact that most public surveys find that people believe (and expect) industrial chemicals are regulated like drugs (governments would never allow companies to place a dangerous, untested chemical into their products, would they?), most government toxics policies, do not follow this expectation. Until now, that is…
When workers are exposed to hazardous substances on the job, it can take years for symptoms to appear – and even longer to fight for treatment and compensation (a fight that many workers lose). Recently, news stories have highlighted workers from Ground Zero and from nuclear weapons facilities who are struggling to get help with health problems ranging from respiratory illnesses to cancer.
By David Michaels
The Bush Administration has been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to pass legislation rolling back public health and environmental protection, even when both the Senate and the House were controlled by Republicans. Some notable examples: attempts to gut the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act failed miserably.
With the Democrats in control of Congress, and less then two years left in office, the Bush Administration has evidently decided to end run Congress and use executive power to handcuff the public health and environmental agencies. That’s not just my opinion. It’s the prediction of Fred Barnes, editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, according to Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes blog at the Washington Post.
In continuation of the tradition begun at Jordan Barab’s Confined Space blog, Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 64 workplace deaths, including the following:
- Janez Case, a 51-year-old EMT who died when the ambulance she was riding in crashed on an icy road in Clayton, Oklahoma.
- Raymond Fenoff, a 38-year-old construction worker from Douglas, Massachusetts, who died when scaffolding collapsed and he fell at least 10 feet.
- Ron Emerick, a 29-year-old bouncer at a Hollywood club, was fatally shot after an argument outside the club.
Read the full descriptions of these and other workplace deaths here. It’s an excellent reminder of how much work we still have to do on occupational health and safety.
By Dick Clapp
Late last month, there was a series of news stories about the drop in cancer deaths reported in 2004 as compared to 2003. The Washington Post story ran under the headline “Cancer Deaths Decline for Second Straight Year,” and the New York Times headline read “Second Drop in Cancer Deaths Could Point to a Trend, Researchers Say.” President George W. Bush was quoted as saying “This drop was the steepest ever recorded. . . Progress is being made.” What he did not say was that a drop in cancer deaths has been recorded in only two years since the data have been collected – and this drop was greater than the one the previous year, 2003 compared to 2002. Both stories noted that the decline was small in absolute numbers (3,014 fewer deaths due to cancer in 2004 compared to 2003), but neither pointed out that cancer incidence has been either slightly increasing (females) or flat (males) in the past decade.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the policymakers’ summary of its 2007 report today, and it was at once a momentous occasion and nothing new. Nothing new, that is, to the people who’ve been following the science for the past few decades and had already figured out that humans are causing global warming and are going to suffer for our folly.
IPCC reports have tremendous authority, because they represent the work of the world’s leading scientists conducting the most comprehensive review of scientific research produced on climate change. Now, they’ve said that they are 90% sure that humans are causing climate change – up from being 66% sure in their 2001 report.
Read the rest of this entry »
By David Michaels
The Guardian newspaper reports that The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the think tank/public relations firm, has offered scientists and economists $10,000 to undermine the report on global warming issued today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the report, AEI “offered the payments for articles that emphasize the shortcomings” of the IPCC report.
The offers were made in anticipation of the report, which was released today. In its letters, AEI asserted that the IPCC was “resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work.” So, without reading the report, AEI commissioned rebuttals. Read the rest of this entry »
In addition to the blogging related to the IPCC (which will be getting its own post), this past week saw lots of discussion on the issue of open-access science journals, following the news that a group of big publishers opposed to open access had hired “the pit bull of public relations,” Eric Dezenhall. Andrew Leonard at How the World Works critiques Dezenhall; Revere at Effect Measure and Mike Dunford at the Questionable Authority (also here) take critical looks at the big publishers’ arguments; and Jackie at Element List has compiled links and descriptions for open-access journals.
On other topics …
Friday, February 2, 2007 (3:30 AM EST): Tune in to listen to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) webcast announcing the Working Group I’s approval of their Fourth Asssessment Report. There’s no doubt the global warming naysayers will critique the IPCC’s report with gusto. But, as Naomi Oreskes writes in “Undeniable Global Warming” in today’s Washington Post ”the chatter of skeptics is distracting us from the real issue: how best to respond to the threats that global warming presents.” Read the rest of this entry »
Congressman George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee says the Secretary of Labor has some explaining to do. Miller asserts that essential provisions of the MINER Act,* signed into law in June 2006 under the watchful and tear-filled eyes of Sago families, have not been implemented promptly or evenly. Read the rest of this entry »
By Liz Borkowski
Last week, Revere at Effect Measure used extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) as an example of why the world needs a resilient and robust public health infrastructure (and just a few days later, an article on an XDR outbreak in South Africa made it to the New York Times’ list of the 10 most e-mailed articles). Earlier this month, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article in Foreign Affairs (subscription only) in which she listed TB as one of the diseases that’s been getting more money and attention recently – and warned that new resources might not improve health if infrastructure isn’t strengthened.
