In my book M’TK Sewer Rat, one of the events that drives the action is a purge. Obeying the emperor’s order, the army came through the city and burned a whole borough. At other times in my back story, the oligarchs ordered their private armies to kill whole villages or all of another family.
Of course we don’t have purges here in the US. We never… well there was that whole business with the native population. However, we don’t have modern day purges.
I wonder. I wonder what goes on in the boardrooms of Dow, Dupont, Bayer, Koch Industries, or Monsanto. Have they ever had a conversation, “Sir, we discontinued the experiment because all the baby rats died, or we’ve reviewed the study behind the claims and it is sound.” Then, someone makes the decision to continue to produce their product saying, “The world has too many people anyway, we won’t discontinue this product until we are forced to.”
Now, if I had not been involved in the research and advocacy on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), I might be able to believe that an industry would not continue to produce a product without warning about it’s effect on the developing fetus or on young children. But, I did work on FAS advocacy and lobbied our legislature to provide services for children with alcohol related disabilities. I also watched my boss get shoved into a wall by the liquor lobbyists. I got stepped on so hard my foot got bruised.
With my background, I can easily imagine the decision-making process when the chemical companies where faced with public knowledge that their products in children’s clothing cause ADD and Autism. I can imagine they looked at what portion of their profits come from chemicals in children’s clothing and made the decisions to stonewall as long as they could. They certainly seemed to have directed their bought-and-paid-for Washington State senators to block all efforts to make children’s clothing healthier by removing the harmful chemicals. What do you call it when a company makes the decision to cause one in fifty children to have a debilitating disability? I call it morally bankrupt. Is it a purge? Or a scourge?
It amazes me that while mothers where terrified that their children might get Ebola, they were also dressing them in flame retardant pajamas and sending them off to bed to develop ADD or Autism. This level of disinformation strikes me as massively criminal and irresponsible on the part of our fourth estate.
Last year, a new book came out telling women that it is okay to drink socially while pregnant. The claims in the book did not match the credible research. The author looked at bogus research that does not measure damage due to prenatal alcohol exposure. Yet, this irresponsible book got published while those of us who have worked with genuine research cannot get a big publisher to take our work on FAS. Where do these decisions come from? Did the publishers accept this sloppy irresponsible work because they thought they could make a profit? They certainly had no respect for the truth or the lives that would be damaged through the misinformation they published.
So we have many substances in our country that can kill or cause damage when used correctly and legally. The government, that is supposed to protect the population from the greed of the few, protects the few and makes the conscious decision to maim and kill a certain portion of our population. What do we call this behavior where profits come before human life? Do these decisions constitute a purge? How many times does a decision maker look at the data vs profit equation and dismiss the health of the population by saying, “The world has too many people all ready. It won’t hurt to lose a few, or one in fifty.”
Of course we don’t have purges here in the US. We never… well there was that whole business with the native population. However, we don’t have modern day purges.
I wonder. I wonder what goes on in the boardrooms of Dow, Dupont, Bayer, Koch Industries, or Monsanto. Have they ever had a conversation, “Sir, we discontinued the experiment because all the baby rats died, or we’ve reviewed the study behind the claims and it is sound.” Then, someone makes the decision to continue to produce their product saying, “The world has too many people anyway, we won’t discontinue this product until we are forced to.”
Now, if I had not been involved in the research and advocacy on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), I might be able to believe that an industry would not continue to produce a product without warning about it’s effect on the developing fetus or on young children. But, I did work on FAS advocacy and lobbied our legislature to provide services for children with alcohol related disabilities. I also watched my boss get shoved into a wall by the liquor lobbyists. I got stepped on so hard my foot got bruised.
With my background, I can easily imagine the decision-making process when the chemical companies where faced with public knowledge that their products in children’s clothing cause ADD and Autism. I can imagine they looked at what portion of their profits come from chemicals in children’s clothing and made the decisions to stonewall as long as they could. They certainly seemed to have directed their bought-and-paid-for Washington State senators to block all efforts to make children’s clothing healthier by removing the harmful chemicals. What do you call it when a company makes the decision to cause one in fifty children to have a debilitating disability? I call it morally bankrupt. Is it a purge? Or a scourge?
It amazes me that while mothers where terrified that their children might get Ebola, they were also dressing them in flame retardant pajamas and sending them off to bed to develop ADD or Autism. This level of disinformation strikes me as massively criminal and irresponsible on the part of our fourth estate.
Last year, a new book came out telling women that it is okay to drink socially while pregnant. The claims in the book did not match the credible research. The author looked at bogus research that does not measure damage due to prenatal alcohol exposure. Yet, this irresponsible book got published while those of us who have worked with genuine research cannot get a big publisher to take our work on FAS. Where do these decisions come from? Did the publishers accept this sloppy irresponsible work because they thought they could make a profit? They certainly had no respect for the truth or the lives that would be damaged through the misinformation they published.
So we have many substances in our country that can kill or cause damage when used correctly and legally. The government, that is supposed to protect the population from the greed of the few, protects the few and makes the conscious decision to maim and kill a certain portion of our population. What do we call this behavior where profits come before human life? Do these decisions constitute a purge? How many times does a decision maker look at the data vs profit equation and dismiss the health of the population by saying, “The world has too many people all ready. It won’t hurt to lose a few, or one in fifty.”
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