Bush's policies are making us ill
By Brian Moench
Salt Lake Tribune
When choosing our next president, Americans should be as concerned about the environment as they are about terrorism. We have had four years to observe this current president's shocking evisceration of our environmental laws, many of which were enacted with the help of such non-tree-huggers as Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The risk of premature death, injury or illness is far greater from environmental causes than from a terrorist attack. One in three U.S. citizens will get cancer, and this year more than 600,000 will die of it. Eighty percent of cancer is environmentally caused. This means something in the air, water or food you consume triggers most cancers. The frosting on the toxic cake for Utahns is that President Bush wants to resume nuclear testing in Nevada. I guess creating more downwinder victims is just his way of saying thanks to the most Republican state in the country. (Incidentally, underground testing contaminates water supplies and still releases atmospheric radiation). Two family members of mine were recently diagnosed with cancer. That brings the total so far to three in my immediate family, all relatively young, still in the prime of life. For many years I've seen the human cost of environmental degradation in the faces of cancer patients I've helped care for, some as young as 1 year old. Now I'm seeing it on the faces of the people I love the most. And cancer is only one of many environmentally caused life-threatening illnesses. On 9-11 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center. But every month more than 3,000 Americans die premature deaths from air pollution. The Bush administration has weakened or refused to enforce laws designed to protect us from mercury, arsenic, benzene, ozone, lead, acid rain, PCBs, MTBE, perchlorate, atrazine, and superfund sites. The list is almost endless. And now, as if Halliburton hadn't already received enough dirty favors, Bush has allowed Dick Cheney's former company to use the potent carcinogen benzene to fractionate rock formations in drilling for oil. The potential for contamination of acquifers supplying metropolitan and agricultural water should be obvious. Every day our citizens are exposed to 80,000 chemicals, only half of which have ever been tested in humans. If one adds increased carbon dioxide to the list, then the biggest threat to human survival is also environmental - global warming. A recent Pentagon study concluded that not only is global warming for real but that the chance of a catastrophic climate change within your grandchildren's lifetime is greater than 50 percent. Increasing frequency and severity of weather extremes like hurricanes and drought are global warming consequences. I'm guessing the residents of Florida might be believers by now. Bush has distorted and suppressed government scientific data and fired government scientists who dare to publish research that contradicts his political agenda. So alarmed is the scientific community that 60 of the nation's top scientists including 20 Nobel Prize winners issued this extraordinary public statement in February: "There is strong documentation of a wide-ranging effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system to prevent the appearance of advice that might run counter to the administration's political agenda. There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression, and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented." Scientist Michael Oppenheimer said, "If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge, and in a search for truth, this White House is an absolute disaster." To allow wholesale contamination of your air, food, and water as payback for corporate campaign contributions is cruel, outrageous and criminal. It couldn't be more hypocritical coming from someone who claims to be driven by Christian family values. In my family we take Bush's disdain for public health very personally. Every voter in Utah should do the same.
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Dr. Brian Moench is an anesthesiologist at LDS Hospital and former instructor at Harvard Medical School. |
