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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (9156)	9/24/2003 5:49:55 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794358

There is no use pandering to the left with this nomination. They will never be happy with the right on this issue. That's what Bush learned with Cristie Whitman. --------------------------------------------------------------------- washingtonpost.com EPA Nominee Questioned by Senate Panel Leavitt Says He Would Seek 'Productive Middle' By Eric Pianin Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, September 24, 2003; Page A04 President Bush's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency calmly fielded three hours of often hostile questions about the administration's environmental record yesterday and told senators he would pursue balanced and moderate policies. Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that he would be a "problem solver" operating from the "productive middle" to resolve disputes among industry, environmentalists and other stakeholders. "I passionately believe that this nation deserves to have a clean and safe and healthy environment," Leavitt said. "I also believe that the United States can increase the velocity of our environmental progress, and that we can do it without compromising our competitive position economically in the world." Leavitt, 52, a three-term governor, has a mixed environmental record, advocates say. He brokered a multistate agreement to reduce regional haze that has darkened the skies over the Grand Canyon. But he also frequently sided with industry in disputes and secretly negotiated an agreement with the Interior Department last April that removes millions of acres in Utah from protected status, a move environmental groups opposed. Although his nomination could stall in the Senate over presidential politics and other matters, Democrats were generally friendly and careful not to directly attack his record or his character. "I believe that too many of our country's environmental policies are being cooked by political chefs in the White House" that serve powerful anti-environmental interests, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). "And what we have today is a situation where into this political cauldron comes a good man -- somebody that I have known as straightforward and decent and bipartisan." Leavitt sidestepped most of the Democrats' questions about the administration's environmental record -- including a recent decision to relax air pollution standards for aging coal-fired power plants, the sharp drop in Superfund toxic site cleanups since Bush took office, the reversal of his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and criticism of the EPA's handling of the cleanup around the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has said she will put a hold on the nomination on the Senate floor to force the administration to respond to the EPA inspector general's findings that the White House instructed the agency to soften its publicized assessment of dangers posed by dust and debris from the skyscrapers' collapse. "I just cannot accept that there seems to have been a deliberate effort at the direction of the White House to provide unwarranted reassurances to New Yorkers about whether their air was safe to breathe," she said. But mostly, Democrats questioned why Leavitt would give up a governorship to head the embattled EPA. Many voiced skepticism that he would have any more success than did former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman in shaping environmental policy that frequently has been dictated by White House political advisers. "You may be in charge of managing, but you're not in charge of policy -- somebody else is," Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told Leavitt. "There's a reason why Christie Todd Whitman left. She was not in charge." Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said, "You've got a lot of guts taking this job, because you're in a big hole to start with." Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the committee, called Leavitt "supremely qualified" to head the EPA, and criticized Democrats for using the hearing as a proxy fight over Bush's environmental record. "I'm confident we'll hear the drumbeat of denunciations that began the day President Bush took office," he said. washingtonpost.com

To: greenspirit who wrote (9156)	9/24/2003 7:27:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 794358

The FDA knows what is good for you. You don't believe me? Ask Them! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Snake Oil or Health Tonic? What the FDA doesn't want you to know about dietary supplements Ronald Bailey REASON Snake oil is a worthless preparation fraudulently sold as a cure for many ills. Nineteenth century medicine shows notoriously peddled all manner of tonics and physicks to cure everything from bunions to cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was established ostensibly to protect the public against such hucksters. But nowadays the FDA is also treating companies and people who want to communicate scientific findings about nutritional supplements to the public as though they, too, are snake oil hawkers. For example, I recently got a form letter from William Faloon, who heads up the Florida-based Life Extension Foundation (LEF), from which I receive discount vitamins and supplements, warning me to stock up on a three-month supply because the FDA had "initiated an intrusive multi-day inspection" of the group's facilities. (Full disclosure: I've been a member of the LEF for a couple of years.) Faloon is worried because the FDA has actually arrested him and LEF founder Saul Kent in the past for allegedly violating FDA regulations. This is not to say that there are not real snake oil sellers out there, but the LEF hardly seems a likely candidate. What's at issue? "The fundamental question is whether or not consumers can receive information based on peer-reviewed scientific studies and authoritative government statements about how foods and supplements affect their health," says Jonathan Emord, one of LEF's attorneys. In 1997, Congress enacted the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act, which explicitly allows supplement makers and distributors to make health claims for their products if a government agency "has published an authoritative statement, which is currently in effect, about the relationship between a nutrient and a disease or health-related condition to which the claim refers." That is, vitamin and supplement makers can communicate to their consumers the findings of conclusive government research. Only, the FDA now says that they cannot. Emord notes that the FDA has set up guidelines that clearly undermine the intent of the law. The rules allow the FDA alone to decide whether or not a government agency's statement is sufficiently "authoritative." Furthermore, according to Emord, the FDA has now worked out tacit agreements with most federal scientific agencies to issue disclaimers with their research findings saying that they're not "authoritative." This bit of underhandedness is "a way to restrict scientific information to government elites and disallow access to it by the public," says Emord. Let's look at a few telling cases. Supplement makers Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw (again full disclosure: Pearson and Shaw have been supporters of the Reason Foundation) wanted to add the following claims to their supplements based on peer-reviewed scientific studies: • "Consumption of antioxidant vitamins may reduce the risk of certain kinds of cancers." • "Consumption of fiber may reduce the risk of colorectal cancer." • "Consumption of omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease." • ".8 mg of folic acid in a dietary supplement is more effective in reducing the risk of neural tube defects than a lower amount in foods in common form." The FDA opposed all of them. Yet the American Association for Cancer Research cited many peer-reviewed articles in 1999 supporting the claim that antioxidant vitamins helped prevent cancer. As it turns out, there is now some doubt that high fiber diets protect against colon cancer, yet that had been the advice of nutritionists and oncologists for nearly three decades. The case for the cardio-protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids has only been strengthened over the years. And most bafflingly, whereas the FDA wouldn't allow supplement makers to point out the benefits of folic acid, in 1996 the agency required that bread and pasta makers include the nutrient in their products. In 1999, the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the FDA in Pearson v. Shalala, ordering the FDA to set up a procedure whereby such claims could be properly evaluated. Nevertheless, since then the FDA has resisted nearly every proposed benefit claim for a nutritional supplement that has been brought before it. For example, the FDA nixed the claim that B vitamins can lower homocysteine levels. (High homocysteine levels are increasingly associated with heart disease.) The FDA also disallowed the claim that saw palmetto extract may relieve the symptoms of enlarged prostates. Fortunately, the agency has lost nearly every one of these cases in court. Companies should, of course, be held legally accountable for disseminating false and/or misleading information. Furthermore, if a supplement has a defined level of toxicity, e.g., vitamin A, then warning labels are appropriate. But surely the Federal District Court was right when it noted in Pearson v. Shalala that: "Truthful advertising related to lawful activities is entitled to the protections of the First Amendment." It's high time that the FDA recognized that that includes scientific information about health supplements and vitamins. reason.com Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent and a fellow at the International Policy Network.

To: greenspirit who wrote (9156)	9/24/2003 8:33:16 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 794358

it's interesting to see you refer to the right as "fascist". And the left as just those guys who are suspicious of you. That's not what I said. I didn't say that the left are suspicious of me, I said they won't have me because I am suspicious of the sacred "isms". I made the point about "not fitting in" because I am categorized here as "left" (which a lot of people would find amusing). I did not refer to "the right", collectively, as fascists. I referred to the "born-again fascists", who are a small fraction of the right, just as the left totalitarian wannabes are a small fraction of the left. As I've said many times, I see the threat as not something that comes from the right or the left, but from polarization. The moderates on both sides have more in common with each other than with the extremist loonies tot he far left and right, and I think it's long past time to resume the search for a political center.