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PAY DIRT FROM THE HUMAN GENOME
The human genome -- the blueprint for making a human being -- has been almost completely cataloged. "Today we are learning the language in which God created life," said President Clinton, announcing the accomplishment June 26.[1] Under a banner headline on page 1, the NEW YORK TIMES called it "an achievement that represents a pinnacle of human self-knowledge."
The 3 billion genetic instructions that form a blueprint for human life have now been cataloged, but the meaning of most of those instructions remains unknown. Therefore, the practical significance of deciphering the book of human life remains murky except in one area: many new pharmaceutical drugs will soon be possible. Unfortunately, this is a mixed blessing. A raft of new drugs may benefit those humans who need and can afford them, but new drugs make serious trouble for the natural environment and for many of the non-human creatures living there. Even for humans, drugs already represent a major environmental challenge -- arguably the most difficult chemical challenge that we face. The environment is already heavily polluted with drugs and personal care products that have passed through humans, entered sewage treatment plants and then been discharged into waterways. (See REHW #614.) Increased drug pollution of our waterways -- including our drinking water -- is one of the dark sides of the human genome project -- a dark side that few acknowledge.
News reports of the human genome achievement have been dominated by "gee whiz" predictions of accelerating pharmaceutical advances, with no hint of any problems. The NEW YORK TIMES said, "The successful deciphering of this vast genetic archive attests to the extraordinary pace of biology's advance since 1953, when the structure of DNA was first discovered and presages an era of even brisker progress."[1] The TIMES went on to quote Dr. Gillian R. Woollett, representing the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug manufacturers' trade association: "The rate of change is absolutely incredible. It's actually changing the way drug development is even conceived," said Dr. Woollett.
The next day the business section of the TIMES explained how companies are "finding gold in scientific pay dirt: ...Genomics companies are using different methods to build businesses out of the genome," the TIMES said, offering three examples: "Incyte Genomics Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., sells access to a database about genes to drug companies. Millennium Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., is using genomics to understand disease processes to develop drugs. Human Genome Sciences of Rockville, Md. is developing drugs and selling its information," the TIMES wrote.[5] Notably, all three examples of commercial exploitation of the genome involve new drugs.
Last December two scientists -- Christian G. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes -- writing in ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES, a respected, peer-reviewed journal, pointed out the relationship between the human genome project and new drugs: "The enormous array of pharmaceuticals will continue to diversify and grow as the human genome is mapped. Today there are about 500 distinct biochemical receptors at which drugs are targeted.... The number of targets is expected to increase 20-fold (yielding 3000 to 10,000 drug targets) in the near future...."[6] Daughton and Ternes go on to say, "Escalating introduction to the marketplace of new pharmaceuticals is adding exponentially to the already large array of chemical classes, each with distinct modes of biochemical action, many of which are poorly understood."
Daughton and Ternes say that the quantity of pharmaceuticals and personal care products entering the environment each year is roughly comparable to the amounts of pesticides used each year. Huge quantities of prescription drugs and biologics, diagnostic agents, "neutraceuticals," fragrances, sun-screen agents and numerous other classes of compounds enter the environment each year, without any government agencies taking notice. As daughton and Ternes point out, these chemicals tend to have several worrisome characteristics:
** Many are very long-lived, many break down into other long-lived compounds with their own peculiar chemical characteristics, and almost nothing is known about their movement in the environment;
** Pesticides tend to enter the environment in seasonal pulses. In contrast, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) enter the environment continuously via domestic and industrial sewage systems and via wet-weather runoff (for example, from confined animal feeding operations such as hog factories).
** Unlike many pesticides, most drugs and personal care products have not been examined for adverse environmental effects. Daughton and Ternes comment, "This is surprising especially since certain pharmaceuticals are designed to modulate [change] endocrine and immune systems and cellular signal transduction and as such... have obvious potential as endocrine disruptors in the environment."
** Many of these chemicals are designed to have profound physiologic effects, so it would not be surprising if they were found to affect fish, shellfish, birds, worms, frogs, insects, and other forms of life.
** With pharmaceuticals, unpredicted and unknown side effects are often the norm: "The possible actions and biochemical ramifications on nontarget aquatic biota are even less understood; many are totally unknown," Daughton and Ternes say.
** "It is important to recognize that for many drugs, their specific modes of action even in the target species are also unknown. For these drugs, it is impossible to predict what effects they might have on non-target organisms."
** Most drugs don't cure illnesses, they control symptoms -- they lower cholesterol levels or blood pressure, or they alleviate pain or depression, or they revive limp libidoes. However, to achieve these results, they must be taken continuously, often for many years. Therefore, even relatively short-lived PPCPs can cause chronic exposures because they are continuously infused into the environment;
** Aquatic organisms are captives of their aquatic environment so must endure perpetual exposure;
** The bioaccumulation/bioconcentration potential for at least some PPCPs matches that of organochlorine compounds;
** Some PPCPs show "very high acute aquatic toxicity" while others "can elicit constellations of significant but subtle effects across numerous species."
** It must also be recognized that even though individual concentrations of any drug might be low, the combined concentrations from drugs sharing a common mechanism of action could be substantial."
** Most chemical researchers don't have the tools needed to look for these chemicals in the environment. Researchers use gas chromatography (GC) and mass spectrometry (MS). The signals produced by such analytic equipment are compared to "spectral libraries," allowing unknown chemicals to be identified. But the standard spectral libraries available from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) do not include most pharmaceuticals. Therefore typical researchers are not prepared to identify pharmaceuticals in the environment.
** Daughton and Ternes list 66 classes of pharmaceuticals, including antidepressants; cancer chemotherapy drugs; tranquilizers and psychiatric drugs; pain killers of many kinds; anti-inflammatory drugs; many kinds of antihypertensives (blood pressure reducers); antiseptics; fungicides; anti-epileptics; bronchodilators (such as albuterol); many lipid regulators or anti-cholesterol agents; chemicals to increase the contrast in x-rays; muscle relaxants; anti-psychotic drugs; oral contraceptives; anorectics (diet pills); antibiotics; and synthetic hormones (estrogen and thyroid). Details about the 200 most popular prescription drugs in the U.S. in 1999 can be found at www.rxlist.com/top200.htm. These 200 reportedly account for two thirds of all the prescriptions filled each year in the U.S.
** Most exposure to drugs and personal care products occurs in the aquatic environment, but it also occurs on land: "...the primary source for terrestrial exposure is probably from disposal of biosolids [sludge] from [sewage treatment plants] and from animal wastes both applied to land and stored in open-air pits (waste lagoons)..."
** Daughton and Ternes say, "Theoretically, [pharmaceuticals and personal care products] in sewage sludge applied to crop lands could be taken up by plants."[6,pg.921] Surely everyone can agree that this problem should be examined carefully BEFORE allowing sewage sludge to be mixed with soil.
Is this a new problem? Daughton and Ternes show that, "It therefore was clearly recognized over 20 years ago that the continual, daily introduction of kilogram quantities of drugs from a given [sewage treatment plant] into receiving waters could result in sustained concentrations with the potential to lead to exposures in aquatic organisms."
But for 20 years regulatory officials and drug corporations have pretended that the problem does not exist, perhaps because they have no idea what to do about it. Now the problem seems about to get worse for three reasons: (1) The genome-induced gold rush to produce new drugs, mentioned above; (2) the Internet, which is allowing people to purchase drugs that they previously could not get their hands on; and (3) recent public hearings by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider allowing many prescription drugs to be sold without a prescription. The last time FDA held such hearings, in 1972, 600 drugs switched from prescription to non-prescription status.
Christian Daughton, a scientist with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is aggressively urging environmental scientists to pay more attention to this problem. However Daughton acknowledges that the problem may already be too large for detailed scientific analysis: "In the final analysis, given the vast array of mechanisms of drug action and side effects, the total number of different toxicity tests possibly required to screen the effluent from a typical [sewage treatment plant] could be impractically large."
In June of this year, Daughton and others organized a scientific conference in Minnesota. There, Glen R. Boyd, a civil engineer from Tulane University in New Orleans reported finding drugs in the Mississippi River, in Louisiana's Lake Ponchetrain, and in Tulane's tap water. In all the waters tested, Boyd and his team found low levels of the anti-cholesterol drug clofibric acid along with the pain killer naproxen and the hormone estrone. In Tulane's tap water, estrone averaged 35 parts per trillion with a high of 80 parts per trillion.
Naturally, the water-dwelling creatures will bear the brunt of all this because they cannot escape civilized peoples' habit of urinating and defecating in all the available fresh water. At the Minnesota meeting in June a team of scientists reporting finding male carp and walleyes producing "sky high" quantities of vitellogenin, an egg-yolk protein normally made only by females. In 1998, Environment Canada, Canada's federal environmental agency, reported high levels of estrogens and birth control compounds in the effluent of sewage treatment plants nationwide. Chris D. Metcalfe of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario created laboratory conditions similar to those found by Environment Canada and he reported in June that those conditions cause some fish to become intersex -- having the characteristics of both males and females. Metcalfe has found intersex white perch in the Great Lakes.
** Daughton and Ternes say, "A major unaddressed issue regarding human health is the long-term effects of ingesting via potable waters very low subtherapeutic doses of numerous pharmaceuticals multiple times a day for many decades." [6,pg.923] What will it mean to raise our babies on water contaminated with low levels of birth control drugs and athlete's foot remedies plus Viagra, Prozac, Valium, Claritin, Amoxicillin, Prevachol, Codeine, Flonase, Ibuprofen, Dilantin, Cozaar, Pepcid, Albuterol, Naproxen, Warfarin, Ranitidine, Diazepam, Bactroban, Lotrel, Lorazepam, Tamoxifen, Mevacor, and dozens of other potent drugs, along with hair removers, mosquito repellants, sunburn creams, musks and other fragrances? No one knows, but evidently we're going to find out, learning by doing.
--Peter Montague
FREEDOM OF ASSSOCIATION
[This concludes our brief history of labor in the U.S. What is the connection to the environmental movement? Labor is on the move once again and, as part of that impetus, is re-examining its history to plan for the future. Given the overwhelming evidence of continuing environmental deterioration, would it not be a good idea for the environmental movement to be asking itself, "What has gone wrong?" The answer to that question can only be found by examining history.--P.M.]
by Peter Kellman*
Labor Crushed
In the 1920s, big business crushed the labor movement. The corporate managers of that period wanted to put in place "The American Plan," the corporation's idea of a social vision for workers. The American Plan called for the open shop, company-run welfare institutions, company-run social institutions and company-controlled local governments. To make the American Plan work, the unions had to be destroyed. Industry after industry called for huge reductions in wages and the unions were forced to strike. Using "government by injunction," the strikes were crushed. Meanwhile the Attorney General was rounding up, detaining and extraditing foreign-born union activists. Sacco and Vanzetti were framed, tried and executed, and anyone who dared challenge the power of the corporate elites was tried and convicted in the newspapers and then by the courts. However, the harshest treatment was handed out to African Americans; for example in the four years, 1918-1921, 28 were publicly burned alive and in 1932, 24 were lynched. These are not numbers we are talking about here these are human beings.
Some historians refer to this period as the "Little Red Scare," but there was nothing little about it. Hundreds of union activist were deported, killed and jailed, and tens of thousands were blacklisted. By 1933 union membership was down to 5.2 % of the civilian labor force.
Labor Comes Back
In all previous depressions in the U.S., labor union membership had declined, but as the Great Depression deepened, labor started to come back as unorganized workers knocked on the union door in unprecedented numbers. Workers who had been suffering in silence for a decade were once again on the move.
Norris-LaGuardia and the National Labor Relations Act
As we have seen, between 1901 through 1928, federal courts issued 118 labor injunctions of which 70 were granted on the basis of employer affidavits without labor even having the opportunity to be heard.[1] By 1932 the country was tired of "government by injunction" and the Republican Congress passed the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act which was signed by Republican President Hoover. This Anti-Injunction Act outlawed the "yellow dog" contract (a condition of employment under which a worker is automatically fired for joining a union) and stated in Section 1 that, "No court of the United States... shall have jurisdiction to issue restraining or temporary or permanent injunctions in a case involving or growing out of a labor dispute, except in a strict conformity with the provisions of this Act." In Section 2 of Norris-LaGuardia, Congress described the existing relationship between labor and the owners of property in the United States: "Whereas under prevailing economic conditions, developed with the aid of governmental authority for owners of property to organize in the corporate and other forms of ownership association, the individual unorganized worker is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty of contract and to protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment..."
Congress then went on to lay out the solution: "...wherefore, though he should be free to decline to associate with his fellows, it is necessary that he have full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of his own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of his employment, and that he shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor, or their agents, in the designation of such representatives or in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection; therefore, the following definitions of and limitations upon the jurisdiction and authority of the courts of the United States are enacted."
In one legislative act the injunction was lifted off labor's back, the yellow dog contract was abolished and a worker could now enjoy, as the act stated, "full freedom of association... and that he shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of labor... in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection." Labor now had its Magna Charta. Freedom of association was the law. The American Federation of Labor's goals of ending the labor injunction and having a law recognizing the right of workers to freely associate was on the books. Labor could organize, labor could boycott, labor could strike and employers could no longer rely on the federal courts for injunctions and the police power of the state to interfere on the employer's behalf.[2]
Despite these legislative victories, not much changed. It was 1932, the country was in the Great Depression, labor was weak and the employers still held most of the cards. President Franklin Roosevelt brought the New Deal to the country the following year. This New Deal included the establishment of a Labor Board, but more importantly the Roosevelt administration supported union organizing as a way to help the country get out of the Depression. The purpose of Roosevelt's Labor Board (and shortly thereafter the National Labor Relations Board) was to cut down on strikes, which hurt production. However, unions WERE encouraged because the Roosevelt Administration believed that as more workers were organized, wages would go up. Workers would then have more money to spend on goods and therefore more goods would be produced and the country would "grow" its way out of the Depression -- the opposite of trickle down, trickle up. Many of Roosevelt's programs were found unconstitutional until he threatened to stack the Supreme Court.[3] The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was found constitutional in NLRB V. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORP (1937). The court's opinion reflected the language of the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act:
"Employees have as clear a right to organize and select their representatives for lawful purposes as the respondent has to organize its business and select its own officers and agents. Discrimination and coercion to prevent the free exercise of the right of employees to self-organization and representation is a proper subject for condemnation by competent legislative authority. Long ago we stated the reason for labor organizations. We said that they were organized out of the necessities of the situation; that a single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer; that he was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and family; that, if the employer refused to pay him the wages that he thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employ and resist arbitrary and unfair treatment; that union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on an equality with their employer."
Furthermore, the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act passed constitutional muster in February of 1938. This meant that workers were free to organize and strike; boycotts were legal, and permanent replacements were not. It meant that the yellow dog contract and the dreaded labor injunction were history. Despite these significant labor victories, it didn't mean that large employers were going to automatically recognize unions. Having the government out of the way was one thing, having the government on your side was another. So workers were forced on their own to shut down entire cities with general strikes and take over factories in order to gain employer recognition.
As the depression continued to deepen, workers continued to organize and their power increased to the point that President Roosevelt was beholden to labor for his re-election to the presidency in 1936. Labor had become so strong that when workers took over the General Motors Corporation factory in Flint, Michigan, late in 1936, neither the governor of the state nor President Roosevelt sent troops to remove the strikers from the property of the corporation. The strikers won and 18 sit-downs followed at other General Motors facilities, culminating in union recognition. But in May of 1938 the Court took a big step backward in NLRB V. MACKAY RADIO, ruling that permanent replacement of strikers was legal; thus the right to strike became not much more than the right to quit.[4] The Court went on in NLRB V. VIRGINIA ELECTRIC & POWER (1941) to grant free speech rights to employers in union certification elections.
Then in 1947 Congress passed the Taft-Hartley "Slave Labor" Act which:
** created the Taft-Hartley injunction whereby the President can set in motion injunctions against "national emergency strikes" that "imperil the national health or safety," thus nullifying the gains made under Norris-LaGuardia in 1932;
** allowed state legislatures to ban the union shop; ** outlawed the closed shop;
** made sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts illegal for all practical purposes; ** barred from participating in NLRB elections unions that didn't ban Communists from their membership;
** took control of pension, and health and welfare funds away from unions; ** allowed EMPLOYERS the right to actively and vocally oppose having labor unions in their enterprises;
** forced foremen out of the unions; ** created the decertification election;\tab
Throughout the 1930s, workers had continued to organize and for a brief period of our history the government was on labor's side. Union membership grew from 5.2% of the private non-professional work force in 1933 to 15.9% in 1939 and peaked at 26.9% in 1953. Today it hovers around 10%. Along with the decline in union economic and political power has come a decline in the standard of living for the majority of workers, whose real wages have been declining since 1973.
Part 4
How the Labor Movement can expand the Constitution
But the news hasn't been all bad. Because the abolition, suffrage and labor movements in the 1830s took seriously the words "We the People" from the Preamble of the Constitution, it has come to pass that slavery is no more; and not just white males with property, but all citizens can vote, regardless of race, gender, or property. The victories of these movements were made part of the Constitution with the passage of the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments.
A number of the legislative goals set and fought for by the labor movement beginning in the 1830s, like the laws protecting children in the workplace, health and safety protection for workers and free public education, have been found constitutional. However, the right to free association -- the right to organize -- has not yet made it into the Constitution. But labor has at times had the POWER to exercise freedom of association. So the question now is: Given all our history - WHAT DO WE WANT THE NEXT NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT TO LOOK LIKE?
For starters a new National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) must be rooted in the First Amendment, the 13th Amendment, the Norris-Laguardia Act and Section 7 of the NLRA, not in the Constitution's Commerce Clause as the present Act now is.[5] In other words, the law protecting workers' right to organize cannot be a subset of the basic law protecting employers. Workers do not participate in a corporation's decision to join the Chamber of Commerce. The corporation should not participate in the process whereby workers form a union.
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