---February 27, 1997---
HEADLINES:
LAST IN A SERIES--THE ALAR REBELLION OF 1989
In the U.S. in 1989, an angry public forced an end to the use of Alar on apples, an event that should go down in history as the Alar Rebellion, not the Alar Scare. Alar is a growth-regulating hormone manufactured by Uniroyal corporation. The story of Alar is one of only a few small victories for democratic government that we can recall at the national level in the late-20th-century U.S.
Alar holds apples on the tree longer than is natural, making apples a deeper red and giving apple growers a better chance of yielding a uniform crop with less effort. From 1965 to 1989, at least half the apples in the U.S. were sprayed with Alar. Unfortunately, in the period 1973 to 1977, lab tests showed that Alar, and its byproduct UDMH, caused cancer in mice and hamsters. In 1984, the U.S. government's National Toxicology Program categorized UDMH as a "probable human carcinogen" (a designation that has not changed to this day). (See REHW #530-#533.)
After these facts became known, no ethical person could justify putting Alar/UDMH into applesauce or apple juice, which are consumed in large amounts by children. However, as we have seen, corporations have no way to sense, or act upon, ethical values. (For example, see REHW #308, #388, and #455.) On the contrary, the corporate form itself is a legal fiction specifically created to PREVENT ethical and moral values (or personal liability and responsibility) from contaminating financial decisions. The corporation was invented to exploit the planet and its inhabitants as efficiently and dispassionately as possible, and to solidify unprecedented power in the hands of the managers of such an entity, and nothing else. As a legal matter, corporations MUST return a profit to their investors or they can (and will) be sued for breach of fiduciary trust. If a few workers or children must be sacrificed to return a profit to Uniroyal's investors, then those workers and children will be sacrificed. This is just the way it is after a sovereign people has allowed the corporate form to usurp its sovereignty, to dominate its government, as the people of the U.S. did approximately 100 years ago.[1]
The basic public health policy question raised by Alar was this: Should the nation's children be placed in harm's way just to make the apple business a bit more profitable for apple-growing corporations? Uniroyal and its helpmates in government had one answer to this question, and the public had a different answer. Putting possibly-cancer-causing chemicals on apples made no sense to the public, and the Alar Rebellion really began in 1984 when apple sales dropped 30% after EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] announced Alar caused cancer in animals. Apple sales would remain 30% below normal until late 1989.[2]
Government officials learned about Alar's carcinogenicity in the period 1973 to 1977, but by 1989 the government had still been unable to ban Alar from apples. (See REHW #530-#533.) Indeed, government had not even been able to BEGIN a process that, some day, might eventually lead to the banning of Alar. Starting about 1980, the Alar story revealed clearly that the nation's laws had been written --indeed the entire apparatus we know as "regulation" had been created in the period 1885-1915 --not to protect public health but to protect the property rights of the corporate manufacturers and users of industrial poisons. The real purpose of government "regulation" as we know it is to install a government bureaucracy as a barrier, a spongy buffer, between the sovereign people and the corporations that have usurped their sovereignty.
On February 1, 1989, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] announced thLAST IN A SERIES--THE ALAR REBELLION OF 1989
In the U.S. in 1989, an angry public forced an end to the use of Alar on apples, an event that should go down in history as the Alar Rebellion, not the Alar Scare. Alar is a growth-regulating hormone manufactured by Uniroyal corporation. The story of Alar is one of only a few small victories for democratic government that we can recall at the national level in the late-20th-century U.S.
Alar holds apples on the tree longer than is natural, making apples a deeper red and giving apple growers a better chance of yielding a uniform crop with less effort. From 1965 to 1989, at least half the apples in the U.S. were sprayed with Alar. Unfortunately, in the period 1973 to 1977, lab tests showed that Alar, and its byproduct UDMH, caused cancer in mice and hamsters. In 1984, the U.S. government's National Toxicology Program categorized UDMH as a "probable human carcinogen" (a designation that has not changed to this day). (See REHW #530-#533.)
After these facts became known, no ethical person could justify putting Alar/UDMH into applesauce or apple juice, which are consumed in large amounts by children. However, as we have seen, corporations have no way to sense, or act upon, ethical values. (For example, see REHW #308, #388, and #455.) On the contrary, the corporate form itself is a legal fiction specifically created to PREVENT ethical and moral values (or personal liability and responsibility) from contaminating financial decisions. The corporation was invented to exploit the planet and its inhabitants as efficiently and dispassionately as possible, and to solidify unprecedented power in the hands of the managers of such an entity, and nothing else. As a legal matter, corporations MUST return a profit to their investors or they can (and will) be sued for breach of fiduciary trust. If a few workers or children must be sacrificed to return a profit to Uniroyal's investors, then those workers and children will be sacrificed. This is just the way it is after a sovereign people has allowed the corporate form to usurp its sovereignty, to dominate its government, as the people of the U.S. did approximately 100 years ago.[1]
The basic public health policy question raised by Alar was this: Should the nation's children be placed in harm's way just to make the apple business a bit more profitable for apple-growing corporations? Uniroyal and its helpmates in government had one answer to this question, and the public had a different answer. Putting possibly-cancer-causing chemicals on apples made no sense to the public, and the Alar Rebellion really began in 1984 when apple sales dropped 30% after EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] announced Alar caused cancer in animals. Apple sales would remain 30% below normal until late 1989.[2]
Government officials learned about Alar's carcinogenicity in the period 1973 to 1977, but by 1989 the government had still been unable to ban Alar from apples. (See REHW #530-#533.) Indeed, government had not even been able to BEGIN a process that, some day, might eventually lead to the banning of Alar. Starting about 1980, the Alar story revealed clearly that the nation's laws had been written --indeed the entire apparatus we know as "regulation" had been created in the period 1885-1915 --not to protect public health but to protect the property rights of the corporate manufacturers and users of industrial poisons. The real purpose of government "regulation" as we know it is to install a government bureaucracy as a barrier, a spongy buffer, between the sovereign people and the corporations that have usurped their sovereignty.
On February 1, 1989, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] announced that new data, from studies conducted by Uniroyal corporation itself, confirmed that Alar/UDMH caused cancer in mice; simultaneously, EPA announced that it was "accelerating the process that will propose cancellation of the food uses of" Alar.[3] Such a proposal might, or might not, succeed in banning Alar after a decade-long battle in the courts. This announcement confirmed that government was unable to protect public health by acting decisively on the weight of the scientific evidence to prevent corporations from putting poisons in our food.
When an environmental group (Natural Resources Defense Council) and a national TV network (CBS) effectively publicized the facts about Alar in late February, 1989, the general public reacted swiftly, cutting its apple purchases by 50% to 60%, essentially boycotting apples. The Alar Rebellion had begun in earnest. It was a text-book case of angry consumers expressing their preferences in the marketplace. Adam Smith would have been proud. By June, 1989, the apple growers were on their knees, actually BEGGING the EPA to remove the temptation to use Alar by making it illegal.[4] Many apple growers had tried for a decade to rein in their own appetites and forswear the use of Alar, and some had succeeded. However many apple growers are organized as corporations and corporations cannot easily do what is right unless it is also profitable.
Our federal government is similarly incapable of doing the right thing, principally because it is held captive by corporations. Even when BEGGED by the users of Alar to ban the chemical in the spring of 1989, the government was not capable of doing it. However, in the summer of 1989, Uniroyal made a strategic decision to take Alar off the U.S. market by November, 1989, thus removing public concerns about Alar and ending the government's public display of weakness. It probably would not help maintain subtle corporate dominion if the people saw their government paralyzed and held hostage for another decade by a single corporation like Uniroyal. It was in Uniroyal's (and the chemical industry's) best interests if Uniroyal caved in to the public will. Uniroyal benefitted indirectly because the corporation had been getting a bad name for poisoning children and the voluntary withdrawal of Alar refurbished the corporation's public image. It is worth noting that Uniroyal's profits from Alar did not diminish because its production of Alar did not diminish.[5] Uniroyal had used the period 1980-1989 to develop markets for Alar in 71 foreign countries. Of course a few children are now being sacrificed each year in those countries (according to the weight of the available scientific evidence and up-to-date risk assessments[6]), but those children cannot be Uniroyal corporation's concern. Uniroyal retained its image in the U.S. and its profits from abroad, so the Alar Rebellion did not harm this giant "legal person without a soul or a conscience" one whit.
We hasten to point out that the individuals within Uniroyal corporation are not bad people, or evil. They are simply captives within an institution they cannot fully control. The law of the corporation does not permit human concerns about children's health to find expression in corporate policies if such human concerns conflict with pecuniary exigencies, i.e., the bottom line.
From the viewpoint of the permanent government in the U.S. (which is not elected), the Alar Rebellion set a very bad precedent: the general public rising up to stop a corporation from poisoning the food supply could hardly promote the continued dominion of corporations over the people. Who knows what the people would be demanding next if the Alar Rebellion went unchallenged?
The chemical industry, the scientific establishment (particularly the American Association for the Advancement of Science) and the transitory (elected) government all unleashed full-scale attacks on NRDC, the environmental group that wrote the report on Alar, and on CBS, which publicized the report, but most of all on the "hysterical" public which had stopped buying apples.
The chemical industry dumped money into its "independent" "scientific" propaganda organization, Elizabeth Whelan's American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) (see REHW #534). The ACSH issued 3 reports on Alar during 1990 to 1995, each report accompanied by great hoopla to attract press attention, including "press briefings" at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.[7] Each report retold the Alar story the way the chemical industry wants it to be remembered: a small environmental group using unsound science frightened the public out of its wits and forced the government to ban a chemical that never harmed anyone.
ACSH's propaganda campaign included paying Walter Cronkite --arguably the most famous and prestigious news "personality" in America --$25,000 to narrate a TV documentary about Alar called BIG FEARS, LITTLE RISKS, in which only chemical industry supporters appeared on camera. Cronkite himself said of the documentary, "It was meant to be propaganda."[8]
The American Association for the Advancement of Science likewise began a propaganda campaign to discredit the public's action against Alar. The editorial staff of SCIENCE magazine had long been dominated by Phil Abelson and Dan Koshland, who brought a strong Libertarian bias to their work. Time after time, these men lashed out at the public for forcing an end to Alar. Their editorials have titles like, "Scare of the Week," "The Great Overcoat Scare," and "Toxic Terror; Phantom 1890Risks."[9] People who know the work of Abelson and Koshland know them as Libertarian extremists and take their editorial rants with a guffaw of astonished disbelief. However, for Alar, SCIENCE went beyond editorials and opened its inside columns to the propagandists. For example, here is how the Alar Rebellion was described in SCIENCE in 1994: "In the late 1980s, in response to a widespread media campaign waged primarily by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the EPA pressured apple growers to abandon the use of the plant growth regulator Alar, an agricultural chemical that permits apples to ripen uniformly and increases yield. EPA's capitulation to environmentalists' demands conflicted with the agency's own scientific findings."[10]
Every part of every sentence of this retelling is wrong. In sum, SCIENCE printed a pack of lies about Alar, but they appeared under the imprimatur of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, so reporter after reporter has told and retold these lies until they have become "the truth" in the national consciousness.
The Alar Rebellion showed that science (and SCIENCE) in the late 20th century can be turned into effective propaganda tools when the powers-that-be feel threatened by the public taking action to curb corporate poisonings. The mass media--dominated by fewer than 25 huge corporations--are easily (even willingly) misled by a chorus of old, white men in lab coats chanting, "Alar is completely safe, the people are hysterical. Housewives should stay in their place --Alar is a miracle." Cheerleader Elizabeth Whelan is prancing with baton.
But the people are not fooled. Partly as a result of the Alar Rebellion, people now know that corporate chemicals of all kinds are making them and their children sick in numerous ways, and that the government is playing along.
No, people are not fooled. They may not yet see a way to erase from the face of the earth the institution that is responsible for their distress: the huge, publicly-traded corporation. But that time will come. Indeed, if the human species is to survive, that time must come.
--Peter Montague
---February 20, 1997---
HEADLINES:
LIES IN DEFENSE OF HUMANISM
Starting some 3 million years ago, human-like creatures (not apes, but hominids) began to appear on the earth. From physical evidence, paleontologists have learned about the evolution of these hominids, naming the oldest species Australopithecus, then Homo habilis (2.5 million years ago), Homo erectus (1.5 million years ago), and finally our own species, Homo sapiens (60,000 to 100,000 years ago).[1]
Throughout this 3 million-year lineage, humans were just another insignificant animal among many. During this long period, all humans shared a single religion, which, today, we would call animism --attributing an indwelling spirit to every material form. Then, during the period 10,000 to 2,000 years ago, humankind's view of itself slowly changed. Roughly 3500 to 1500 years ago (in other words, in the most recent 0.08% of humanity's time on Earth), the major religions of the modern world appeared, the religions that dominate human thinking today --Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism. From this point onward, humans have thought of themselves as special creatures, quite distinct and apart from the other animals.
The stories from the major modern religions agree: the purpose of the creation of the Earth was to provide a home for humans and the purpose of evolution was to evolve modern humans, after which evolution stopped. In this view, because the Earth was created for humans, the Earth is specially adapted to taking care of human needs. East, West, capitalist or communist, everyone could agree on this. The world was created for us to exploit, and exploiting it actually IMPROVED it. As Daniel Quinn expressed it in his recent novel, THE STORY OF B:
"Scrape away the forests, fill in the wetlands, dam the rivers, dump poisons anywhere you want, as much as you want. None of this was regarded as wicked or dangerous. Good heavens, why would it be? The earth was created specifically to be used in this way. It was a limitless, indestructible playroom for humans. You simply didn't have to consider the possibility of running out of something or of damaging something. The earth was designed to take any punishment, to absorb and sweeten any toxin, in any quantity. Explode nuclear weapons? Good heavens, yes--as many as you want. Thousands, if you like. Radioactive material generated while trying to achieve our God-given destiny can't harm us.
"Wipe out whole species? Absolutely! Why ever not? If people don't need these creatures, then obviously they're superfluous. To exercise such control over the world is to HUMANIZE it, is to take us a step closer to our destiny."[2]
In sum, the philosophy called humanism (which assumes a cardinal role for humans on Earth) now dominates the entire planet, East and West, North and South.[3]
Now, however, evidence is piling up at an accelerating pace indicating that these deeply-held cultural assumptions are dead wrong. Humans are just another animal; furthermore, humans in a humanist culture are a phenomenally destructive animal. On top of that, it is now clear that Earth was not created as a plaything for humans, and it is not exempt from harm by humans' destructive impulses. Human activities are now damaging the planet on a grand scale. Where is this humanist culture leading? Toward global ecological degradation which in turn is leading toward human extinction.[4]
Thus the assumptions of humanism have been turned upside down by the recent findings of scientists in diverse fields of study. Daniel Quinn dates the initial overturning to 1962, when Rachel Carson published SILENT SPRING, and we have no reason to dispute that dating. Ms. Carson told compelling stories of twin dangers: radioactivity from nuclear fallout, and DDT and the other organochlorine pesticides. Carson showed many people for the first time that humans are capable of wrecking the Earth's ecosystems that sustain life. In the 35 years since SILENT SPRING, thousands of scientific studies have confirmed and expanded our knowledge of our true place in the order of things: we humanist humans are chiefly destroyers, desert-makers, dealers in death.
The effect of these revelations upon our culture has been devastating: the main intellectual, emotional, and spiritual underpinnings of our culture have been revealed as false. As a result, our culture is convulsed by confusion and chaos everywhere. Our history, legends, customs, laws, rituals, art, stories, and songs all derived from, and reinforced, the culture of humanism. Humanism told us our place in the scheme of things, our vision of where we fit in the universe. Now many among us --particularly the young --find themselves loose from their moorings, bereft of cultural guidance. The old humanist views, the old ways, the old myths, are pretty clearly leading us toward extinction, but life-sustaining alternative views, ways, and myths have not yet been widely accepted. In sum, we are in the midst of a revolution, with all the danger, pain and deep uncertainty that revolutions always entail.[5]
It is against this backdrop that we must view the "chemical wars" of our own time, of which the Alar story is but a minor skirmish.
Today, after 25 years of observing the chemical wars first hand, we can identify two main strains of thinking in the world of the chemical corporations and their acolytes: first, there is a Libertarian strain, which argues that "human liberty" is the highest value in the universe and that any effort by government to constrain corporate activities in the name of the "general welfare" (quoting the U.S. Constitution) is foolishly counterproductive at best, and sinful at worst. This Libertarian strain derives directly from the humanist worldview.
The second strain of thinking also derives directly from the humanist worldview: humans are exempt from great harm because they are the pinnacle of creation, the appointed masters of the planet and, indeed, of the universe. If a chemical causes cancer in mice, we should not assume that it might also cause cancer in humans --mice are not little men. Men are special.
ALAR AGAINST THIS BACKDROP: When Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued its report on pesticides and children's health in 1989, the news media narrowed the focus to a discussion of only Alar, a synthetic growth hormone sprayed on apples to hold them on the tree longer. High doses of Alar and its breakdown byproduct, UDMH, had been shown to cause cancer in both sexes of mice and hamsters and in male rats. (See REHW #530-#533.)
Today the chemical industry has many clandestine front groups that pretend to be "independent" and "scientific."[6] However, back in 1989, when the Alar story made it onto CBS's "60 Minutes" TV show, the chemical industry had only a few such "public interest pretender" groups. In 1989 the industry's main front group was something called the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). The ACSH had been started in 1978 by Elizabeth ("Beth") Whelan, who has a degree in public health from Harvard, a devotion to the chemical industry, and a quick tongue. Whelan's mission is to prove to the world that industrial chemicals are safe, particularly industrial chemicals in food.
ACSH does "independent" studies of topics like artificial sweeteners, then seeks funding from groups like the Calorie Control Council to disseminate the results. Monsanto and its subsidiaries, G.D. Searle and the Nutrasweet Co., gave ACSH $105,000 in 1992 making Monsanto "our largest funder," according to an ACSH memo.[6] The close ties between ACSH and the petrochemical industry are revealed in a comment by Ms. Whelan after she lost some funding from Shell Oil: "When one of the largest international petrochemical companies will not support ACSH, the great defender of petrochemical companies, one wonders who will."[6]
With a seed grant of $25,000 from Alar's manufacturer, Uniroyal (plus annual donations of roughly $600,000 from the likes of Exxon, Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Mills, and other chemical corporations),[7] ACSH got onto the Alar case like a bulldog in 1989 and hasn't let go since. More than any other organization, Whelan's ACSH created the false mythology of the "Alar scare." It was Whelan who coined the phrase "Alar hoax." If it is true that Beth Whelan almost singlehandedly created the false myth of the "Alar scare," it is also true that the "Alar scare" created Beth Whelan: "It was the great Alar scare of 1989 that boosted Whelan into the media stratosphere,"[8] says Howard Kurtz writing in the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW.
Because she has a sharp tongue and isn't constrained by the facts, Whelan is very quotable, and the press loves to quote her. For example, she'll tell you that the National Cancer Institute and the American Medical Association have both "gone on record saying that the use of Alar on apples never posed any risk to the health of either children or adults."[9] Unfortunately, Whelan's claim is completely false. Neither organization has ever taken an official position on Alar. Whelan made it up. But it sounds convincing, and this audacious style gets her onto the talk shows and into the newspapers where she spins out her false myths, her Libertarian revisions of recent history, and her "humans are special" defense of the chemical industry. It was Whelan who coined the phrase, "Mice are not little men," meaning chemicals that cause cancer in mere mice should not be of special concern to humans.
To the press, Whelan's consistent line is that "a virtual consensus" has emerged among scientists that Alar was never a threat to public health.[10] However, Whelan has to play fast and loose with the facts to create the appearance of such a "consensus." In February, 1992, Whelan prepared a memo called "Confidential update on Alar, 3rd year anniversary, quest to interest '60 Minutes' in an update."[11] The memo describes Whelan's efforts to gather statements from the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that Alar was not a problem. When she couldn't get such statements, she expressed dismay in her memo, "So many professional organizations, including the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society flatly refused to say that the food supply was safe, that pesticide residues in food were not a cause of cancer, that Alar did not pose a risk.... All of this only serves to make consumers worry more. Indeed the original statements we got from NCI and the current statements from ACS play right into the hands of those who seek to convince us that the American food supply is not safe because of the presence of pesticide residues," Whelan wrote.[11]
Nevertheless, at her press conference Whelan asserted again that there is a consensus among the world's scientific experts that Alar is safe for children to eat. And the press repeats these fabrications, thus establishing the enduring false myth of the "Alar scare."
The philosophy that underpins the false myth of the "Alar scare" seems to be this: Lies that shore up a disintegrating humanist culture are justified. Or perhaps it is much simpler than that: Lies that boost the chemical industry's bottom line are justified.
--Peter Montague
