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---March 18, 1999---
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS ACTIVISTS MURDERED
Three American human rights activists were murdered March 5 in northeastern Arauca province in Colombia, South America, where they had traveled at the invitation of the U'wa people. Since 1992 the U'wa have been locked in a life-and-death struggle to protect their homelands against oil drilling by Occidental Petroleum of Bakersfield, California. Various environmental and indigenous peoples' organizations from North America have been supporting the 8,000 U'wa in their efforts to repel, by peaceful means, the invasion of the oil giants. (See https://uwa.moles.org)
Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, a Menominee from Keshena, Wisconsin was a well-known indigenous leader in the U.S. She was co-chairperson of the Indigenous Women's Network, headquartered in Rapid City, South Dakota.[1] She and her murdered companions, Lahe'ena'e Gay, 39, an indigenous leader from Hawaii,[2] and Terence Freitas, 24, a biologist and California native, were visiting the U'wa people in the Andes mountains to plan an education system to help the U'wa retain their culture in the face of growing pressure from outsiders.
The three Americans were abducted at gunpoint February 25 while driving to a provincial airport to fly home. Eight days later, on March 5, their bodies were found bound, blindfolded, and riddled with bullets. Initially it was not clear who had kidnapped the three activists,[3] but on March 10 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) acknowledged that one of their field commanders had perpetrated the crime. (See https://burn.ucsd.- edu/~farc-ep/communic.htm; omit the hyphen.) With 7000 troops in battle dress, FARC is the largest armed group waging civil war against the Colombian government.
The NEW YORK TIMES reported March 11 (pg. A10) that Raul Reyes, a FARC spokesperson, said, "Commander Gildardo of the FARC's 10th Front found that strangers had entered the Uwa Indian region and did not have authorization from the guerrillas. He improvised an investigation, captured, and executed them without consulting his superiors." FARC has refused to turn over the murderers to Colombian or U.S. authorities but said they would be "sanctioned" in keeping with FARC's code of revolutionary justice. According to the Associated Press, Reyes said the guilty parties may face the death penalty, and he said FARC "requested forgiveness from indigenous peoples around the world."[4]
The backdrop for these murders -- the big picture -- is that the U.S. has depleted its domestic oil reserves and is now aggressively drilling for oil in Latin America and elsewhere. As the WASHINGTON POST summarized it in 1991, "Big Oil is heading south -- or east or north, or anywhere, so long as it's outside the United States. At an accelerating pace, the major U.S.-based oil companies are shipping their exploration and development capital overseas. Tens of billions of dollars that once would have been spent to drill wells or build refineries in the United States are being earmarked for foreign operations."[5]
In 1992, Occidental Petroleum formed a consortium with Shell Oi and the Colombian government. The consortium planned to explore for oil beneath the homelends of the U'wa people, a plan that Colombia's Supreme Court later said violated the constitution that Colombia had adopted in 1991. The U'wa call themselves "the thinking people" and so far -- through successful law suits, publicity, and organizing opposition in North America -- they have outmaneuvered the oil companies and their supporters in the Colombian government. No oil drilling has begun on U'wa land, though Occidental still insists it intends to begin drilling at the earliest opportunity. The U'wa have threatened mass suicide if drilling begins.
Besides the U'wa, three separate revolutionary groups that are fighting to overthrow the Colombian government are also opposing oil development. Their techniques include kidnapping, murder, and frequent use of high explosives -- techniques also employed by a string of U.S.-supported Colombian governments.[6]
The Indigenous Women's Network issued a statement March 8th, before FARC's leadership acknowledged responsibility for the murders. The statement said, in part,
"We, the members of the Indigenous Women's Network, address our comments to the world. On February 25, we received word that our sister Ingrid Washinawatok, the Co-Chair of The Indigenous Women's Network and Lahe'ena'e Gay and Terence Freitas, two other members of a humanitarian delegation to the U'wa People of Colombia, were kidnapped. It was during the end of their visit that our sisters and brother were kidnapped by hooded men in civilian clothing from the car they were traveling in. The three were part of a delegation that had been invited by the U'wa People to join in prayer and solidarity. The purpose of the trip was to assist the U'wa People in establishing a cultural education system for their children and support the continuation of their traditional way of life.
"The morning of March 5, the U.S. Embassy contacted the families of Ingrid, Lah'ena'e and Terence informing them their bodies had been found in Venezuela about 30 yards from the border of Colombia. They had been bound, blindfolded, beaten, tortured, and shot numerous times. It was through Ingrid's credit cards, which were still in her possession, that they were able to trace their identity so rapidly.
"The Indigenous Women's Network, joining with the Menominee Nation, and other Indigenous Nations, is calling for a full prosecution of those responsible, and an investigation into the actions of the U.S. State Department in reference to this incident. We believe that the U.S. State Department destabilized negotiations and ultimately cost our sisters and brother their lives in a possible attempt to gain financial support for U.S. policies in Colombia.
"We attribute this assertion to the fact that exactly during the negotiations for the release of the three humanitarian workers, the U.S. State Department released approximately $230 million in military support for the alleged Anti-Drug War in Colombia. The Colombian government then attacked and killed over 70 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in an orchestrated attack. We believe that these two overt acts may have destabilized any hopes for the release of our sisters and brother.
"The U'wa People live in the Arauca province in Northeastern Colombia. The U.S. multi-national oil corporations, Occidental Petroleum and Shell Oil, had been carrying out oil exploration in the area known as the Samore block, the ancestral homelands of the U'wa People. It is estimated that these oil fields hold less than 1.5 billion barrels of oil, equating to less than a three-month supply for the U.S. The U'wa People had threatened to commit mass suicide if these oil companies were successful in their exploitive endeavors.
"U.S. and Colombian government officials were prompt to lay blame on the left wing guerilla forces of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia). This situation is not one that blame can be established through words of government officials without conducting an investigation. It is a much more complex crime.
"The reality is that the indigenous community and the U.S. State Department had both been involved in negotiations for the release of these three humanitarian workers. Apesanahkwat, Chairman of the Menominee Nation, was active in attempting to negotiate the release of the hostages as soon as he heard of their capture. 'I sent a direct communique to the leadership of FARC two days after [Ingrid] was captured. The FARC leadership had sent a response by e-mail the morning of the hostages' death,' Apesanahkwat said, 'They sent greetings to us as a relative indigenous group, and said they were optimistic about seeking her release,' he said. Yet, as Apesanahkwat noted, the U.S. government sent money for arms to the Columbian government four or five days after the kidnappings, knowing that those arms might be used against the rebels who may have held the kidnap victims, and that the kidnap victims might well be executed in retaliation. Seventy FARC rebels were killed in a government-led attack just before the kidnap victims were executed.
"We, the Indigenous Women's Network join with the Menominee Nation is calling for a Congressional inquiry into the State Department actions in Colombia, with regards to this incident. We also request , on behalf of our sister Ingrid, that her death not be used to forward political ends of the U.S. State Department, but that instead, it be recognized as a crime, a continuation of the Indian wars....
"Ingrid and her companions gave the ultimate sacrifice -- their lives -- in the struggle for the attainment of human rights for Indigenous Peoples. State Department support will increase the militarization of a country already fraught with one of the highest rates of violence in the Western Hemisphere, and a state continuing violence against Indigenous peoples. It is against violence, and for the life of the people and the land, that Ingrid, and the others stood.
"Ingrid as well as her companions viewed the situation of the U'wa as a part of the global struggle for Indigenous self determination as well as the preservation of the natural environment. The deaths of our three companeros must be understood as having a direct relationship to the many thousands of deaths of those who seek human justice not only in Colombia but throughout Latin America and other parts of the world.
"We who work for social justice must ensure that further repercussions do not fall on the U'wa community simply because they sought and received international solidarity and support from groups like Project Underground [www.moles.org/], the Indigenous Women's Network and the Pacific Cultural Conservancy International.[2] The Indigenous Women's Network and others will do our utmost to see that justice is done and that we will continue Ingrid's fight in her support of the U'wa Peoples and all those who work for social justice....
"As women, we are the Mothers of our Nations. We share the responsibility of being life-givers, nurturers and sustainers of life--as Mother Earth is a life giver.
"The Indigenous Women's Network is committed to nurturing our children and planting seeds of truth for generations to come. We do not want to repeat past mistakes. We will continue our work to eliminate the oppression of colonization, and to end the Indian wars...."
THE CANCER WAR GRINDS ON
In 1996 Donna Shalala, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, declared that the war on cancer was finally showing results. "This looks like a turning point in the 25-year war on cancer, and it should be cause for celebration by every American," she said.[1] Shalala made her dramatic pronouncement to underscore the fact that the death rate for all cancers combined had declined 2.6% during the period 1991-1995. It was the first sustained decline since the government started keeping cancer statistics in the 1930s.
Cancer deaths declined for cancers of the lung and prostate in men, breast and uterus in women, and colon/rectum in both sexes. Since these are the most common cancers, they drove down the overall death rate.
We suspect that these reported trends are questionable because reputable studies indicate that many cancers remain undiagnosed unless an autopsy is performed, and autopsy rates have declined in recent years.
However, for purposes of discussion, let's assume that the government is right, that age-adjusted deaths from all cancers combined really did decline 2.6% between 1991 and 1995.
Despite this bit of good news, the details of cancer in this country are still awful. Cancer struck 1,228,000 Americans for the first time in 1998, and 564,800 Americans died of cancer in 1998.[2] A man's chances of getting cancer during his lifetime are now 48% (about 1 out of 2) and a woman's chances are now 38% (about 4 out of 10). Clearly, we have a very long way to go before we can claim that the "war on cancer" has been won.
Furthermore, the good news about cancer hides some terrible injustices. For example, the largest declines in cancer death rates between 1991 and 1995 occurred among African-Americans. The death rate for all cancers combined declined 5.6% among blacks between 1991 and 1995. The decline was especially great among black men, whose cancer death rate decreased 8.1%, compared to black women, who experienced a 2.5% decline during the same period.
Despite this good news, the overall age-adjusted cancer death rate is still 40% higher among black men compared to white men, and 20% higher among black women compared to white women.[1]
Why do blacks die of cancer so much more than whites? The Director of the National Cancer Institute, Richard Klausner, phrases it delicately: "less access to care and less aggressive treatment" play a role, he says.[1] Less aggressive treatment? There is an extensive body of literature showing that many physicians give second-class medical care to black patients.[3] Perhaps this occurs because blacks tend to be poorer than whites, but perhaps it also results from a widely-shared (and perhaps subconscious) racist view that blacks deserve less than whites.
The "cancer establishment" has a ready explanation for the declining death rates from all cancers combined. They say roughly half the overall 2.6% improvement in cancer death statistics, 1991-1995, can be accounted for by improvements in "life style" -- less smoking, better diet, more exercise. They say the other half results from better diagnosis and treatment -- more people are being kept alive by chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.
But Richard Clapp at the Boston University School of Public Health points out that heart disease is caused by these same factors -- smoking, bad diet and insufficient exercise.[4] Because of improvements in these factors, deaths from heart disease have declined 49% during the past 25 years. If heart disease and cancer are caused by the same factors, why has the cancer death rate remained so high? It cannot be simply that cancer is a disease of old age. Heart disease, too, is a disease of old age. Is something else besides "life style" factors causing cancer? It is a fair question.
We note that in a 1990 cancer prevention booklet titled EVERYTHING DOESN'T CAUSE CANCER, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) says, "Many cancers could be prevented by reducing our exposure to carcinogens."[5] The NCI identifies 30 chemicals or industrial processes that are known to cause cancer in humans. Furthermore, NCI says, "Of the several hundred other chemicals that cause cancer in animals, however, it is not known how many are also human carcinogens. Nevertheless, materials that cause cancer in one type of animal usually are found to cause cancer in others.... For these and other reasons, we should expect animal carcinogens to be capable of causing cancer in humans."
The NCI goes on to explain why weak cancer-causing chemicals cannot be reliably identified among the 70,000 chemicals now in industrial use. In a typical test of a chemical for carcinogenicity, "groups of about 50 mice or rats of each sex are exposed to the test substance at different dosages for about two years." At the end of the experiment, the animals are killed and examined for cancer.
NCI goes on: "In the human population, large numbers of people are exposed to low doses of chemicals, but the total impact may not be small at all. For example," NCI says, "a carcinogen might cause one tumor in every 10,000 people exposed to it, which may not seem great. But exposure of 230 million Americans would result in 23,000 cancers -- a public health disaster."
NCI goes on: "We obviously could not identify a carcinogen that causes one cancer in every 10,000 exposed mice by running the test on only 50 mice. To detect such a low cancer rate, we would need tens of thousands of mice. This would cost many millions of dollars per test. Testing more than a few chemicals in such a fashion would be too expensive and time-consuming," NCI says.
NCI also points out that it is difficult to identify which carcinogens cause which cancers because "A chemical that causes cancer of the liver in mice, for example, might cause cancer of the breast in rats and cancer of the bladder in humans."
Is there a safe level of exposure to a cancer-causing chemical? NCI says no: "There is no adequate evidence that there is a safe level of exposure for any carcinogen." And "Low exposure that might be safe for one person might cause cancer in another.... Unfortunately, scientists have not yet developed any way to measure a person's individual risk. Exposure to a low level of a carcinogen thus has to be considered a risk for everyone," NCI says.
Here is the big picture of cancer: Table 1 shows that during the last 45 years, the incidence of all cancers combined has risen 1.0% each year and the death rate for all cancers has increased at the rate of 0.2% each year. If we exclude lung cancer, the increase in the incidence of all other cancers is still 0.8% each year for the past 45 years, but the death rate has declined at the rate of 0.4% each year. A rising incidence and a dropping death rate, taken together, mean more people are learning to live with cancer.
TABLE 1
U.S. Cancer Incidence and Deaths in 1995, and the Percent Change
in Age-Adjusted Rates of Incidence and Death per 100,000 U.S. .
Population, 1950-1995. .
. .
. -----ALL RACES------- ------WHITES---------
Cancer Incidence Deaths Percent Percent
type in 1995 in 1995 change in change in
. (estimated) incidence, deaths,
. 1950-1995 1950-1995
----------------------------------------------------------------
stomach 22,800 13,645 -76.6 -79.5
cervix 15,800 4,503 -79.3 -75.1
rectum 38,200 8,053 -26.8 -67.0
colon 100,000 49,591 +15.4 -19.1
larynx 11,600 3,871 +41.7 -13.1
testicles 7,100 314 +109.6 -72.3
bladder 50,500 11,083 +54.0 -34.8
Hodgkin's disease 7,800 1,431 +15.0 -73.0
childhood (0-14 yr) 8,300 1,584 +9.8 -66.5
leukemias 25,700 20,323 +8.9 -3.5
thyroid 13,900 1,122 +138.8 -49.9
ovaries 26,600 13,341 +2.4 +0.6
lung 169,900 151,099 +257.0 +261.2
skin melanomas 34,100 6,905 +426.0 +154.4
breast (female) 183,400 43,843 +56.1 -5.1
prostate 244,000 34,475 +204.0 +14.4
kidney 28,800 11,083 +128.9 +37.2
liver 18,500 11,191 +131.1 +30.9
non-Hodgkin's .
lymphomas 50,900 22,391 +199.3 +137.0
multiple myeloma 12,500 10,250 +199.5 +209.1
brain 17,200 12,062 +80.0 +46.3
pancreas 24,000 26,765 +10.8 +16.7
. .
All types ex- .
cluding lung 1,082,100 387,338 +42.1 -16.6CHLORINE CHEMISTRY NEWS
Several new studies have implicated chlorinated chemicals in human disease, including breast cancer and tooth decay. Chlorine chemistry is clearly the premier example of humans adopting a new technology without thinking about the consequences.
BREAST CANCER
A recent study in Denmark reveals a relationship between breast cancer and the chlorinated pesticide dieldrin.[1] The prospective study examined blood taken in 1976 from 7712 women enrolled in the Copenhagen City Heart Study. In the following 17 years, 268 of the women developed breast cancer.
The blood samples drawn in 1976 were analyzed in 1993 for 46 chlorinated chemicals, including 28 individual PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls], and 18 other chlorinated compounds such as DDT, mirex, aldrin, dieldrin and others.[2] Of the compounds studied, only dieldrin was significantly elevated in the blood of women who developed breast cancer. Beta-hexachlorocyclohexane (beta-HCH) was also elevated in women with breast cancer, compared to those without breast cancer, but the finding was not statistically significant.
In Denmark, about 14% of all women (one in seven) develop breast cancer, and the incidence of the disease has more than doubled in the past 30 years.
Most of the identified "risk factors" for breast cancer indicate that estrogen (female sex hormone) in a woman's blood plays an important role in the disease. The major known "risk factors" for breast cancer are early menarche (early age when the period begins), late menopause, not having any children, late conception of the first child, and hormone-replacement treatment after menopause. All of these factors tend to increase a woman's lifetime exposure to estrogens circulating in the blood.
The Copenhagen study found that the risk of breast cancer was twice as high in women with the highest concentrations of dieldrin in their blood serum, compared to women with the lowest concentrations. Furthermore, a significant dose-response relationship was evident -- the more dieldrin in the blood, the greater the chance that breast cancer would develop.
Some previous studies have implicated certain organochlorines in breast cancer, while other studies have shown no such relationship.
The authors of the Copenhagen study say theirs is the first to properly compare blood levels of organochlorine compounds because they adjusted completely for varying levels of serum in the blood of each individual. They conclude that, "These findings support the hypothesis that exposure to xeno-oestrogens may increase the risk of breast cancer." Xeno-oestrogens are industrial chemicals (such as pesticides) that can mimic estrogen in the human body.
The use of dieldrin in Denmark and in the U.S. was banned about 20 years ago but, in the industrialized world, nearly everyone's body still contains small amounts of stored dieldrin, along with several hundred other industrial poisons, many of them chlorinated.
DIOXIN
For several years, U.S. and European health authorities have been hinting that the general public is being exposed to levels of dioxin that are probably causing harm in sensitive people. Now the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has confirmed the bad news.
The term "dioxin" encompasses a family of 219 different toxic chlorinated chemicals, all with similar characteristics but different potencies.
Because some dioxins are more toxic than others, scientists have established a way of comparing the toxicities and the quantities of various mixtures of dioxins. The technique is called TEQ, or toxic equivalents. The TEQ system takes into account the variations in toxicity, expressing toxicity in terms of the most toxic dioxin, which is TCDD, or 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p- dioxin.[3]
Dioxin is a highly toxic, unwanted byproduct of many industrial processes, including incineration of municipal, medical and hazardous wastes; metal smelting; the burning of fossil fuels; the manufacture of many pesticides and other chemicals. (See REHW #636.) We are all exposed to dioxin through our diets, mainly by eating fish, meat, and milk products. Vegetarians get much less than the average, but they do not get zero because dioxin falls out of the air onto vegetation.
Last December, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in Atlanta published the long-awaited final report, TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR CHLORINATED DIBENZO-P-DIOXINS.[4] The report had been circulating in draft form since 1991. In the final report, ATSDR establishes a Minimum Risk Level (MRL) for chronic (long-term) exposure to dioxin. An MRL is the amount of total dioxins (expressed as TEQs) that ATSDR believes people can take in day after day without suffering adverse health effects.
ATSDR's official MRL for chronic (long-term) exposure to dioxin is one picogram of dioxin TEQ per kilogram of body weight per day.[4,pg.264] The new ATSDR report says that the average exposure of U.S. citizens is currently three to six times as high as this "safe" level.[4,pg.253] (A picogram is one trillionth of a gram, and there are 28 grams in one ounce.)
Thus ATSDR gives us reason to wonder whether people are being harmed at current background levels of dioxin.
Shortly after ATSDR released its final dioxin report, a new study was published showing that some people have defective teeth as a result of exposure to current background levels of dioxin.[5]
The new study was conducted by dentists in Finland who have been studying dioxin for a decade. In the early 1980s, they noticed that many children had poorly developed molars -- discolored and soft. The normal hard enamel coating was partially missing, making the teeth subject to decay.
The researchers hypothesized that the children were being exposed to some toxin early in life and this was interfering with normal growth and development of their teeth.
Chinese children born to mothers who were accidentally exposed to high levels of dioxins showed tooth problems similar to those in Finnish children.[6] Taking this as a clue, the Finnish dentists began exposing rats to low levels of dioxin. They found that they could produce the same kind of tooth defects in the rats that had been seen in the Chinese and Finnish children.[7]
Next they studied 102 Finnish children, ages 6 to 7, whose mother's breast milk had been tested for dioxins when the children were four weeks old. Seventeen of the 102 children (16.6%) had soft, mottled molars, with insufficient enamel to protect the teeth from decay. If a tooth fails to develop a proper enamel coating, the tooth is subject to decay for the rest of the person's life because enamel never develops later.
The Finnish study found that children with the worst teeth were born to mothers with the highest levels of dioxin in their breast milk, thus establishing a dose-response relationship.
The researchers examined PCBs separately from the other dioxins and dioxin-like compounds and they found that the PCBs did not contribute to the children's tooth problems.
The Finnish researchers' new findings "are very exciting in a scientific sense--and very concerning in a public-health sense--because they demonstrate effects from [dioxin] exposures at background levels," says Linda Birnbaum, a well-known dioxin researcher with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).[8]
According to ATSDR, many people in the U.S. and elsewhere have dioxin exposures that exceed the average. These include:[4,pgs.485-497]
** People who are exposed at work, or through environmental contamination, such as people living in Times Beach, Missouri;
** People living near incinerators that are burning municipal, medical or hazardous wastes, or people living downwind from coal-burning power plants;
** People living near any of the 110 Superfund sites where dioxins have been identified. (Superfund sites are chemically-contaminated places that the federal government has identified as dangerous to human health.)
** Sport fishers in the Great Lakes regions are very likely to have high exposure to dioxin, with Lake Huron the highest, Lake Michigan next highest, and Lake Erie the lowest.
** Currently 66 fish advisories have been issued by 21 states because of dioxin-contaminated fish. Three states -- New York, New Jersey, and Maine -- have statewide fish advisories in effect for all of their marine coastal waters, warning people to limit the amount of fish they eat because of dioxin contamination.
** Many indigenous people eat far more fish than the average. Under these circumstances, even low levels of dioxin contamination in fish can add up to a hazard.
** Subsistence farmers who consume their own farm-reared meat and dairy products may be highly exposed if they live downwind from an incinerator or a metal refinery or other source of dioxins.
** People eating food grown on soil treated with sewage sludge may be in danger. ATSDR says, "Exposure to [dioxin] from land application of municipal sewage sludge or paper mill sludge also can occur through the dietary pathway if people consume food grown or animals grazed on sludge-amended lands."[4,pg.497] And: "Most recently, MacLachlan... reported that the prolonged use of sewage sludge as a soil amendment on English farms under some conditions can lead to an increase in the concentrations of [dioxins] in both the soil and in cow's milk."[4,pg.497]
The question is, can humans do things differently in the future, or are we doomed to stumble from one uninformed decision to another? Are there social mechanisms (such as environmental impact analysis) that could help us avoid massive mistakes like chlorine chemistry?
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