Having problems with message search?
Scientists Identify Corporate Structure as Bad for Public Health
Corporate power is a major cause of health problems, according to the October/December 2005 special issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health. Contributions to the issue reveal how corporate structure results in pressure to influence science and place the public at risk from pesticides, lead, asbestos,
toxic municipal sewage sludge, and other harmful substances.
"Occupational and environmental health diseases are in fact an outcome of a pervasive system of corporate priority setting, decision making, and influence," state guest editors David Egilman and Susanna Rankin Bohme. "This system produces disease because political, economic, regulatory, and ideological norms prioritize values of wealth and profit over human health and environmental well-being."
Skip Spitzer, Program Coordinator at PAN North America and a contributing author to the journal notes that, "In market economies, private corporations play such a decisive role in the economic sphere that they are often able to secure more rights than people. Corporations deeply influence politics, law, media, public relations, science, research, education and other institutions. It's no surprise that corporate self interest routinely supersedes social and environmental welfare."
In his article "A Systemic Approach to Occupational and Environmental Health", Spitzer describes how corporations are part of a "structure of harm", meaning that the very way in which corporations are structured produces social and environmental problems and undermines reform. The pressure to compete in the marketplace and create demand for their products creates incentives for corporations to shape the political system, the mass media, and science for commercial ends. Corporations use this power to avoid taking responsibility for the larger environmental and social impacts of their actions (or "externalities"), including the public health impacts of developing dangerous new technologies. Spitzer quotes Reagan administration economist Robert Monks describing the corporation as "an externalizing machine, the same way that a shark is a killing machine - no malevolence...just something designed with sublime efficiency for self-preservation, which it accomplishes without any capacity to factor in the consequences to others."
The editors conclude that corporate corruption of science is widespread and touches many aspects of our lives, as indicated by the range of articles in the issue. In "Genetic Engineering in Agriculture and Corporate Engineering in Public Debate", Rajeev Patel, Robert Torres, and Peter Rosset analyze Monsanto's efforts to convince the public of the safety of genetically modified crops. Other articles describe how industry pressure on government agencies such as EPA have influenced cancer research and resulted in approving toxic municipal sewage sludge as crop fertilizer.
"Occupational and environmental health diseases are in fact an outcome of a pervasive system of corporate priority setting, decision making, and influence," state guest editors David Egilman and Susanna Rankin Bohme. "This system produces disease because political, economic, regulatory, and ideological norms prioritize values of wealth and profit over human health and environmental well-being."
Skip Spitzer, Program Coordinator at PAN North America and a contributing author to the journal notes that, "In market economies, private corporations play such a decisive role in the economic sphere that they are often able to secure more rights than people. Corporations deeply influence politics, law, media, public relations, science, research, education and other institutions. It's no surprise that corporate self interest routinely supersedes social and environmental welfare."
In his article "A Systemic Approach to Occupational and Environmental Health", Spitzer describes how corporations are part of a "structure of harm", meaning that the very way in which corporations are structured produces social and environmental problems and undermines reform. The pressure to compete in the marketplace and create demand for their products creates incentives for corporations to shape the political system, the mass media, and science for commercial ends. Corporations use this power to avoid taking responsibility for the larger environmental and social impacts of their actions (or "externalities"), including the public health impacts of developing dangerous new technologies. Spitzer quotes Reagan administration economist Robert Monks describing the corporation as "an externalizing machine, the same way that a shark is a killing machine - no malevolence...just something designed with sublime efficiency for self-preservation, which it accomplishes without any capacity to factor in the consequences to others."
The editors conclude that corporate corruption of science is widespread and touches many aspects of our lives, as indicated by the range of articles in the issue. In "Genetic Engineering in Agriculture and Corporate Engineering in Public Debate", Rajeev Patel, Robert Torres, and Peter Rosset analyze Monsanto's efforts to convince the public of the safety of genetically modified crops. Other articles describe how industry pressure on government agencies such as EPA have influenced cancer research and resulted in approving toxic municipal sewage sludge as crop fertilizer.
Source: International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, http://www.ijoeh.com/
Caroline Collard
World's first fully certified organic skin, body, oral and health care products
Yahoo! Model Search - Could you be the next catwalk superstar? Check out the competition now
Offline 
Send Email