The lobbyist for an international pesticide manufacturer whose North American headquarters are located in Research Triangle Park, N.C. was among the industry insiders who helped Bush administration officials craft a policy allowing chemical testing on humans.
Jean Reimer, the Washington-based lobbyist for RTP-based Bayer CropScience, was among the pesticide industry representatives who
attended an Aug. 9, 2005 meeting inside the President's Office of Management and Budget, according to documents obtained by
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Also attending the meeting were representatives of
CropLife America, the pesticide trade association; Environmental Protection Agency officials; and a lobbyist for a law firm representing pesticide companies.
The
meeting notes detail industry concerns about the text of a proposed rule the Bush administration released a month after the gathering. "We should prevent Boxer from misunderstanding or misstating the meaning of the rule," Reimer said, according to the notes.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was an outspoken opponent of the industry's efforts to test its products on humans. In June 2005, the U.S. Senate approved a Boxer amendment that would have placed a one-year moratorium on the EPA's use of human testing data and restricted testing on pregnant women, infants and children. Boxer offered the amendment in response to a report requested by her and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that showed the EPA was reviewing more than 20 human pesticide studies that violated ethical, scientific and moral guidelines. Some of the studies involved dosing college students with a chemical warfare agent.
At the August OMB meeting, the CropLife America representatives urged, "Re kids -- never say never." They also noted that they "want a rule quickly" so therefore "narrow" is "better."
"These meeting notes make it clear that the pesticide industry’s top objective is access to children for experiments," says PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose groups works with EPA scientists prevented from voicing ethical and scientific concerns about human testing. "For an administration which trumpets its concern for the ‘value and dignity of life,’ it is disconcerting that no ethicists, children advocates or scientists were invited to this meeting to counterbalance the pesticide pushers."
The EPA adopted a final rule allowing human pesticide tests in January of this year, and the regulation went into effect last month. CropLife America called it a "necessary and appropriate step in risk assessment research." The Clinton administration had placed a moratorium on such research over ethical concerns.
The final rule contains loopholes advocated at the OMB meeting for exposing children to pesticides, such as testing on young workers. The rule also allows dosing experiments on infants and pregnant women using non-pesticide chemicals.
The disturbing history of human testing has heightened the emotional nature of the debate about the issue. Bayer scientists were among those who conducted human experiments in Nazi concentration camps. At the time, the company was a subsidiary of IG Farben, which manufactured the poison gas used to kill Nazi prisoners.
A catalyst for the policy change was Bayer's submission to the EPA in August 2001 of a human study of azinphos methyl conducted by a contractor in Scotland in 1998. Azinphos methyl is an insecticide derived from nerve gases developed during World War Two.
At least one participant from the Scottish azinphos methyl study came forward to accuse Bayer and its contractor of treating subjects unethically by failing to give them the information needed to give truly informed consent.
Subject Bruce Turnbull in 2003 told the Sunday Herald in Glasgow that he was told the chemical he ingested was a drug, not a pesticide. He was not told for whom the test was being conducted, or the fact that the substance already had been deemed "highly hazardous" by the World Health Organization. And the subjects -- who were paid 700 pounds, or about $1,000, for their participation -- were not given follow-up exams to test for the long-term effects of exposure. Turnbull later suffered from health problems that he believes may be related to pesticide ingestion.
Fawn Pattison, director of the
Agricultural Resources Center and Pesticide Education Project in Raleigh, says she's not surprised to learn that pesticide industry insiders helped write the rule allowing human testing.
"The pesticide industry was the only interest group in the nation not opposed to testing pesticides on humans, and they got their wish list granted -- even though EPA received hundreds of opposition letters from the public," Pattison says. "This new evidence confirms many people's suspicions about EPA: In recent years it has gone from an agency whose mission was protecting the environment to an agency whose mission is to shepherd polluters safely through the regulatory process."
