<x-charset ISO-8859-1>It works both ways folks. Here is a recent quote from someone in the business:
Due to legislation that was heavily lobbied by companies like mine, laws were passed forcing schools to inspect and abate asbestos materials. I was one of the folks using scare tactics to startle mothers into thinking it's possible that their kids won't live to 12th grade unless they spend millions and millions to remove all the asbestos. Moms fell for it. Some schools raised taxes to pay for my work, others cut sports and busing to pay for it. The law required it, which makes great business sales. Meanwhile, according to NIOSH, a worker in an asbestos mill without using a respirator for 40 years has the same risk of getting lung cancer as a 1/2 pack a day smoker. Fact is, a kid was more likely to get killed on the playground or from lightening than die from exposure from asbestos pipe insulation in the basement. But I'm not going to play that angle, as it won't make me any money. Since 1988, I personally have made hundreds of thousands of dollars from asbestos regulations. Recently, I worked with a regulatory think tank to help develop regulations to inspect and abate lead- based paint from schools. You know, moms don't want lead-poisoned children! I figure once the regs pass, I'll be able to retire by age 45. Now, the world is full of people who get over on others, and those who think they are getting over on by others. But Darwin put it best, "Survival of the fittest". If I can get richer, but at the expense of others ignorance or stupidity, I'll do it in a N'York minute. Money is money, adn as ling as I'm not breaking laws, it's a means to the end. If you feel paying the book rate for service hours while the tech does it actually work in less than half the time is unfair, well, welcome to the real world. It's the norm. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <biofuel@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2004 12:09 PM Subject: [biofuel] Bush administration fudging data top scientists warn Bush administration fudging data top scientists warn By OLIVER MOOREGlobe and Mail Update Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004 Twenty Nobel laureates are among the scores of scientists who on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of using dubious science to gain public support for its policies. In an open letter, the Union of Concerned Scientists charges that supposedly independent advisory panels have been manipulated to suppress or minimize findings contrary to the White House's political agenda. Russell Train, a Republican who served as EPA administrator under both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said that he never once felt any pressure from either of those presidents. But on Wednesday he told a conference call: "how times have changed." Representatives of the group said that this manipulation has been done by appointing unqualified or biased people to the advisory panels, by disbanding some existing panels, by suppressing reports and by forgoing independent scientific advice. "The concerns we raise here at not academic abstractions," said Kurt Gottfried, Cornell professor of physics and chairman of the UCS. "The cavalier attitude toward science that has provoked us to speak out can produce tangible damage to the health, wellbeing and security of all of us, for generations to come." In some cases, another member of the group said, politicizing ostensibly neutral scientific advice can leave the public at great risk. "One of the most egregious cases mentioned in the report was the issue of the panel on appropriate levels of mercury and lead in paint, and in the environment in general," said Neal Lane, a former director of the National Science Foundation and a former presidential science adviser. "To appoint people who have clear conflicts of interest, because of their association with the paint industry, to panels that have to make difficult judgments on the scientific basis for limiting the amount of lead that is available in the environment, you could in fact do harm to hundreds of thousands of young people." The substance of the letter - which was signed by 60 prominent U.S. scientists, including Nobel Prize winners Steven Weinberg and James Cronin (physics) and Eric Kandel and Harold Varmus (biology) - was denied by the White House. "I can assure you that this is an administration that makes decisions based on the best available science," Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan told Reuters. He also said that the Bush administration had "worked on an independent peer review process to look at how science is used in regulatory decisions." Dr. Lane said that scientists understand that politicians must make their decisions based on any number of factors, not just the science, but he warned that efforts to fudge the data have gone so far that "leading policy-makers simply don't know what they don't know." "I've become increasingly concerned, even alarmed, by the Bush administration's actions to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system. Even, I think, to prevent the administration or the upper-level policy-makers of the administration from hearing any advice that might run counter to its political agenda," he said on a conference call with Dr. Train and Dr. Gottfried. "What you must not have is people on these panels who are unqualified, who have clear conflicts of interest, who have strong ideological views that have been publicly expressed on issues that run counter to the science. That simply confuses the information that then is provided to the policy-makers." 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