By Rich Kozlovich
The Alar story is a most enlightening account of how abuse of bureaucratic power, scare mongering by the media, and self enrichment by the green activists can create a real mess. If you ask most people who are somewhat familiar with this story how it all got started they will tell you that it was the 60 Minutes broadcast that did it. That is inaccurate; although the 60 Minutes segment set the story on fire, if you dig deeply into the whole Alar story you find that it takes so many twists and turns that it is hard to believe; but this is how the whole thing started.
In 1982 the EPA got caught up in a superfund scandal. By March of 1983 EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford resigned after finding herself in a bureaucratic mess between the EPA and the Department of Justice in an attempt to deal with this scandal. One prominent EPA staffer was fired and others left.
What has this to do with Alar? Everything! Because of the black eye EPA received over this it was decided that something had to be done to restore their credibility to the public. So what did they do? They felt that they needed to ban something, and since anti-pesticide activists love anyone who wants to ban something, they started looking around and viola; Alar was to be the target.
Why Alar? It had been used successfully as a growth regulator to keep apples from falling off trees since 1963. In 1983 the EPA placed Alar under “special review” and in 1984 they claimed that Alar was a potential carcinogen for children because after administering massive doses of Alar to mice tests showed that that it might cause cancer. It might be noted that rodent testing as a determinate as to what is carcinogenic has come under attack from the scientific community. Although critics of this procedure don’t disavow the value of using rodent testing, they dismiss the idea that EPA should be determining what is carcinogenic based on rodent testing alone.
On August 23, 2005 the American Council on Science and Health petitioned the EPA to “eliminate "junk science" from the process by which it determines whether a substance is likely to cause cancer in humans” under the Information Quality Act (IQA), which requires the government to use the best science available. Nearly five months later the EPA responded by “claiming that their Risk Assessment Guidelines are not statements of scientific fact -- and thus not covered by the IQA -- but merely statements of EPA policy.” If their policy guidelines aren’t based on scientific fact, what are they based on? What were they based on in 1985?
The reality is that in 1985 the EPA own “Scientific Advisory Panel” concluded that the laboratory animal studies of Alar were too flawed to use.” However, the anti-chemical people became involved to “help” EPA to ban Alar, because no matter how much they studied the matter EPA couldn’t develop enough evidence to justify banning Alar.
Eventually facts and studies were irrelevant. The NRDC, through Fenton Communications, a public relations firm that seems to specialize in representing radical environmental groups, approached 60 Minutes with this unwarranted health scare.
“Following the release of a report called “Intolerable Risk” — which claimed that Alar was “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply” and blamed the chemical for “as many as 5,300” childhood cancer cases — Fenton and NRDC went on a five-month media blitz. The campaign kicked off with a CBS 60 Minutes feature seen by over 50 million Americans. Despite the fact that the claims were completely unfounded, hysteria set in. Apples were pulled off of grocery shelves, schools stopped serving them at lunch, and apple growers nationwide lost over $250 million.”
However, “from the standpoint of the NRDC and Fenton Communications, the campaign against Alar had been a phenomenal success. The public had been panicked, the product had been destroyed, and a major media organization, 60 minutes, had been a willing tool in carrying out the operation. Further, membership and contributions to the NRDC increased.” Worse yet, “after the election of President Clinton, the EPA ceased being an unwitting participant in the toxic scare campaign.”
“The Wall Street Journal printed one of David Fenton’s internal memos, after the Alar-on-apples scandal was publicly debunked. Here’s Fenton in his own words: “We designed [the Alar Campaign] so that revenue would flow back to the Natural Resources Defense Council from the public, and we sold this book about pesticides through a 900 number and the Donahue show. And to date there has been $700,000 in net revenue from it.”
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan states that “the Alar scare was totally without scientific merit. By the early 1990s, authorities ranging from the World Health Organization to U. S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop confirmed that there was never any health risk posed by the use of Alar. Even the late Don Hewitt, creator of 60 Minutes, told me that he regretted having done the Alar segment, but Ed Bradley, the producer of the piece, refused to retract it.”
When junk science becomes policy it is because the policy was already a conclusion in search of data. And when there is no data available… then apparently any old conclusion will do.
In days gone by the Pravda media controlled the narrative and anyone who refused to be interviewed must have had something to hide, but here's what I observed about 60 Minutes going back many years ago. It was the 60 Minutes who was doing the hiding. And they're still doing it.
I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced (“cut and pasted”) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought, all in an effort, possibly illegal as part of the “News Division,” which must be licensed, to make her look “more Presidential,” or a least, better. It may also be a major Campaign Finance Violation. This is a stain on the reputation of 60 Minutes that is not recoverable - It will always remain with this once storied brand. I have never heard of such a thing being done in “News.” It is the very definition of FAKE NEWS! The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY! This is an open and shut case, and must be investigated, starting today! - Donald Trump
Update, 10/11/24, 1:00 PM: ‘Race and Culture Unit’: CBS goes old Soviet Russia-style with new department that approves stories before they’re allowed to air…
If Trump had been interviewed they would have sliced and diced his word also, but in total disregard for the truth.Mike Wallace did a piece on the Moonies, and they said they'd do it only if they showed the entire piece. 60 minutes refused, but they agreed to allow the Moonies to film the whole interview. I noted how the usually smug and confident Mike Wallace didn't show up that day. It was the uncomfortable and a bit nervous Mike who showed up. That was an enlightening moment for me, since it was clear, at least to me, that was because he knew they couldn't cut the interview to suit themselves without being exposed for their corruption. I knew then beyond any doubt Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes wasn't to be trusted, and neither is his son, Chris Wallace.
And this vile partisan corruption is ubiquitous in the media, and has always been so! In Andrea Widburg's article, CBS News continues its decades-long decline into the leftist muck, she starts out saying:
Until the day he retired, my parents revered CBS News’s Walter Cronkite. Combining dignity with a gentle flow of compassion and wisdom, and always with a warm twinkle in his eye, he informed Americans about events worldwide. Then he concluded the show by saying, “And that’s the way it is.” They told me how they wept with him when President Kennedy died, and they believed him when he lied about the U.S. victory in the Tet Offensive, a lie that effectively lost the Vietnam War for America. In those days, CBS News had gravitas, and no one knew understood was pushing propaganda along with its straight news reporting.
She goes on to say CBS interviewed a guy named Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose claim to fame, other than being a vicious antisemitic liar, is"
"..........blacks in America are among the world’s most abused people, victims of a vast “white-wing” (my word) conspiracy, and entitled to scads of money and preferential treatment to compensate for America’s endless sins...... Coates is a communist, he despises Jews and, therefore, the world’s only tiny Jewish nation....
She went on to say:
I also believe that leftists cannot bear the thought of a moral God before whom they’ll one day be called to account. The essence of communism is that they are the gods, and they will not accept competition. Jews, by their very existence, remind communists that they’re probably wrong.
He expected to get the usual disgusting and fallacious fawning interview for which these networks are now famous. That's not what he got, and he was totally unprepared for Tony Dokoupil who actually insisted he "defend those views about Israel." End result? He looked idiotic, and the management at CBS was outraged at the interview. Why? It was racist! And immediately imposed DEI indoctrination on the staff. Let's try and get this right once, just once, please. Truth isn't racist, it's just the truth!
The big take away from all this is these "news" organizations? They've been lying to America for decades, and now America knows it. They're being exposed daily as nothing more than leftist propaganda machines, and are now collapsing under the weight of all their lies.