Good News/Bad News July 18, 2002

By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted July 18, 2002.

It's been a black week for GN/BN. Everything from food disasters to global warming has come up on the BN side, and we've found very little reassurance from GN that things are gonna turn around. That said, let's jump into the stinking cesspool of our global environment:

BAD News

How's this for bad news: Not only are these "trans fats" unsafe at any level, they're like dark matter in the universe: we know they're out there, but we just can't prove where they are! I think it's time for everyone to go raw...
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And for all you who gave up red meat after the Mad Cow disease scare, now it's time to stop eating chicken, too: Thanks to the glorious innovations of our agribusiness giants, poultry products destined for grocery stores has been saturated with beef protein to make it absorb extra water and thus sell for higher prices.
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First Yucca Mountain, now this: Even though the Congress of the U.S. has passed its bill to create a toxic playground deep in Yucca Mountain, they still need somewhere to store all this waste until then. Why not store it above ground, 45 miles outside Salt Lake City?
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Did you hear the one about getting Prozac in the mail? That was classic. Now, the manufactured-illness industry is going to get a little smaller. Pfizer is going to buy up its biggest competitor, Pharmacia (already a megaconglomerate), thereby becoming the first, last, and almost only name in legal drugs.
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More pharmaceutical goodness: It seems that a preposterous amount of glucose syrup tainted with the synthetic hormone progesterone turned up in pig feed, meat, and even soda pop in the Netherlands, and spread from there to Belgium, Germany, France and Spain.
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Beautifully enough, the responsible party for the above story is none other than Wyeth Medica. You may remember Wyeth Medica from the breaking news this week that their hormone treatment medication, Premarin, causes cancer in women who take it to ease menopause symptoms. Turns out that Wyeth's plant outside Dublin is the one that mislabeled the toxic waste as "green" waste, and therefore fit for consumption.
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How is this for a stunning headline: Secret U.S. Biopharms Growing Experimental Drugs. Apparently, the drug companies are hoping that in the not-too-distant future, if you need an abortion or heart attack medication you can get them by eating a nice bowl of genetically modified rice. This story is almost too shocking to believe, and yet, here are the Details

Moving away from Big Pharma, let's talk about GM foods some more: Japan this week approved the marketing and sale of GM corn and soy for human consumption. Until this decision, the U.S. was the major market for GM goods, since Europe has banned them and Asian countries have large concerns about their safety. Europe's still steadfast, but the dominoes are tumbling....
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Good News, at last

There's lots more bad news from the past week, but we can neither handle dishing it out, nor taking it.

Though few and far between, the good news was pretty sweet this week:

Eleven attorneys general sent a highly-publicized letter to President Bush asking him to end the "regulatory void" on greenhouse gas emissions this week. Who knows if it will make a difference to his policy, but at least we're finally showing the world that some of our leaders believe in and want to stop climate change.
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Thanks to widespread public disapproval and intense lobbying against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling, New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman believes that pro-exploration Congresspeople have gotten the hint that it just won't fly. At least not until this election cycle is over ...
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Green buildings are hot: Nearly 400 buildings are seeking certification as environmentally sound and ecologically friendly. The latest to get certification, the Chicago Center for Green Technology, is only the third of its kind, but many more are soon to come ...
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Matt Wheeland is an editorial intern at AlterNet.

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