perchlorate tests on humans

[Guest guest]

Reminds me of fluoride

Kirk

 

http://www.ewg.org/reports/perchlorate/

Rocket Science:

Aerospace contractor pays Californians $1,000 to eat thyroid toxin in first

large-scale human test of water pollutant SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- On

behalf of military contractor Lockheed Martin, Loma Linda University is

conducting the first large-scale tests of a toxic drinking water contaminant on

human subjects -- a precedent medical researchers and Environmental Working

Group condemned as morally unethical and scientifically invalid. The Los

Angeles Times reported Nov. 27 that Loma Linda Medical Center in San Bernardino

is paying 100 people $1,000 to eat a dose of perchlorate every day for six

months. Perchlorate is a toxic component of rocket fuel that damages thyroid

function, preventing healthy development of fetuses and children and causing

cancer. It is found in hundreds of water supplies in California, most of them in

Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Although Loma Linda researchers defended

their study by claiming that perchlorate also has therapeutic

value, EWG has learned that its use as a medicine has been discredited since

1966, when Israeli researchers reported that large doses caused deaths and

severe illness among already-ill test subjects. The Times quoted Richard

Wiles, research director of Environmental Working Group, who said, " These tests

are inherently unethical. " (Documents from the Loma Linda study are available

here.) " It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to know that medical researchers

shouldn't feed toxic chemicals to humans, " Wiles added. The Loma Linda

subjects are being fed up to 83 times the " safe " level of perchlorate currently

set by the state health department, which is expected to review its perchlorate

standards in coming months. Next year, the U.S. EPA will begin national testing

of water supplies for percholorate in preparation for adopting national standard

If Lockheed Martin can persuade the state and EPA not to set strict standards

for perchlorate in drinking water, the company

will save millions of dollars in cleanup costs. The rocket maker is also being

sued for unspecified damages by a group of San Bernardino County citizens who

suffer thyroid cancer and other disorders from ingesting perchlorate that

leached from a now-closed Lockheed Martin plant into area water supplies.

According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the residents' attorney, Gary

Praglin, said of the Loma Linda study: " I think they ought to be ashamed of

themselves. " The Times said the Loma Linda study, sponsored by both Lockheed

Martin and the U.S. Air Force, is apparently the first large-scale study to use

human subjects to test the harmful effects of a water pollutant. The EPA has no

protocols or regulations for human testing, and to date only industry-sponsored

studies have employed human subjects. In September the agency's science advisory

panel said human testing should be used only with " the greatest degree of

caution. " But two members of the panel dissented

strongly, calling the studies dangerous and insufficient to judge the safety of

pollutants, especially for children. In their dissent, EPA panel members Dr.

Herb Needleman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Dr. J.

Routt Reigart of the Medical University of South Carolina wrote that allowing

human testing " lays the ground for a flood of research that should not be

conducted and should not be accepted by the EPA for regulatory purposes. " In

an editorial today, the Los Angeles Times noted that Lockheed Martin claims " It

is trying to promote science and human health, but the study is designed in ways

that could downplay perchlorate's dangers. . . . Regulators should be wary of

dubious research like the Lockheed study. " The director of the Loma Linda

study, Dr. Anthony Firek, defended the use of human subjects by saying that

perchlorate is also used as a therapeutic drug in rare cases to treat

hyperthyroidism. He said if perchlorate were only a toxic

pollutant, he would have declined to conduct the human tests. But use of

perchlorate as a hyperthyroidism treatment has been discredited for more than 30

years. In 1966 Israeli researchers conducted a study in which large doses of

perchlorate were fed to a group of 76 patients with hyperthyroidism. The study

found 10 serious complications among the group, including two deaths, one of a

patient who developed aplastic anemia, where bone marrow fails to produce blood

cells, and another who died of agranulocytosis, where there is a marked decrease

in a type of white blood cell critical to immune function. In addition to the

fatalities, there were two more cases of agranulocytosis and two of leukopenia,

a significant decrease of white blood cell count. The authors wrote: " In our

opinion the results do not justify the continued use of perchlorate in the

therapy of thyrotoxicosis. " In a report on the Loma Linda tests in this week's

U.S. News & World Report, Dr. Gina Solomon

of the Natural Resources Defense Council, member of a recent EPA advisory

committee, said: " They are giving people a chemical that flunked as a medicine. "

A recent study by the Arizona state health department of infants near Lake Mead,

Ariz., which is contaminated with perchlorate, found that many were born with

altered thyroid function. The director of the study, Dr. Ron Breckner, told EWG

he was surprised that the Loma Linda subjects were not told of the 1966 Israeli

study. In a letter to the president of Loma Linda University, EWG warned that

the ethical and scientific cloud over human testing means that " the human

subjects in this experiment, including Loma Linda University students in all

likelihood, will have accepted risks during the course of an experiment that

will yield results that are unusable for any regulatory purposes. " " I am

writing to express serious ethical, scientific, and policy concerns about this

human study, and to strongly urge the university

to terminate it immediately, " EWG President Ken Cook wrote in a Nov. 22 letter

to Loma Linda President B. Lyn Behrens. Cook said Loma Linda should not " be

complicit in a corporate strategy to permit long-term perchlorate contamination

of tap water, and associated exposure to many thousands of individuals in

proximity to the University, in large parts of Southern California, and in other

states. " Cook also urged the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Center, where some of

the Loma Linda tests are being conducted, and Boston University, which employs

one of the researchers, to terminate their participation in the study.