Entine, J

===

promoted to evil 6/14 on bees

entinebak

ENTINE 2 12/15 atz new tag

see Times Beach in Scared to death book: 62 horses!

8/14 tag; entne (no i)

he's at uc davis? explains veterinarians on petition?

see STATS

OMG wikipedia

4 24 gmail

conspiracy nut Robert Kennedy, Jr. is desperately trying to convince the American voting populace that he is indeed a serious candidate, all while doing his very best to play third party spoiler and gift wrap the election to the disgraced former president Trump. Someone share with Aaron Rodgers’ hand chosen candidate that a reliance on the most bizarre Russian invented conspiracy theories won’t get the job done.

According to Kennedy, there is something in the water. In fact, the son of Bobby Kennedy, believes that the water is making Americans gay and trans, entirely feminizing a population of men in the process. Yes, the apple has fallen far from the tree. Although Kennedy is doing his very best to distance himself from the most bizarre conspiracy theories he has shared over the years, Kennedy has been conveying the following for awhile:

I think a lot of the problems we see in kids, and particularly boys – it’s probably underappreciated how much of that is coming from chemical exposures, including a lot of sexual dysphoria that we’re seeing. They’re swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today and many of those are endocrine disruptors. There’s atrazine throughout our water supply. Atrazine, by the way – if you in a lab put atrazine in a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there. And 10% – the male frogs will turn into fully viable females able to produce viable eggs. If it’s doing that to frogs, there’s a lot of other evidence that it’s doing it to human beings as well.

IFrame Content

Yes, a major presidential candidate just compared human beings to frogs. As you may have guessed, Kennedy does not have a medical background either, so he is hardly an authority on anything of this nature.

Shockingly, actual experts disagree with Kennedy’s studious assessment. Dr. Andrea Gore, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at University of Texas contends that sex for human beings is determined at conception and unlike frogs or other amphibians, can not be altered by the chemicals Kennedy references in his eloquent and thoughtful diatribe. According to Gore,

I don’t think people should be making statements about the relationship between environmental chemicals and changes in sexuality when there is zero evidence.

Dr. Linda Kahn, professor of pediatrics and population in health at New York University, got right to the point

Comparing humans to frogs is an apples to oranges kind of thing. Humans metabolize atrazine and excrete it from the body within 12 hours.

Genetic Literacy Project editor’s note: RFK, Jr is wrong in endorsing claims by some environmental activist groups that atrazine or other chemicals found at micro-trace levels in drinking water — far below what the EPA or any serious oversight regulatory agency believes could cause any harm — “feminize” boys/men. The Genetic Literacy Project and other media have reported extensively on claims by the University of California-Berkely biologist gone rogue, and found his claims unconvincing (**[**here**,**here**). For more than 20 years, Hayes has refused to release his “data” for review by the EPA or independent scientists whose own studies do not document the feminization Hayes claims to have found.

The EPA has**reviewed**,**re-reviewed**and**re-re-reviewed**his claims under multiple administrations and has found no evidence that atrazine is dangerous at the low levels we encounter it in the environment, and it certainly does not feminize males. In 2007, the EPA wrote a scathing 321-page review of Hayes’ claims, and found no data — Hayes’ or anyone else’s — in support of the thesis that RFK, Jr. swallowed and propagates. Since that EPA report, and refusing to accept the global science consensus, Hayes in cohort with the kooky-left wing of the environmental movement — Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council and other anti-chemical activists, including a tiny but vocal minority of scientists and ambulance-chasing lawyers (e.g., RFK,Jr.) —have kept this bogus claim alive partly because mysterious illnesses can be claimed and blamed on ‘chemicals’ even without hard data. — Jon Entine, GLP]

The man whose campaign began in Steve Bannon’s basement is wrong, as in factually incorrect, but like other paid Russian propagandists that won’t stop Kennedy from disseminating this dangerous propaganda to an audience of millions. These millions are eager for any disinformation that will allow them to further hurt the LGBTQ community.

Kennedy’s famous family, meanwhile fully endorse President Joe Biden for 2024 and that says a whole lot.

pix Junior’s family with :coughs: President Joe Biden

A version of this article was originally posted at It’s The Russians Stupid and is reposted here with permission. Any reposting should credit both the GLP and original article.

===

https://www.desmog.com/2022/12/09/pesticide-industry-science-denial-monsanto-glyphosate-cancer/

As regulators in the United States and European Union prepare to review and potentially reauthorize the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, anew report reveals the stealth tactics and narrative spin deployed by the chemical’s manufacturer to discredit inconvenient science and protect profits.

The report, published by Friends of the Earth and nonprofit investigative organization U.S. Right to Know, uses the case study of Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) and its widely used glyphosate-based product Roundup to illustrate the pesticide industry’sdeceptive tactics and communications strategies — which mirror those of the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.

“The pesticide industry is not just following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco and Big Oil, they co-wrote the playbook,” Stacy Malkan, lead report author and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, said.

The pesticide industry used this PR strategy, which involves tactics like distorting science and disseminating misleading messaging through third party allies, to convince regulators and the public that its products were safe and necessary, the report explains.

“This case study provides an important window into how one company worked with many partners across the pesticide and processed food industries, academia, PR firms, and various front groups to sell the world on a toxic pesticide,”said author and advocate Anna Lappé, who contributed to the report. “These disinformation tactics are critical to understand because they have been used to push the entwined myths that we need pesticides to ‘feed the world’ and that they are totally safe.”

Despite mounting scientific evidence of their harms to human health and the environment, pesticides have proliferated, withglobal usage up by about 80 percent since 1990. The most widely used pesticide in the world is Roundup, which is alleged to have caused cancers. Litigation over this cancer link is ongoing, spurred by a 2015 finding from the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm classifying the chemical as a probable human carcinogen.

[twt]

the report, released December 5, brings together internal corporate documents revealed through this litigation, as well as documents obtained through public records requests filed by U.S. Right to Know, to illuminate the extensive campaign by one of the world’s leading pesticide manufacturers — Monsanto, acquired by Bayer in 2018 — to disseminate disinformation and manipulate science regarding the health and environmental impacts of glyphosate.

These strategies have been “used by the pesticide industry for decades now and [their] impact on public health is enormous,” Nathan Donley, PhD, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told DeSmog via email.

Litigation concerning the health hazards of various pesticides, including glyphosate, stems from companies hijacking the regulatory process, he explained. “This can happen multiple ways, from pressuring decision makers at the EPA to producing enormous amounts of biased data that guide the actions of regulators. It’s been very effective unfortunately.”

For example, as noted in the report, under pressure from Monsanto in 1986, EPA overturned its own decision made the previous year to classify glyphosate as a possible human carcinogen. To this day, EPA maintains the position that glyphosate is not carcinogenic and does not pose human health risks if used according to its label. However, the agency is planning to conduct a new review of the chemical after a federal appeals courtstruck down EPA’s previous designation of glyphosate as benign.

The report found that over a five-year period, seven front groups with links to Monsanto spent $76 million “to push corporate disinformation, including attacks on scientists.” During that same period, six industry trade associations that appear in Monsanto PR papers spent $1.3 billion, including on lobbying and PR around glyphosate regulation.

It also argues that the pesticide industry’s current business model “would not be possible if pesticide products were subject to rigorous, independent research and if there were widespread public understanding of the harms and risks of many of these products.”

“It’s clear from this report and all the work that’s been done in this field that corporate influence in science-based decision-making is way too common,” said Genna Reed, director of policy analysis in the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and lead author of a2021 study exploring ways to protect scientific integrity from the corporate “disinformation playbook.”

“This isn’t just a wonky policy problem,” Reed added. “This is a massive institutional rot that needs to be fixed to protect public health.”

Fossil Fuel and Pesticide Industry Parallels

In addition to pressuring regulators, Monsanto deployed other strategies to discredit evidence of health and environmental harms of its glyphosate-based product. The report found that Monsanto undermined or even shaped the science, attacked public health experts, bought influence at academic institutions, and used third party messengers to pollute the public discourse. These are the same strategies — and in some instances involved the same actors — that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries used to generate doubt and to deceive the public about the harmful consequences of their products.

According to the report, Monsanto covertly contributed to the scientific literature examining the health risks of glyphosate, ghostwriting papers in toxicology journals, including an influential paper published in April 2000 that concluded that glyphosate-based Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” Internal company emails reveal that Monsanto employees played critical roles in data collection, drafting, editing, and relationship-building with the paper’s authors. In the wake of the 2015 glyphosate classification from the World Health Organization’s cancer research agency, Monsanto ghostwrote scientific manuscripts published in a prestigious journal as an “independent review” on the science of glyphosate. The company also orchestrated a campaign to intimidate cancer researchers and enlist Republican lawmakers to try to defund the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm.

[twt]

monsanto’s influence extended to academia.The report details how the company funded academics and universities to promote educational messaging supportive of pesticides and genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) — seed traits designed to resist toxic chemicals. Emails obtained from records requests reveal that the University of Florida, for example, “had plans for ‘educating the masses’ about GMOs and pesticides with messaging that was ‘harmonious’ with Monsanto’s,” Malkan explained.

This co-opting of academia was part of a larger pro-pesticide PR strategy. As the report explains, PR firms that helped Monsanto defend glyphosate and promote GMOs have worked with other polluting industries, including tobacco and fossil fuels. For example,**FTI Consulting**,which has worked extensively with the oil and gas industry, has also worked closely with Monsanto/Bayer to discredit the science on glyphosate.

Furthermore, as the report details, one industry front group that worked to attack cancer scientists and dispute the evidence linking glyphosate to cancer was the Genetic Literacy Project. Its founder Jon Entine has worked in defense of chemicals, plastics, fracking, and oil companies, and the group’s funding sources “trace back to some of the largest, most consistent funders of climate science denial.” These include foundations like Donors Trust, Scaife Foundation, and Charles Koch Foundation. Other institutions that engaged in climate denial — including Competitive Enterprise Institute,Heartland Institute,Cato Institute, andCommittee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) — also attacked scientists who raised concerns over glyphosate, according to the report.

“This is not surprising since nearly all agricultural chemicals are derived from fossil fuels,” Malkan said, adding that both industries are continuing to mislead the public in portraying their business or products as essential to climate and sustainability solutions.

“Just like Big Oil, pesticide companies are using disinformation tactics to push false solutions for the climate crisis, and stalling action on real solutions,” Malkan added. ADeSmog investigation published in November 2020 described how pesticide companies are now marketing themselves as climate-friendly.

“Pesticide companies are desperately trying to, and in many instances are successfully greenwashing the poisons they make billions of dollars selling,” Lori Ann Burd, senior attorney and environmental health program director at Center for Biological Diversity, said via email. She added that many U.S. government officials have adopted the pesticides industry’s position that their products are necessary.

“USDA, EPA and many members of Congress have largely bought in to industry rhetoric that dangerous pesticides are essential tools for feeding Americans, ignoring the reality that many countries, including Brazil, China and nations within the E.U. continue to eat despite having banned dangerous pesticides that are still widely used in the U.S.,” she explained. UN human rights experts have also pushed back against the claim that pesticides are necessary to feed the world.

Bayer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

Countering the Disinformation Playbook

The report concludes with some recommendations and steps to take to counter the pesticide industry disinformation playbook. According to this advice, which is aligned with that of other experts in fighting disinformation, exposing the tactics and strategies and enforcing strong disclosure and accountability rules are important steps to mitigate undue industry influence.

“We need to continue to shine a light on these practices and actively work on policies that can serve as firewalls,” Reed of the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

Other recommendations include challenging corporate influence in academia and holding PR firms accountable. Just as there are now campaigns to do just that for fossil fuels, the report calls for similar action and pressure for combatting pesticide industry influence and enablers.

“While the propaganda tactics of Big Oil and Big Tobacco are well-documented and their grave impacts well understood, the pesticide industry’s similar role in widespread disinformation, and its extensive scope and impact, has not been as well documented or publicly understood. We hope this report, and the chorus of recent reporting, will change that,” the report states.

===

===

ggl doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PPkRCl98kqsVGTPK2p7mOMdv68eAFjtIIrWi-vpgCFM/edit

...

Analysis:

Inside the Wire: one problem with exposing PR people is that their highest priority is self-protection, they are good at it and because the stakes are high will often fight dirty. Invoke spec-ops hubris: deny everything, make counter-accusations. The Entine article on Sourcewatch, a site dedicated to exposing activities like his, is in fact a fluff piece he wrote about himself, with one link to Mojo that does in fact critique him.

Like a virus trying to pick the lock of a cell to infect it, Entine is very good at insinuating himself into sources that are/ seem legitimate, but they have an apparently unmoderated blog (or they just put in what could seem to be a useful warning (these opinions are those of the author only) but easy to ignore if noticed at all as just a symptom of our litigious times). eg Scientific American; Moreover, his pieces are long and apparently draw on legit sources in legit ways, do not take the ridiculous extreme positions that hacks do (and maybe the hacks make him look reasonable by comparison), and he occasionally tosses in faint praise for the other side (and trots out noble motives for his actions, such as protecting the idea/brand/rep of CSR when he is actually trying to discredit it).

National Press Club we would think is a professional organization that enforces standards; instead it’s a venue with a podium (and with two restaurants) that can be rented by anyone.

Perhaps because the hacks are slowly getting exposed (Singer, Soon etc), the quasi-academics like Lomborg are the fallback, but really equally dangerous because delay is deadly.

https://www.desmogblog.com/statistical-assessment-service

desmog STATS

820

...Sense About Science USAwas launched in late 2014 and partners with the pro-GMO Alliance for Science. [11]

Genetic Literacy Project (GLP)

The Genetic Literacy Project, described by *U.S. Right to Know*as “a central player in Monsanto and the agrichemical industry’s public relations efforts to promote genetically engineered foods and pesticides,” was formerly connected to STATS but later denied this connection. [12]

The following was posted on a 2012 archiveof the GLP's website: [13]

“Statistical Assessment Service

The GLP is affiliated with STATS, which is a non-profit, non-partisan resource on the use and abuse of science and statistics in the media. Its goals are to correct scientific misinformation on public policy issues resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge; and to act as a resource for journalists and policy makers on scientific issues and controversies. Two of its executives play a crucial role in overseeing the work of the GLP: S. Robert Lichter, President of STATS, Professor of Communication at George Mason University and President of the Center for Media and Public Affairs holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and has also served on the faculties of Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Georgetown and George Washington Universities; and Donald Rieck, Executive Director, who received his MA in Political Science and MBA from Temple University.”

Center for Health & Risk Communication, GMU

The GLP and STATS are affiliated with the CHRC, which provides an organizational framework for stimulating innovative health and risk communication research collaborations, health promotion intervention projects and community interventions. […]” [13]

A revised statement on the GLP's website, as of March 29, 2016, read as follows:[14]

“The Washington, DC office of the GLP-founded and independently run GENeS project has an office in the University of California Washington, DC building but receives no university support of any kind, including for the office itself.The GLP has no affiliation with George Mason University (and never had an affiliation with GMU) or with the Statistical Assessment Service, which is now defunct. From 2011-2014, GLP operated as an independent entity within STATS, which provided accounting services to the GLP, until the GLP was able to secure independent 501c3 status in 2015. GLP was not involved in STATS activities.” [14]

While there was no official statement on the STATS.org website that it had dissolved at this time, between January 1, 2015andJanuary 28, 2015, the STATS website rebranded from “STATS” to “STATS.org” and cleared any mention of George Mason University. Under the new description, STATS.org described itself as “a joint project of the American Statistical Association and Sense About Science USA.”[15],[16],[17]

As of March, 2017, the STATS.org website redirected to Senseaboutscienceusa.org/stats.

Interestingly, the 2012 statement on the GLP website lists the Genetic Literacy Project as “a division of the Science Literacy Project.” According to nonprofit filings at the Economic Research Institute (ERI), the “Science Literacy Project”is also an alias of STATS. [2]

Stance on Climate Change

April 4, 2008

STATS commissioned a study by Harris Interactive on climate change views. According to the interpretation of S. Robert Lichter: [18]

“Scientists are still debating the dynamics and dangers of global warming.” [18]

Below is a list of 1996 - 2001 “Global Warming & Climate Change” articles linked on the STATS Website:

“The Sizzling Subcontinent.” VitalSTATS. May 2001.
“Some Climate Research Not So Hot.” Technopolitics.Howard Fienberg. April 27, 2001.
“Europe Emits C02, U.S. Cleans It Up.” Technopolitics. Iain Murray. April 13, 2001.
Dubious Data Awards 2000
“Climate casino.” VitalSTATS. March 2000.
“A Professor Pangloss for the Doomed Millennium?.” VitalSTATS. March 2000.
“What Global Warming Means, Scientifically.” Wall Street Journal. David Murray. February 24, 2000.
“The Worst Science of the Century.” VitalSTATS. January 2000.
“Methodology Meltdown.” VitalSTATS. May 1999.
“”MAKING THE CUT” IN ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS: Is some research more likely to attract headlines than others?“ VitalSTATS. March 1999.
“Mean-ingless Measures?“ VitalSTATS. February 1999.
“Tree-mendous Adaptability?“ VitalSTATS. March 1998.
“Temperature Tussle Turnabout.” VitalSTATS. October 1997.
“Point/Counterpoint.” VitalSTATS. October 1997.
“STATS' Best and Worst of the Month.” VitalSTATS. October 1997.
“Here's a Hot One.” VitalSTATS. April 1997.
“WARM FRONT: Print Media and Climate Change Coverage.” STATS Spotlight.
“Global Climate Change.” STATS Spotlight. July 1996
“Global Warming Plague Looming? Wrong.” USA Today. Tony Snow. February 19, 1996

Funding

The 2015 revamp of the STATS.org website offered a revised “note on funding”: [6]

“STATS.org is a non-profit and non-partisan project; it is funded by a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the American Statistical Association; it does not accept industry funding or support.” [6]

In 2013, STATS also claimed on their website that “We do not take money from industry or industry-related groups.” [19]

Conservative Transparencyhas documented STATS funding from several conservative sources. Totals are detailed below, including totals from publicly available 990 tax records.[20]

View the attached spreadsheet for details on STATS funding by year (.xlsx).

...[docs] [ppl tables]

Actions

June 5, 2013

The Statistical Assessment Service's Jon Entine (STATS Senior fellowand Executive Director of the Genetic Literacy Project) is a signatory toCenter for Industrial Progress' letter titled, “:{Don’t Divest}:, Educate—An Open Letter to American Universities:{.” }:[22]

In the letter, Alex Epstein and several other notable climate change deniers, including Peter Ferrara, J. Scott Armstrong, Steve Goreham, S. Fred Singer, David Schnare, Richard Lindzen, and Matt Ridley, proclaim that they are “proud to stand in favor of fossil fuels.” [22]

The “undersigned scientists, philosophers, energy experts, and economists” of the letter ask for a “more rigorous education on energy and environmental issues,” and “are willing to debate anytime, anywhere to defend what [they] believe is right.” [22]

April, 2008

STATS commissioned a study of climate scientists, conducted by Harris Interactive®. STATs reported that “Over eight out of ten American climate scientists believe that human activity contributes to global warming.” The study, entitled “Climate Scientists Agree on Warming, Disagree on Dangers, and Don't Trust the Media's Coverage of Climate Change” was released on April 24, 2008. [18]

According to the STATS interpretation of the results, “scientists are still debating the dynamics and dangers of global warming” and “Only 29% [of scientists] express a “great deal of confidence” that scientists understand the size and extent of anthropogenic [human] sources of greenhouse gases.” [18]

===

post NAS talk

http://www.:{forbes:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/23/will-the-us-national-academy-of-sciences-fumble-its-reassessment-of-gmos/

This National Research Council study is intended to provide an independent, objective examination of what has been learned since the introduction of GE crops, based on current evidence. The study will assess whether initial concerns and promises were realized since the introduction of GE crops and will investigate new concerns and recent claims.

The speakers offered the committee a range of views from university professors and non-governmental experts who have battled over biotech crops for decades. Below are my remarks at the conference, on September 16.

* * *

I’m Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project. We are a non-profit NGO. We receive no industry funding. We welcome blog contributions from anyone from any ideological perspective—supportive of or critical of human or agricultural genetics—including everyone on this panel and those testifying over these two days. I am also a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy at the University of California-Davis.

[MOST POPULAR

Photos: America's Best Business Schools 2015

Jon Entine

Introduction

Jon Entine is a media-savvy corporate propagandist and pseudo-journalistic "hit man" who fronts the opinions and positions of chemical corporations by pretending to be an independent journalist. He has ties to biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta while playing a key role in another industry front group known as the American Council on Science and Health, a thinly-veiled corporate front group that Sourcewatch describes as holding "a generally apologetic stance regarding virtually every other health and environmental hazard produced by modern industry, accepting corporate funding from Coca-Cola, Kellogg, General Mills, Pepsico, and the American Beverage Association, among others." (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php? title=American_Council_on_Science_and_Health)

His actions against targeted individuals or companies are systematically abusive and resemble "revenge journalism." Entine takes a "hit man" approach to single out individuals - especially critics of GMOs - for accusations and abuse, often calling them names or implying they are sociopaths or a danger to society.

Entine's deep involvement in the propaganda of poison-pushing corporations is also reflected in his own personal life, where he remains embattled in a bitter seven-year divorce during which he engaged in highly questionable behavior such as threatening his young daughter's therapist with a lawsuit if he continued to provide therapy sessions. At one point during the divorce, Entine's ex-wife pleaded with the court to demand a psychiatric evaluation of Entine, for which he refused to volunteer. (Source)

A protection order against Entine was issued by the courts in relation to his divorce battle.

Biography

Jon Entine is currently a visiting fellow at the American EnterpriseInstitute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a columnist for the British-based international magazine Ethical Corporation, and co-founder of E.S.G.Metrics, which advises business and NGOs on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, including sustainability and executive leadership (Sourcewatch). His most recent clients have included KKR, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Proctor & Gamble, American Greetings, Monsanto, DHL/Deutsche Post, Fischer Homes, and Pomeroy IT Solutions.

But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-judicial Prosecution (TFG Books, 2009), which focuses on the dangers of overzealous government prosecutors and the threat they pose to American civil liberties.

Before launching his consulting and writing career, he spent 20 years as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC, and was Tom Brokaw's long-time producer at NBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries.

One of Entine's books, “Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture”(AEI Press, 2006), purports to examine the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. But it is clear that the book is critical of anyone who questions the safety of GMO foods or otherwise supports further regulation of it, perhaps through legislation requiring GMO foods to be labeled, or by limiting the proximity of GM crops to fields planted with non-GM crops.

Though he is listed as a “visiting scholar”…

http://therefusers.com/refusers-newsroom/meet-jon-entine-pro-monsanto-gmo-activist-and-pro-bill-gates-activist/#.U4zcivldWSo

Cover-up, intimidation and 'paid-for research'

Over the past decade there has been growing controversy concerning atrazine, an herbicide of the triazine class. Atrazine is manufactured by Syngenta, a major biotechnology company, and the chemical is widely used in the United States and Australia to stop pre and post-emergence broadleaf and grassy weeds in crops such as sorghum, maize, sugarcane, lupins, pine and eucalypt plantations, and triazine tolerant (TT) canola.

As of 2014, in the U.S., atrazine was the second-most-widely used agricultural chemical after glyphosate (which goes under the trade name of Roundup, which was developed and is sold by Monsanto). Nearly 80 million pounds of atrazine is applied to U.S. crops annually http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3733-2004Aug15_2.html. As noted in an August 15, 2004, Washington Post story (see above link), atrazine is, according to the EPA, “the most prevalent herbicide in ground and surface water, remaining stable and toxic for decades in some environments.”Further, “It is also a major source of revenue for Syngenta, a Swiss company with U.S. headquarters in Greensboro, N.C., that sells hundreds of millions of dollars'worth of the chemical every year.”

The Post story noted that for years, the primary concern regarding atrazine was cancer, noting that “the chemical clearly causes cancer in rats.”Further, the Post reported, “male workers in Syngenta's production facility in Louisiana have experienced much higher rates of prostate cancer than other men statewide. But studies supported by Syngenta recently convinced the EPA that the mechanism by which atrazine causes cancer in rats probably does not occur in people.”The company's reasoning for the higher rates of prostate cancer among its Louisiana workers “is that it has an aggressive screening program that finds cases that would otherwise go undetected.”

The Post story further reported that previous studies on frogs were performed by biologist Tyrone Hayes, a U.C./Berkeley professor who found that tiny doses of atrazine affects frogs'sexual development. When Hayes “sought to publish his work and have the data considered by the EPA, the company told him to run the tests again, said Hayes and Tim Pastoor, a Syngenta vice president. When repeated studies confirmed the worrisome link, Hayes was reminded that his contract forbade him to publish without Syngenta's approval. He was told that his data ought to be passed to a company-selected statistician for double-checking.”Hayes quit the company he was working for at the time, EcoRisk, and published his findings on his own in a pair of peer-reviewed journals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003)

Enter Entine, Syngenta intimidation and the American Council on Science and Health.

Intimidation. (Per Wikipedia) “In 2014, New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv reported that Syngenta might have been orchestrating an attack on the “scientific credibility”of not just Tyrone Hayes, the lead critic of atrazine use, but other scientists as well whose studies have shown atrazine to have negative effects on the environment and/or human and animal health http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all.

“Paul Winchester, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote a paper that was published in Acta Paediatrica http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2008.01207.x/full reviewing national records for thirty million births, found that children conceived between April and July, when the concentration of atrazine, mixed with other pesticides, in water is highest, were more likely to have genital birth defects. Professor Winchester subsequently received a subpoena requesting that he turn over to Syngenta every e-mail he had written about atrazine in the past decade.

“Deborah Cory-Slechta, a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and a former member of the EPA's science advisory board, said that she, too, had felt that Syngenta was trying to ‘undermine'her work, after she published a study showing that the herbicide paraquat may contribute to diseases of the nervous system. “The folks from Syngenta used to follow me to my talks and tell me I wasn't using ‘human-relevant doses',”Cory-Slechta said. ‘They would go up to my students and try to intimidate them.

There was this sustained campaign to make it look like my science wasn't legitimate.'

“In one of the e-mails obtained by class-action suit plaintiffs, the company's communications consultants had written in 2005 that they “wanted to obtain Hayes's calendar of speaking engagements,”so that Syngenta could “start reaching out to the potential audiences with the Error vs. Truth Sheet,”which would provide “irrefutable evidence of his polluted messages.”Syngenta subsequently stated that many of the documents unsealed in the lawsuits refer to “ideas that were never implemented.”

Scientific abuse.

By 2012, a lot had happened regarding atrazine. As of 2001, Atrazine was the most commonly detected pesticide contaminating drinking water in the United States. By 2004 it had been banned for use by the European Union. Later, scientists would learn that the endocrine system was the system in humans and animals alike that atrazine targeted most heavily, while a 2008 study would report that tadpoles developed deformed hearts and impaired kidneys and digestive systems when exposed to atrazine in their early stages of life. Tissue malformation may have been induced by ectopic programmed cell death, although a mechanism was not identifiedhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235211/. The following year, in 2009, The New York Times discussed how atrazine could be a potential cause of birth defects, low birth weights and menstrual problems when consumed at concentrations below federal standards http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23water.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&.

atrazine in human water supplies. Syngenta agreed to pay $105 million to reimburse more than a thousand water systems for “the cost of filtering atrazine from drinking water”, although the company denied all wrongdoing http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2013/atrazine.

The EPA had conducted a number of reviews of findings regarding health risks posed by atrazine, but has still elected not to impose stricter regulations on its use.

Entine's ties to Syngenta, involvement with ACSH and defense of atrazine

Entine, the American Council on Science and Health offer to ‘help'Syngenta. An internal email disclosed in documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), as part of a major lawsuit against Syngenta, shows that the ACSH received regular money and even asked for additional funding from “Syngenta friends”to commission a book that would, in large part, be a defense of atrazine:

“As we made clear, ACSH is eager to commission a literature review on the general subject of pesticide exposure and human health. The paper would, of course, not be exclusively about atrazine, but the recent and ongoing “controversy”would be a primary focus.”

ACSH said it was committing $100,000 to the project –funding that was “separate and distinct from general operating support Syngenta has been so generously providing over the years, which we request to continue at current or increased levels.”

Entine was the author of the commissioned book.

In 2011 the ACSH produced its “companion friendly”paper called, “Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.”The book attacks the EPA and “harmful, unnecessary regulation”as well as the precautionary principle. It contains a chapter-long “case study”defending atrazine, just as members of the Syngenta PR team had been seeking. (http://acsh.org/2011/01/scared-to-death/) [acsh says it is based in his book?]

An investigative report by PR Watch also links Entine to the book: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/02/11277/syngenta-pr%E2%80%99s-weed-killer-spin-machine-investigating-press-and-shaping-news-about

Mother Jones magazine further reported:

CMD's investigation does not establish whether ACSH ever got Syngenta funding for that project. But CMD raises the possibility that Entine's slim volume Scared to Death might be the very booklet that ACSH's executive director envisioned in his letter to Syngenta. Entine flat-out denied this suggestion in an email exchange. "Syngenta is not a client and never has been. I have no clients in the agricultural or chemicals businesses," he wrote.

Michael F. Jacobson, the executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said this about the ACSH in a letter to the editor at the Washington Times: “The group is a receptacle for payments from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, food and other companies who appreciate the convenience of having their grantees and former employees serve on government science panels.”And the Center for Media and Democracy discovered that Syngenta's public relations division operated in part to protect the company's lucrative sales of atrazine (in a two-part report here and here). Entine's name shows up in these reports.

It's important to further note that, before ACSH stopped revealing donors in 1991, this online source reports that the “Monsanto Fund”was a corporate donor of $25,000 and above. Another donor was “The NutriSweet Company,”which was owned by G.D. Searle & Co., which in turn also funded Enzine-linked STATS. Pfizer, which held the NutriSweet brand, was also a donor to ACSH. This source is called the “Integrity in Science Project.”

In this Forbes piece further touting atrazine, Entine claims that Hayes'research was not “reproducible,” but this assessment

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/atrazine-and-health.html

by the Union of Concern Scientists notes that the hand-picked industry scientists chosen to “replicate”Hayes'research did not accurately copy Hayes'methods:

Dr. Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley, originally hired by the chemical company Syngenta to review studies to help certify the herbicide for re-registration with the EPA, was at first surprised when he found that African clawed frog tadpoles were “chemically castrated”when exposed to even trace amounts of atrazine –levels one-thirtieth the amount currently permitted in US drinking water. Hayes'findings were published in both Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hayes, who eventually resigned from the Syngenta review panel out of concern that his worrisome lab results were being buried, later charged that industry-supported scientists produced “a number of studies that were purposely flawed and misleading, and that changed the weight of the evidence.”The two remaining members of Syngenta's atrazine review panel claimed that they had each tried but failed to replicate Hayes'data. In the scientific world such a claim is an insult or worse, implying that the original

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experiment may have been dishonest or flawed. In this case, the two scientists had both experienced difficulties raising the frogs—many of which died before metamorphosis because of being overcrowded and underfed. One scientist reported that he had contaminated the water with too much atrazine.

In other words, the new studies did nothing to disprove Hayes'results, which have been “echoed by at least four other independent research teams in three countries.”When Hayes offered to help the Syngenta panel members and the EPA repeat his experiments to see for themselves whether atrazine posed a danger, the EPA declined. Nonetheless, the failed studies served to bolster the argument that the science linking atrazine to hormone disruption was uncertain.

So, Entine's claim that Hayes'experiments were “not reproducible”is not accurate because the research attempt at replicating Hayes'results was flawed from the start and was not conducted under the exact conditions Hayes first used to reach his conclusions.

Further, and under a byline stating that he was the “Director, Genetic Literacy Project, Statistical Assessment Service, George Mason Univ.,”Entine authored a piece for The Huffington Post attacking atrazine critics and defending the chemical:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/frog-day-afternoon-choose_b_853776.html

And as noted here, Entine has a history of defending chemical use, GMO foods and other industry initiatives on behalf of the chemical/biochemical/biotech industries on behalf of ACSH: http://acsh.org/?s=jon+entine&cat=0&x=31&y=22

In an investigative piece, Mother Jones revealed how heavily financed ACSH is by the very industries the “independent”organization defends: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-council-science-health-leaked-documents-fundraising :

According to the ACSH documents, from July 1, 2012, to December 20, 2012, 58 percent of donations to the council came from corporations and large private foundations. ACSH's donors and the potential backers the group has been targeting comprise

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a who's-who of energy, agriculture, cosmetics, food, soda, chemical, pharmaceutical, and tobacco corporations. ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation ($15,000), Dr.

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Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000), Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000), McDonald's ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria ($25,000).

See the document listing these donations here: http://www.motherjones.com/documents/809483-acsh-financial-summary#document/p4/a128808

More from the Mother Jones investigation:

Dr. Gilbert Ross, the group's executive director, declined to answer specific questions about ACSH's fundraising. He did not dispute the authenticity of the documents provided to Mother Jones. (Multiple corporations listed as donors on these documents confirmed they had supported ACSH.) Ross says the group doesn't disclose its backers because “the sources of our support are irrelevant to our scientific investigations.”According to Ross, “Only science-based facts hold sway in our publications, even if the outcome is not pleasing to our contributors.”

As Mother Jones reported in 2005, Ross was previously convicted for defrauding New York State's Medicaid program of roughly $8 million. His medical license was temporarily revoked and a jury sentenced him to 46 months in prison, of which he served 23 months. Ross currently has his license and is allowed to practice.

The ACSH was founded in 1978 by Elizabeth Whelan, a Harvard-trained public-health scientist, as a counterweight to environmental groups and Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy movement. At the organization's founding, Whelan stated that the council “intends to remain free from financial ties with corporations with a financial interest in the topics we are investigating.”

“ACSH calls the U.S. ban onDDT one of the 20 worst unfounded health scares of the 20th century. It ridicules the risks that chemical ‘endocrine disruptors'pose to human health and fertility. In addition to pesticides and chemical food additives, it has defended asbestos, Agent Orange and nuclear power. Whelan's nutritional advice has also raised eyebrows among health experts, many of whom take exception to her claims that there is ‘no such thing as ‘junk food,*and that ‘There is insufficient evidence of a relationship between diet and any disease.'” Source

From the start, ACSH has faced questions about its funding:By the early 1980s, ACSH's donors included Dow, Monsanto, American Cyanamid, Mobil Foundation, Chevron, and Bethlehem Steel. In 1984, Georgia-Pacific, a leading formaldehyde maker, funded a friend-of-the-court brief filed by ACSH in an industry-backed lawsuit that overturned a ban on formaldehyde insulation.ACSH claims it does not seek donations from corporations or trade groups that are earmarked for specific research projects –in short, there is no quid pro quo. But atMother Jones reported:*In a March 1992 internal memo obtained by Consumer Reports, Whelan wrote that ACSH staffers would ask the Calorie Control Council, a trade group backed by diet food and drink companies, and McNeil Specialty Products, a Johnson & Johnson

subsidiary that owned the US marketing rights to Splenda (an artificial sweetener), for contributions to underwrite the dissemination of a research paper touting artificial sweeteners. (Splenda was then seeking approval for sale in the United States.)*Entine's book (“Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health”) and chapter singing the praises of atrazine followed along with the Syngenta PR team's wishes.

In a piece for Forbes.com, published February 9, 2012, Entine attackedMother Jones magazine for its earlier exposé of Hayes; Entine's piece in Forbes was critical and an attempt as well to discredit Hayes'research, but again it was based on faulty premises.

ThisChicago Now piece dissects Entine's (and Forbes') claims: http://www.chicagonow.com/high-gloss-and-sauce/2013/08/forbes-atrazine-jon-etine-082013 The piece charges that an EPA-recognized study on the effects of atrazine on frogs which claimed not to be able to refute or confirm Hayes'studies is “mainly because of the limitations of the study designs and uncertainties in the data.”It was a problem with the EPA's own processes.

In Forbes, Entine argues that atrazine is “so gentle”it can be applied right after a “crop's first shoots”appear. But this is misdirection; the issue is that atrazine is harmful once it runs off into ground water, as Hayes'data show. PerChicago Now: “The EPA is

so aware of this and eager to dodge upsetting Syngenta, the makers of Atrazine (as well as avoid upsetting the public and showing their incompetence) that for the 2013 report on Atrazine, the EPA took the groundwater measurement in January, when toxin levels are typically low. (Atrazine is applied to farm crops in Spring.)”

As the EPA itself notes:

-“Atrazine is a commonly reported groundwater contaminant.”

-“Drinking water from a contaminated groundwater or surface water source can be a significant medium of exposure for children.

-“Exposure to children can occur primarily from ingestion of contaminated drinking water, and from dermal contact or ingestion following agricultural and lawn applications.”

-“Atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. surface waters, particularly in the U.S. Midwest Corn Belt region.”

The source for these EPA statements is here: http://www.epa.gov/teach/chem_summ/Atrazine_summary.pdf

In his Forbes piece, Enzine made these claims:The EPA's assessment reflects the consensus by many scientific bodies around the world, including the World Health Organization and regulatory agencies in Australia, Canada the European Union's safety review: atrazine has a short half-life, does not bio-accumulate in organisms, is not carcinogenic and study after study has shown it does not cause abnormalities and deformities at levels occurring in groundwater.As noted byChicago Now:

- Atrazine has been banned by the EU.

- The problem is not that it bio-accumulates in organisms, the problem is that exposure around the time of ovulation can cause adverse effects on embryos including chromosome aberrations (to quote the EPA, “Reproductive effects are the most sensitive

effects observed in atrazine toxicity tests”also, “Change in hormone levels is the most sensitive health effect observed in an extensive battery of atrazine toxicity tests” Source: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/atrazine/atrazine_update.htm

A National Institutes of Health study found thatsurface water atrazine and nitrate levels were related to increased incidences of abdominal wall defects. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17560200">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17560200

Also, an independent panel of scientists convened by the EPA recommended that the agency revise its assumption that atrazine “is unlikely to cause cancer.”Pointing to what it called "strong" epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer, the

panel states that the agency is currently acting with "inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential."

Entine essentially is defending the indefensible.

As reported byMother Jones here:*Last week, the EPA released the minutes of the panel's final meeting, which took place July 26-28. Its conclusions were stark. The panel criticized the EPA for lumping all forms of cancer together in its atrazine assessment, noting that "it would be useful and appropriate to make conclusions for individual cancers as opposed to making a blanket determination for cancer in general." It then gave a list of cancers for which there is "suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential": ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer. For other cancers—prostate cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancers, and childhood cancers—the panel found that "there is inadequate evidence" to determine whether or not atrazine is a cause.

At another point in the minutes, the panel pointed to "strong" epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer and "suggestive" evidence linking it to ovarian cancer. "Many on the Panel believed that the epidemiology data failed to provide compelling evidence that atrazine is not carcinogenic," the minutes stated.*Documents in the atrazine lawsuit revealed that Entine was one of the "third party outreach" people that Syngenta's PR contractor, the White House Writers Group, was in communication with over a pesticides conference that the AEI hosted.

This report by PR Watch confirms the “third party outreach”allegation. Here is the relevant passage:*"Unsealed e-mails reveal (PDF) that earlier that same week WHWG had reported to Syngenta that a third party the PR team was in communication with was Jon Entine of the American Enterprise Institute. Entine is a former producer with NBC and ABC News, whose books attacked the idea of socially responsible investing and the precautionary principle (Let Them Eat Precaution)."

Entine connections and funding organizations

Entine is founder of ESG MediaMetrics, “an alliance of strategic partners, to address an unfilled frustration voiced by corporations, business groups and civil society organizations: how to manage the complex nexus of media, public policy and sustainable management. This is a PR group aimed at attacking anyone and any group or company that dares to challenge the “scientific orthodoxy”of ESG clients.

Source: http://www.esgmediametrics.com/founder.htm

One of EGR's clients is Monsanto, according to this source.

Entine's EGR site discusses the firm's role:

We manage and create reputations. We bring to every challenge our vast experience as active journalists, public relations and media specialists, international scholars, and advisers for Fortune 500 corporations.One of the company'sspecific roles is “Communications and Public Relations Strategy,”but in an email to Mother Jones, Entine denied EGR was a PR firm:I consult with organizations, from fair trade groups to the Environmental Defense Fund to corporations. I'm committed to science. I do no corporate PR work. You can misrepresent what I do and call it PR work, but that would be deceitful. People who do what I do are generally called "green consultants," which I'm sure you'd never use as then I'd seem like a good guy and it's much easier to put people and what they do in neat little boxes that prevent real thinking.

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no ital:

As for listing Monsanto as a client on the ESG website, Entine wrote: "Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That's the entirety of my Monsanto relationship."

Entine has also worked with Jay Byrne's PR firm v-Fluence, which was set up by former Monsanto executives.

Genetic Literacy Project.

Entine is also executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project, which is affiliated with George Mason University. One of the organization's purposes is to promote GMOs. The GLP is also associated with STATS, or the Statistical Assessment Service and the Center for Media and Public Affairs. GLP has another “sister”organization besides STATS, and that is EconoSTATS, which promotes privatization and discourages

government regulation http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service. STATS has been funded in the past by Searle Freedom Trust, an organization founded by Big Pharma G.D. Searle & Co., makers of (among other things) aspartame (trade name “NutriSweet”) and is now part of Pfizer http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Searle_Freedom_Trust. The Searle Freedom Trust funds a number of organizations and think tanks aimed at promoting corporate bottom lines, even over sound science.

According to an email he sent Mother Jones magazine, Entine derives the bulk of his income from the GLP:

To hear Entine tell it, his defenses of atrazine and other pesticides are entirely pro bono and driven by his own initiative. He told me he gets "almost all" of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project, which, he added, is funded by what he called the Templeton and Searle foundations. The project is housed at the Statistical Assessment Service program at George Mason University, where Entine is a fellow. Though Entine would not specify which Searle trust funded the GLP, the Searle Freedom Trust's 2010 tax form lists a $154,000 grant to STATS for a "Gene Policy and Science Literacy Project," which sounds an awful lot like Entine's.

Entine is also listed as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute Entine uses his AEI platform as a “visiting fellow”to give himself credibility http://www.aei.org/scholar/jon-entine/, but he says he receives no money from the organization.

Entine as journalist hit-man

The Body Shop.

One of Entine's crowning achievements was the “take-down”of a business known as The Body Shop (TBS) during his waning days as a news program producer at ABC, in 1994. Unable to get the program aired at ABC, Entine eventually convinced a small-time journal, the Minneapolis-based Business Ethics magazine, to publish what can only be described as a hit piece against TBS. This was a long-term “investigation”by Entine, who seemed locked into TBS for some reason. Immediately prior to the publication of his piece in Business Ethics, TBS responded to his reported allegations, which were reported by Britain's Independent newspaper: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/besieged-body-shop-comes-out-fighting-1386286.html

“Mr. Entine was accused by the company of using questionable methods, and making ‘misleading statements which are seriously defamatory of The Body Shop. It added that he ‘has been engaged in a single- minded campaign of vilification against The Body Shop'.

“Mr. Entine is alleged to have described Anita Roddick, the company's founder, as a ‘schizophrenic and a sociopath.'

“He is said to have denounced the company in approaches to investors, franchisees and potential supporters. Yesterday's statement also accused him of pestering Anita Roddick at home, a claim Mr. Entine denies.

Among allegations to surface in the past 10 days are claims that the company's ‘Trade not Aid'policy of buying goods from indigenous peoples was not as vigorously pursued as The Body Shop had claimed, that Ms Roddick ‘stole'the company's concept from a tiny American outfit, and that it had been responsible for pollution in New Jersey.”

TBS' share prices fell on news of the report.

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As for listing Monsanto as a client on the ESG website, Entine wrote: "Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That's the entirety of my Monsanto relationship."

Entinehas also worked with Jay Byrne's PR firm v-Fluence, which was set up by former Monsanto executives.

}:Genetic Literacy Project.

*Entine is also executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project, which is affiliated with George Mason University. One of the organization's purposes is to promote GMOs. The GLP is also associated with STATS, or the Statistical Assessment Service and the Center for Media and Public Affairs. GLP has another “sister”organization besides STATS, and that is :{EconoSTATS, which promotes privatization and discourages

government regulation}: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service. STATS has been funded in the past bySearle Freedom Trust, an organization founded by Big Pharma G.D. Searle & Co., makers of (among other things) aspartame (trade name “NutriSweet”) and is now part of Pfizer http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Searle_Freedom_Trust. The Searle Freedom Trust funds a number of organizations and think tanks aimed at promoting corporate bottom lines, even over sound science.

According to an email he sent Mother Jones magazine, Entine derives the bulk of his income from the GLP:

Entine as journalist hit-man

The Body Shop. One of Entine'scrowning achievements was the “take-down”of a business known as The Body Shop (TBS) during his waning days as a news program producer at ABC, in 1994. Unable to get the program aired at ABC, Entine eventually convinced a small-time journal, the Minneapolis-basedBusiness Ethics magazine, to publish what can only be described as a hit piece against TBS. This was a long-term “investigation”by Entine, who seemed locked into TBS for some reason. Immediately prior to the publication of his piece inBusiness Ethics, TBS responded to his reported allegations, which were reported by Britain'sIndependent* newspaper: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/besieged-body-shop-comes-out-fighting-1386286.html

“Mr. Entine is alleged to have described Anita Roddick, the company's founder, as a ‘schizophrenic and a sociopath.'

TBS' share prices fell on news of the report.

However, according to environmental activist, writer, lecturer and organizer Lorna Salzman (Source: http://www.lornasalzman.com/collectedwritings/unwise.html) there was more to Entine's TBS episode behind the scenes. She writes:*Entine's lengthy CV on the web emphasizes his television news experience prominently. His last full-time TV stint was at ABC television's Primetime Live, but what Entine doesn't report is that he was fired from ABC during his investigation of TBS for “mistakes in methodology.” In a letter from London's The Sunday Times, the Deputy Editor explains how his paper was misled by Entine and how he misrepresented himself.

“We now know what we did not know then: ABC discovered Entine had made a number of mistakes in his methodology so serious that they had in effect fired him some ten days before. Entine, probably unknown to ABC, was however still picking up his messages from a phone on his old desk in the ABC building. We now understand from ABC sources that Entine is regarded as out of control and has been running around saying some wild things”(Ivan Fallon, letter from Deputy Editor of The Sunday Times, October 8, 1993).

Entine then sold the idea to Vanity Fair, a publication with many cosmetic advertisers who compete with TBS (Sandra Earley, “The Woman Who Wants to Save the World”, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). They rejected the story but paid Entine a $15,000 kill fee and $18,000 in expenses. (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996).It isn't as if Entine is some Norman Mailer; his bio up until this article shows no other published stories but a recent book on black athletes got some media attention.

Entine tried to bring the story to other magazines without success, and finally Business Ethics, a small financially struggling publication, paid him $300 for the story and published it. Entine then turned around and made a $1000 donation to the magazine (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). The publication of this story, to which Business Ethics would not allow a rebuttal, damaged TBS'image and stock value. Two years after the article appeared, Entine's wife Ellen Turner was hired to be a marketing executive for The Limited, the parent company of TBS'largest US competitor, Bath and Body Works.

Then, to use a favorite Entine word, a bizarre thing occurred during a 1997 lecture at Trent University in Canada: Entine stated that “Of course, The Body Shop is better than 99% of companies”. But why doesn't he WRITE that? When pressed at Trent about why he doesn't pursue corporate criminals like Shell Oil over their Nigerian operations (an issue TBS has campaigned on since 1993), he had no answer.Salzman adds this regarding Entine's TBS “investigation”:In Entine's TBS attack, he referred to a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) investigation of a small shampoo spill from TBS'New Jersey operations. But he failed to say that it was HE who called in the complaint (later whiting out his name, a fact he concealed), that FDA found the TBS facility to actually be well-run, and that FDA, upon completing all inspections, is bound by law to make recommendations regardless of how clean the facility may be. (FDA Report Summary of Findings, 1123).

Walter Ritte. Writing inThe Daily Kos, “Karen from Maui”dissects another hit piece written by Entine, in which he attempts to disparage another environmental activist: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/21/1240329/-Corporate-PR-The-War-on-Environmentalists#Searle funded STATS shill, Jon Entine, wrote an entire article filled with unsubstantiated accusations against GMO activist, Walter Ritte. Walter Ritte is a long time Hawaiian activist who is respected for his role in reclaiming the island of Kaho'olawe from military bombing. In the article Jon Entine mixes up Ritte's activist causes with his unsuccessful run for Office of Hawaiian Affairs. This article is a textbook example of this PR technique in action. It not only uses Destroying Personal Reputations but it is done through a corporate-sponsored Front Group.In his capacity as Genetic Literacy Project, Entine levels non-specific and, at the time of his writing, unsubstantiated charges against Ritte:Activist leaders opposed to crop biotechnology, such as Walter Ritte, the Molokai-based political activist, have attempted to frame this battle as David vs. Goliath, threadbare grassroots campaigners fighting Big Ag. Although they claim their opposition to the innovative technology is home grown, a Genetic Literacy Project investigation, still in its infancy, suggests that the opposition is flush with cash, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from mainland anti-GMO organic organizations that have an ideological stake in blocking new farming technologies.And, as the headline introduction to one portion of his piece, Entine prominently, and rhetorically, insinuates:Did Walter Ritte violate Hawaii's campaign spending law?*In a subsequent investigation by a local newspaper, The Molokai News, in reference to a piece Entine wrote at

Forbes.com, in which he accused an anti-GMO group Ritte is associated with of illegally receiving more than 80 percent of its funds from non-Hawaii donors, a charge that records filed by Ritte with the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission appear to substantiate. What Entine doesnot mention in his charges –either in his Forbes.com piece or on his GLP website, is that, according to The Molokai News, despite Hawaii law on the matter, it is moot:*Gary Kam, legal counsel for HCSC, would not comment on whether there is an active investigation being conducted on Ritte. This will not be public information, he said, unless it is referred to the Commission for action. He did say that there has been no past enforcement action taken against Ritte.

Kam also mentioned that the violation may be moot and unenforceable anyway. Apparently, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided, prior to 2012, that it was unconstitutional to limit contributions from out of state sources, said Kam. This was based on a case in which a University of Hawaii student contribution was considered valid even though the student had a permanent address on the mainland.A report from the organization Campaign Freedom further found in April 2014 that, because of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling inMcCutcheon v FEC, which invalidated the federal aggregate limit on contributions by individuals to candidate campaigns and political committees as unconstitutional under the First Amendment, “states with aggregate limits and proportional bans should strongly consider repealing these speech-stifling regulations in order to comply with the precedent set in the *McCutcheon decision and avoid a likely successful legal challenge.”

A case that challenged a number of Hawaii's campaign spending laws was being appealed by the state of Hawaii, but the state dropped its appeal in June 2011.Gilles-Eric Saralini. Entine has also set his sights on French Prof. Gilles-Eric Saralini, whose University of Caen study found that GM maize and Roundup at very low doses caused organ damage, tumors and premature death in rats over the long term.

Entine, again in Forbes, criticized Saralini in a May 2013 piece for withdrawing from a planned debate regarding biotechnology (Saralini is a critic of Monsanto, Roundup and GMOs, largely as a result of his findings) at the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute. Entine, in his critical piece, claimed that he wanted to use the debate forum to “present both sides of the issue”regarding genetically modified foods and GM biotechnology in general, but his history suggestions otherwise, as he is a regular, vociferous defender of GMO foods and the biotechnology that created them.

GM Watch reported that these articles are dishonest in the extreme. “For example, Entine described Seralini's findings as "anomalous" even though Seralini's was the only long-term toxicity study ever carried out on this particular GM maize and the herbicide it is grown with. It's hard not to produce "anomalous" findings if there is only one experiment.”

Entine has also worked to undermine Saralini on Wikipedia, using the handle “runjonrun”(Incidentally, Entine's email address is mailto:runjonrun@earthlink.net). GM Watch was*alerted by Wikipedia users to the fact that Entine was one of the early editors on a one-sided and originally potentially libellous Wikipediaarticle called "The Seralini affair", which denigrated Seralini's study and Seralini himself.

Entine, under the Wiki user name "runjonrun", was active in vandalizing the article by rapidly deleting balancing information, for example, about the scientific support for Seralini's study and the conflicts of interest among critics of the study.In a previous Wiki spat, "runjonrun" had revealed his true identity as Jon Entine after upsetting other Wiki users by allegedly contravening Wiki conflict of interest guidelines and vandalising articles without justification.

Entine's legal issues

Entine has been involved in a seven-year divorce battle with his wife. And, according to court documents, there has been an order of protection filed against him:

Each party supplemented its position with a subsequent affidavit. And Humbert introduced the affidavit of Entine's ex-wife, along with copies of her application for protective orders against Entine made in the course of their recent divorce.

Entine refuted

- One of Entine's books, “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It,”has been called the “go-to”piece of work for mainstream sports writers when the subject turns to race in sports. But in a scholarly work countering Entine's claims, Ian B. Kerr from Western Michigan University concluded “that science and genetic experimentation have proven that natural biological variation amongst and between peoples cannot be used to validate claims of innate racial superiority in athletic competition.”

Kerr further notes:

When Entine does cite supposed “genetic”data on the differences between Blacks and Whites, he is in fact citing biological data. These include studies on African fast twitch muscle fibers and development of motor skills. Entine includes these studies to demonstrate irrevocable proof of embedded genetic differences between populations but refuses to accept the fact that any differences may be due to environmental factors or training. Entine then is unfairly giving an undue strong preference to genetic factors while disregarding social and environmental factors (Harpalani, 2004).

Moreover, external differences like height or weight, which play an instrumental role in helping define an individual's athletic prowess, have not been proven to be exclusively rooted in biology or genetics. Genetic differences among people cannot solely account for why certain people are more athletic than others, as scientists cannot find any specific genetic markers that define the characteristics of athleticism (speed, height, strength) in one group or “race”more than any other.Further:Yet why has the genetic theory of Black athletic dominance been so difficult to debunk? Part of the problem are the roles of professional athletes and the media in reinforcing negative stereotypes regarding race and athletic ability.He makes this conclusion, among others:Entine and other quasi-genetic determinists fall into a mode of thinking wherein physical differences between individuals are read as proof that separate races of people exist. By focusing on physical differences and insignificant genetic variations rather than providing insight into the biodiversity among humans, Entine muddies the waters of racism and racial superiority.:{

Writing in American Scientist, University of Georgia's Paul Achter and Celeste Condit also refute Entine's conclusions:

}:The bulk of the book blends historical anecdotes about the intersection of race, science and sports with genetic research underwritten by a supposed objectivity of observation. Entine refutes deterministic environmental explanations for athletic superiority. Too often, he argues, such accounts completely ignore the contribution of genes in our ability to dunk a basketball, run long distances or elude a defensive back. But Entine goes too far in the opposite direction. Although he occasionally gives lip service to the idea that nature and nurture both contribute to athletic ability, Entine ultimately dismisses substantive consideration of environmental factors as ideological or self-censoring. He leaves the impression that there are clear racial differences in athletic abilities and that all such differences are traceable to genes.

Regrettably, Entine's version of genetics constitutes a caricature of that science. His account of the debate over the "out-of-Africa" hypothesis is lopsided and reflects the hastiness and sloppiness that also bedevils the proofreading, organization and argumentative structuring throughout the book. Ultimately, Entine takes what may be a kernel of truth—that there are very small differences in frequencies of particular physical structures in some geographically localized populations—and distorts it into the claim that "blacks" are universally better athletes because of their genes.

The flaws in this larger claim are illustrated by Entine's use of Tiger Woods as an example of the physical superiority of black athletes. Entine admits Tiger Woods's multiracial origins but then lumps him back into a mythical racial group called "blacks."

Throughout, Entine plays fast and loose with categories in this fashion. He proves that a local group of Kenyans dominate middle-distance running, then uses this to make generalized statements that "blacks" are better "athletes." Sports where "blacks" do not dominate (swimming, cricket, gymnastics, polo) are quickly dismissed on grounds of nurture or environment (for instance, blacks don't have access to polo ponies), but in either case, the difference somehow is treated as support of his claim that "blacks are innately superior athletes."If taken seriously, Entine's claims could only support the silliest of propositions. Entine maintains that the "disparity between blacks and whites in sports is at least as pronounced" as the disparity between women and men. Do we need, therefore, a separate "white men's league" for basketball and tennis? Should Title IX agents worry about the inadequacy of opportunities for young white boys to play basketball or go bowling? Any other suggestions? As long as white-skinned boys, even those who are relatively untalented, continue to have greater opportunities for athletic self-development than boys of all other cultural and geographic heritages and than all girls, Entine's argument will remain one undeserving of much concern

:{------

- Arthur E. Berman, a petroleum geologist and consultant to the energy sector; editorial board member of The Oil Drum; Associate Editor of the AAPG Bulletin; Director of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil, wrote a letter to George Mason University dated July 4, 2011, that he also posted online on his blog, in which he sought to refute claims and assertions made by Entine in his Real Clear Politics column published a few days earlier, on July 1, “Natural Gas "Bubble" Report: Market Tinkering or Shoddy Reporting?”

Berman writes:

}:His post contains errors, exaggerations and untrue statements that cannot be substantiated, and thereby jeopardize George Mason University's legal position and reputation as an honest broker of information.

I specify below. He never contacted me or my clients to verify these claims and, apparently, did no research to document his many specious allegations.''

Berman then goes on to list the errors, exaggerations and statements he says are untrue. Those are here: http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/letter-to-george-mason-university-re.html

PDF Documents

Entine-Divorce Decree.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Docket-Case-DR-05-00131.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-1.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-2.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-3.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-4.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-5.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-6.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-7.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-8.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-9.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-10.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-11.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-12.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-13.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-14.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-15.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-16.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-17.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-18.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-19.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-20.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-21.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-22.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-23.pdf

Entine-Divorce-Group-24.pdf

:{http://:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{truthwiki.}::{org/Jon_Entine}:

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:{http://www.:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{philanthropyroundtable}::{.org/site/print/gas_heat}:

...

Is fracking safe? That depends on one’s risk tolerance. While key opponents promote fears and “not in my backyard” protests, the federal government and most mainstream scientists believe fracking is no less safe than other forms of energy extraction as long as regulations are frequently updated. Scientists at many universities, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Environmental Defense Fund, and other organizations reject a black-and-white view of shale gas.

“At the EDF, we don’t pick fuels. We are realists; we recognize that fossil fuels will be around for a while,” says senior policy adviser Scott Anderson. Noting that most states have considerable experience in regulating well construction and operation, he says, “if wells are constructed right and operated right, hydraulic fracturing will not cause a problem.”

But the emphatic message coming from the Park Foundationand its beneficiaries is that only a total ban on fracking is acceptable. Opposition to shale gas is being transformed into one of the ideological litmus tests of our time.

The Park Foundation provided the funds for reams of anti-fracking articles, some of which are shown here.

Drilling for dissent

Over the past four years, a few researchers at Cornell University have emerged in the vanguard of activists challenging shale-gas drilling, and their alarms have found a worldwide megaphone in theNew York Times.The Times helped transform Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth into a hero of anti-shale-gas activists. Within a few days in April 2011, the paper twice promoted stories on an academic brief that Howarth and co-author Anthony Ingraffea had just published in the letters section of Climatic Change.

The authors claimed that the extraction process releases rogue methane gas that generates more greenhouse gas emissions than the production and use of an equivalent amount of coal would entail. Fracking could push the world over a tipping point, sending global temperatures irreversibly higher. Natural gas and fracking, they concluded, were a catastrophe in the making.

“All this talk that it’s a clean fuel, as some say, is not based on any scientific analysis,” Howarth told me. “There is a lot of money invested in shale-gas development. Our research is threatening that, which makes it political.”

Howarth is a longtime environmental activist. Until his controversial letter he had never published any university-level research on natural gas. The obscure letter was initially ignored by scientists and the media until the Times featured it. It would be difficult to overstate the influence its coverage generated. It led to thousands of headlines around the world and was debated in the British parliament and the European Union.

How did Howarth come to write what has become a seminal script of the movement against shale gas? Howarth told me he had been approached by the Park Foundation in 2010 to consider writing an academic article that would make a case that shale gas was a dangerous, polluting fuel. That led to the first of numerous grants from Park. Howarth has also said that his conclusion was not influenced by Park’s request: “$35,000 won’t buy my opinion.”

While the study and subsequent Times coverage generated thousands of media stories, the paper was widely criticized by scientists across the ideological spectrum. The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory reviewed the same data, concluding that natural gas, even from shale, results in far lower emissions than coal.

“His analysis is based on extremely weak data, and also has a severe methodological flaw (plus some other questionable decisions), all of which means that his bottom line conclusions shouldn’t carry weight,” concluded Michael Levi, energy and climate-change scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, in a study partly funded by the Sierra Club, subsequently concluded that shale gas has significantly less impact on global warming than coal. “We don’t think they [Howarth et al.] are using credible data and some of the assumptions they’re making are biased,” Paulina Jaramillo, one of the lead researchers, told Politico. The Worldwatch Institute reported, “despite differences in methodology and coverage, all of the recent studies except Howarth et al. estimate that life-cycle emissions from natural gas-fired generation are significantly less than those from coal-fired generation.”

Howarth’s conclusions were sharply challenged even at Cornell. Professors Lawrence Cathles, Larry Brown, and Andrew Hunter combined their expertise in earth and atmospheric sciences and chemical engineering to pen a stinging response, calling the work “seriously flawed.” They wrote, “the assumptions used by Howarth et al. are inappropriate and…their data, which the authors themselves characterize as ‘limited,’ do not support their conclusions.”

When I interviewed Howarth at the time, he insisted that his analysis and conclusions were “solid,” the shale-gas disaster his models predicted was inevitable, and laggard environmental nonprofits like EDF would turn against shale eventually. “They’re still heavily invested in their prior statements that shale gas is a win-win solution,” he said. “It will take them some time to come to grips with the new data and move toward a new position. Science moves slowly.”

Building a movement

While science was moving slowly, the Park Foundation moved quickly. By simultaneously funding an interlocking triangle of sympathetic scientists, anti-fracking nonprofits, and media outlets, Park helped move the idea that natural gas is environmentally unfriendly from the activist fringe to the mainstream.

The foundation has continued to provide numerous grants (in the range of $50,000-$60,000) directly to Howarth and his research colleagues. And the Howarth argument, despite its dismissal by scientists of various ideological stripes, has taken on immortal life among many progressive organizations that are supported by Park.

The foundation’s mostly unknown ties to scientists, journalists, and activist groups were on display last September in the brouhaha over a methane gas and fracking study that contradicted Howarth’s claims. Researchers at the University of Texas-Austin released a study done in cooperation with the Environmental Defense Fund which found that the national rate of leakage of methane during natural gas production was equivalent to four tenths of one percent of total U.S. extraction, vastly lower than Howarth’s claims. This was the most comprehensive shale-gas emissions study ever undertaken, covering 190 well pads around the country.

Howarth and his co-authors denounced the UT/EDF findings, and other groups funded by Park joined in the criticism. Media stories quoted a heretofore unknown organization, Physicians Scientists & Engineers for Healthy Energy, portraying the university and the environmental nonprofit as shills. UT was quite open in disclosing that the study received industry support, but few noted that the physicians group, characterized as “independent” in many stories, had been recently founded by one of Howarth’s co-authors, Anthony Ingraffea, with Park Foundation money, specifically to promote an aggressive anti-shale-gas agenda.

This script repeated itself again and again. In 2011, the New York Times began running a new series it called “Drilling Down,” billing it as an exposé of “the risks of natural-gas.” Over the next year and a half, the Times churned out more than a dozen scathing articles, such as a story asserting that many “insiders” in the natural gas industry harbored serious doubts about its long-term viability, but were keeping mum to cash in on the short-term exuberance over rapidly growing shale-gas reserves. The author, Ian Urbina, quoted Deborah Rogers—portrayed as a “member of the advisory committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas”—as saying “we have a big problem,” appearing to spill the beans on industry corruption.

Rogers, a former stockbroker for Merrill Lynch whose term on the advisory committee had expired, now raises goats and makes artisanal cheeses, and is also a community organizer and outspoken national critic of shale gas. Urbina failed to mention her longstanding involvement with multiple activist organizations, including Earthworks—an anti-fracking group that has received more than $300,000 in Park money in recent years. A careful review of Urbina’s articles finds no less than a dozen examples of interview subjects in his stories being portrayed as independent, aggrieved citizens while they were actually activists linked to organizations funded by Park.

The Times coverage was so widely recognized as blundering and biased that the paper’s public editor, Arthur Brisbane, launched an internal investigation of Urbina’s reporting. In two reports, Brisbane warned that the stories painted a complex issue with “an overly broad brush and didn’t include dissenting views from experts who aren’t entrenched on one side or another of the subject.”

According to e-mails later produced by the Times at the behest of a Senate investigation, Urbina’s stories relied on sources and background fed to him by the Natural Resources Defense Council—a group which has collected more than $350,000 from the Park Foundation for anti-fracking work.

Park-supported groups like the NRDC weigh in on many Park-supported projects. In February of this year, the Center for Public Integrity and InsideClimate News (ICN) teamed up with the Weather Channel to produce a series of reports on the Texan Eagle Ford shale formation.

“Their reporting now shows clearly that Texans in the area of Eagle Ford are having trouble breathing, and regulators are having trouble noticing,” said NRDC attorney Kate Sinding.

“People who suffer the effects of oil and gas emissions have few places to turn for help other than to the politicians and regulatory agencies that are often cheerleaders for, and financially beholden to, the industry,” said one ICN story.

The series was supported by a $25,000 Park grant “to report and publish articles on…air and water pollution related to hydraulic fracturing.” Many of the sources in the series, as well as the outlets promoting it (the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthworks, Public Citizen, the NDRC) also received Park funding.

“What they do is have one group write on an issue, another quote them or link to them, and so on,” Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center told the Washington Free Beacon. “It keeps going until they create this perception that there’s real concern over an issue and it bubbles up to top liberal sites like Huffington Post and from there into the traditional media.”

Roy Park’s legacy INTENT

Adelaide Park Gomer, and her daughter, Alicia Park Wittink, who is also on the Park Foundation board, are openly hostile to natural-gas development, and corporations in general. Today’s foundation has a very different profile from the one Roy Hampton Park left to his heirs upon his death in 1993. In his day, funding went mostly to education, religious organizations, public broadcasting, and conservation—all passions of the founder.

“None of the environmental grants were political,” says his son Roy Park, Jr. “We focused on animal welfare, rainforests, marine life, oceans—doing what we could to promote environmentalism. We didn’t focus on causes.”

But Roy Hampton Park’s will left no roadmap of his intentions for the foundation. Soon a rift developed between the younger Roy and his sister and niece. They were out to “save the world,” he says.

Roy’s mother, Dorothy Park, ultimately sided with Adelaide and Alicia, cleaving the Park Foundation in two in 2003. The bulk of the funds stayed with them, while Roy was given a third to start the Triad Foundation with his two children. Like the Park Foundation, it continues to fund education programs at Cornell, but also supports more traditional conservation efforts and some conservative causes, which he believes are more in line with his father’s wishes.

“My father’s legacy…what he worked for all his life, should not be ignored or refuted,” says Roy, mourning what he sees as the “erosion of his hardworking lifetime ideals” by today’s Park Foundation. “Despite the absence of his intentions for the foundation’s mission in his will, his philanthropic objectives…were evident in the previous 30-year history of its grantmaking.”

....

Jon Entine

"He is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a columnist for the British-based international magazine Ethical Corporation, and co-founder of E.S.G.Metrics, which advises business and NGOs on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, including sustainability and executive leadership. Recent clients have included KKR, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, P&G, American Greetings, Monsanto, DHL/Deutsche Post, Fischer Homes, and Pomeroy IT Solutions.

"Jon writes for academic and popular publications around the world and is a frequent television and radio commentator on business issues, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, NPR, and BBC. He has written and edited five books, most recently No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-judicial Prosecution (TFG Books, 2009), which focuses on the dangers of over zealous government prosecutors and the threat they pose to American civil liberties.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002355.html wapo op ed

"Before launching his consulting and writing career, Jon spent 20 years as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC (on the Miss America Pageant!), and was Tom Brokaw’s long-time producer at NBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries.

"In 1989, Tom and Jon collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989), which led to his best-selling book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It (Public Affairs, 2000), which was recently reissued. AEI has published two books written and edited by Jon:Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (AEI Press, 2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, 2006), which examines the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. In 2007, Jon published Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), which merges genealogy, genetics, and religion to vividly bring to life a new understanding of Western identity and the shared biblical ancestry of Jews and Christians. It addresses efforts to identify cures for diseases that disproportionately impact specific populations and the social and political tempest that a renewed focus on “race” research is stirring...

"Jon has participated in and organized dozens of public forums on policy issues at the AEI, the Brookings Institution, and the Hudson Institute. He has served as a lecturerat various universities, including Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, New York University, and most recently Miami (Ohio) University, where he was scholar-in-residence. Jon graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 1974 with a degree in philosophy and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan in 1980-1982. He was recently named to the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Cincinnati, where he resides." ^[1]

See his critiques of Anita Roddick's Body Shop.

[hide]

External links

Jon Entine, "Let Them Eat Precaution", The American Enterprise, American Enterprise Institute, March 2004.

Resources and articles

References

:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:↑ Biography, Jon Entine, accessed November 13, 2009.

External Articles

Tom Philpott, "The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist," Mother Jones, February 24, 2012.

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biz ethics uk (he's more modulated? praises a soc entr Paul Rice)

Articles

When losing $2bn is a smart move American drug store giant CVS Caremark has taken a gamble in banishing tobacco from its thousands of stores

Wed, 2014-06-11 14:07

General Motors – GM fiasco shows need for new route Could increased individual employee liability help counter corporate malpractice?

Thu, 2014-05-08 12:30

Chevron and Ecuador: Red card for green lawyer Cheating in a game of high-stakes legal tactics has backfired in the ongoing Chevron-Ecuador case, potentially leaving villagers with nothing

Fri, 2014-04-04 16:08

Aluminium vehicles – Nimble giants Might aluminium vehicles for the masses be a game-changer for emissions reduction? Ford is about to roll-out a revolutionary version of its best-selling pickup truck

Mon, 2014-02-10 10:28

DNA – Testing genetics Outlandish claims about what we can learn about ourselves from our DNA threaten the credibility of the personal genomics

Mon, 2013-12-16 12:58

Ethical investment – Returns on good behaviour? The launch of the Global Compact 100 Index, which selects its line-up according to financial performance as well as sustainability credentials, pits purists against pragmatists

Tue, 2013-11-12 18:31

Eco labels – Fair trade’s food fight As the fair trade movement matures, deep rifts are appearing. But despite intense disputes, the collective impact continues to be for the good

Wed, 2013-10-02 21:11

GDP v GPI – What price progress? Quantifying development in a way that counts the costs of growth can help challenge conventional thinking, but is never going to be an exact science, says Jon Entine

Thu, 2013-09-05 20:40

:{Organic food:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: – What is an ‘organic’ label really worth? Consumers are willing to pay a premium for organic products, but the realities can mean you get little more than a psychological boost for your buck

Fri, 2013-07-12 10:00

Ecolabels: chemical reactions Until labels declaring foods and other products free from dangerous chemicals are based on unequivocal science, they offer little more than confusion

Phone: 718-522-0253 • Fax: 413-410-1401 • lsalzman1@verizon.net

lsalzman2@verizon.net

A graduate of Cornell University, Lorna Salzman has been an environmental activist, writer, lecturer and organizer for forty years. In the early 1970s, under the auspices of Citizens for Local Democracy, co-founded by the late Walter Karp, she edited a Brooklyn Heights NY community paper, The Township, dedicated to neighborhood government and political decentralization.

Later she was hired by the late David Brower, founder and president of Friends of the Earth (FOE), as the

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It is easy to ferret out these surrogates. All one has to do is look at who is being attacked and who is being ignored. Those who attack groups like Sierra Club or Greenpeace without ever mentioning corporations like Monsanto, Dupont, Shell Oil and Dow Chemical are the ones to look out for.

True, hardly an organization or corporation exists that hasn't committed some errors in judgment or made some bad policy bloopers. And needless to say, no organization, no matter how noble its cause, should be exempt from criticism. But there is a world of difference between those corporations or groups who are basically good but exhibit occasional flaws, and those who are basically bad but sometimes do some good things. Unlike the Monsantos and Shell Oils of the world, the Sierra Clubs and Greenpeaces of the world, if left to their own devices, will not destroy the earth.

The same goes for corporations. Here the good, bad and worst can also be rather easily distinguished. Some corporations may not be particularly admirable regarding their labor or management practices, while others may be destroying the world while being paragons of good management and worker relations. Here's a test: if you had to prevent the damage done by certain businesses, would you choose Ben & Jerry's and The Body Shop on the one hand, or Monsanto and Shell Oil?

Take for instance Jon Entine, whose sophisticated atacks on liberals, ethical investors, anti-defense spending and anti- animal testing advocates, and anti-nuclear activists - as well as on The Body Shop (TBS), Council on Economic Priorities, Ben and Jerry's and others - have helped damage these organizations both in reputation and stock value, not to mention public trust. Where are these attacks really coming from? In Entine's case, clearly not from any love for the progressive movement or environmentalism.

Entine's lengthy CV on the web emphasizes his television news experience prominently. His last full-time TV stint was at ABC television's Primetime Live, but what Entine doesn't report is that he was fired from ABC during his investigation of TBS for "mistakes in methodology".In a letter from London's The Sunday Times, the Deputy Editor explains how his paper was misled by Entine and how he misrepresented himself.

"We now know what we did not know then: ABC discovered Entine had made a number of mistakes in his methodology so serious that they had in effect fired him some ten days before. Entine, probably unknown to ABC, was however still picking up his messages from a phone on his old desk in the ABC building. We now understand from ABC sources that Entine is regarded as out of control and has been running around saying some wild things" (Ivan Fallon, letter from Deputy Editor of The Sunday Times, October 8, 1993).

Entine then sold the idea to Vanity Fair, a publication with many cosmetic advertisers who compete with TBS (Sandra Earley, "The Woman Who Wants to Save the World", Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). They rejected the story but paid Entine a $15,000 kill fee and $18,000 in expenses. (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996).It isn't as if Entine is some Norman Mailer ; his bio up until this article shows no other published stories but a recent book on black athletes got some media attention.

[Earley, Sandra"The Woman Who Wants to Save the World." Corporate Report Minnesota. June 1996. p(p): 43 (Marjorie Kelley, founder and publisher of Business Ethics magazine) interview/profile of MK?]

Entine tried to bring the story to other magazines without success, and finally Business Ethics, a small financially struggling publication, paid him $300 for the story and published it. Entine then turned around and made a $1000 donation to the magazine (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). The publication of this story, to which Business Ethics would not allow a rebuttal, damaged TBS' image and stock value. Two years after the article appeared, Entine's wife Ellen Turner was hired to be a marketing executive for The Limited, the parent company of TBS' largest US competitor, Bath and Body Works.

Then, to use a favorite Entine word, a bizarre thing occurred during a 1997 lecture at Trent University in Canada: Entine stated that "Of course, The Body Shop is better than 99% of companies". But why doesn't he WRITE that? When pressed at Trent about why he doesn't pursue corporate criminals like Shell Oil over their Nigerian operations (an issue TBS has campaigned on since 1993), he had no answer.

Kooky Left-Wing Organic Companies

In Better World Zine, with Martha Nichols, Entine said: "Moreover, to begin to compare Body Shop with a GE or Dow Chemical or biotechnology companies, with Body Shop coming out BETTER in the comparison, is beyond liberal-think bizarre. GE and the rest are hardly pristine and I make NO wholesale defense of them. But the issue is social change. A 1% change in the behavior of GE will have more impact than creating a thousand new kooky left wing organic companies". (Jon Entine and Martha Nichols, Better World Zine, website)

Note how Entine aligns "kooky left wing" and "organic companies". Smart readers will also ask just WHICH 1% change GE might have in mind: laying off 1% fewer employees than planned? Like others of his ilk, Entine skillfully uses the temperament, semantics and vehicles of progressive and investigative journalism to gain sympathy with editors and readers. Not all are fooled however; Jay Harris of Mother Jones magazine reports that Entine called him and that "he began our conversation with a 20-minute rant about The Body Shop being the most evil company (he had) ever encountered in 20 years of investigative reporting". Harris goes on: "Mother Jones has exposed the deadly explosive tendencies of the Pinto and broke the story on the Dalkon Shield. This guy is talking about a company that spilled a few gallons of Fuzzy Peach Shampoo. He clearly had an axe to grind and was willing to let that take precedence over the facts".

In Entine's TBS attack, he referred to a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) investigation of a small shampoo spill from TBS' New Jersey operations. But he failed to say that it was HE who called in the complaint (later whiting out his name,a fact he concealed), that FDA found the TBS facility to actually be well-run, and that FDA, upon completing all inspections, is bound by law to make recommendations regardless of how clean the facility may be. (FDA Report Summary of Findings, 1123).

Most recently, Entine took onWorking AssetsLong Distance for allegedly deceiving customers who subscribed to them without knowing that nuclear-generated electricity was included in the electricity mix delivered to customers. But Entine's own views on nuclear power are suspect. In comments on a draft energy policy paper written by an activist on Long Island he said, in reference to nuclear power: .."to me, measured up against the conceivable dangers of coal-generated electricity, it is a potentially attractive alternative". And to the undersigned he wrote: "Your myopia..on nuclear energy reminds me of the statement that being against defense spending is 'socially responsible' or 'liberal'. It's a ridiculously shallow statement...I am thankful that we developed enough of a military deterrent to curb the Soviet Union and to be able to have challenged Iraq". To the Association of Organizational Management he said: "There is a world of difference between the mutant nuclear energy facility at Seabrook..and, say, the ones operated by Duke Power. With new technology and potential for deep core disposal of nuclear waste, it is time that we revisit this as part of a long-range plan at future energy needs.."

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"Monsanto's Robert Shapiro is a 'CEO leading the charge into the new era of business ethics'", (Business Ethics Magazine, Jan.. 96).

Entine's attacks on TBS, Greenpeace and other progressive organizations are in no way balanced by any critical analysis of major polluting or exploitive corporations. On the contrary, Entine's writings set up as shining examples corporations like DuPont, General Motors, Monsanto and Duke Power. Ignoring the fact that Monsanto, a leading chemical manufacturer and biotechnology giant (maker of Agent Orange) is pressuring the government to allow its products onto the market without adequate testing, fighting to prevent labelling of genetically engineered foods, has threatened small dairy farmers who want to label their milk as free of RBGH (the Monsanto artificial growth hormone) and has attempted to bribe the Canadian consumer agency into approving its products without testing, Entine says: "Monsanto has made a lot of progress in developing pro-active models to limit chemical pollution". Entine boasts of his friend Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce, who was a paid Monsanto consultant, and claims Hawken's work for Monsanto has resulted in its instituting "significant environmental reforms". But there is no mention of Monsanto's ongoing efforts to subvert the political process in order to get its untested genetically engineered products and dangerous chemicals to a wider market. Meanwhile, Ben & Jerry's, who Entine has called "slippery and unethical" (Jon Entine, Students for Responsible Business website), recently fought and won, against Monsanto's wrath, the right to label their products to be free of recombinant bovine growth hormone, a right that was won against Monsanto and for all US dairy farmers and consumers.

Multicultural Cabal...

AEI Conferences Involving Jon

**See Jon's AEI Scholar web page**

**Crop Chemophobia: Are We Over-Regulating Pesticides?**January 18, 2011

What is the proper balance between crop protection and environmental and public health considerations? AEI scholar Jon Entine explores this question in a new edited volume, Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution?

**The Bloody Crossroads of Science and Policy: Personal Genomics**

September 24, 2010

Public policy debates are increasingly based on matters of science, from issues such as energy and climate change to health and food safety. Yet the results of these debates vary, with good legislative outcomes when the available scientific evidence is used objectively and bad policy choices when it is interpreted subjectively in pursuit of a preordained policy agenda. Jon oversees a panel on the regulatory outlook for the burgeoning personal genomics industry. This "bloody crossroads" of science and policy was the subject at AEI.

**The Science and Policy of :{BPA:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:**

June 9, 2010

Although regulatory authorities in the United States, most of Europe, Australia, and Japan have approved as safe the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA)--ubiquitous in plastic products and the lining of metal cans--controversy remains over its potential health effects when found in low doses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are reevaluating the chemical. Precautionary" regulatory actions, are underway in numerous jurisdictions, including in the U.S. Congress. At this conference, policy experts and scientists participated in a nonpartisan dialogue about the risks and benefits of using, or choosing not to use, BPA and whether a more precautionary approach should be adopted in regulating chemicals.

Science and Technology in the Balance? Food Security,:{ Precaution, and the Pesticide Debate:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:October 6, 2009

The 27 European Union (EU) governments have instituted new criteria that could ultimately blacklist around twenty-two chemicals--about fifteen percent of the EU pesticides market--used by the agricultural and pest control industries. The EU regulation embraces a more restrictive hazard structure based upon the "precautionary principle," which contends that some chemicals are intrinsically dangerous at any level, even absent definitive risk data. The new ban has been challenged by some policy experts concerned that it could damage food security while yielding limited or no health benefits.Proponents of the new pesticide regulations hail them as necessary precautions for addressing the unknown cumulative effects of chemical residues.

:{Capitalism, Freedom, and Jewish Accomplishment::(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: The Israel TestJuly 28, 2009

Israel faces hostility and pressure from religious enemies on its borders. But in a new book, "The Israel Test," author George Gilder reveals that Israel has also become "the crucial battlefield for capitalism and freedom in our time." In Gilder's telling, Israel has emerged in the early twenty-first century as a bastion of technological progress and commercial and scientific advance. Israeli Jews have achieved enormous success in areas ranging from business to the arts. Gilder argues that "if we allow Israel to be quelled or destroyed, we will be succumbing to forces targeting capitalism and freedom everywhere."

The Coming Age of the Uber-Athlete: What's So Bad about Gene Enhancement and Doping?

December 18, 2008

It is said to be sports' doomsday scenario: a new generation of chemically enhanced or bioengineered athletes transformed from also- rans into world champions. We are entering an age often referred to as posthumanist, and sport is its leading edge, benefiting from dramatic advances in medical technology, reconstructive surgery, and drug therapy. Most physiologists, ethicists, and sport authorities have attempted to draw a line — one that critics say is hazy and unenforceable — that makes certain performance-enhancing drugs and gene manipulation off limits.

**Corporate Responsibility in an Era of New Internationalism**

December 14, 2008

Corporations and governments are witnessing a resurgence of political and economic internationalism. Increasingly prominent issues such as the global financial crisis, the environment, human rights, the developing world, and trade policy have galvanized efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international governmental organizations to become more deeply involved in government and corporate policies. Considering that these are often contentiously debated issues, to what degree should sovereign governments be held accountable to these demands? How should corporations respond in light of their classic responsibility as wealth generators and engines of the world economy?

**Corporate Image Advertising and the Future of Free Enterprise**

June 4, 2007

Crisis management has become the latest fashion in building a corporate reputation. Companies that come under siege from interest groups, trial lawyers, and the press wage image campaigns to make themselves "better liked" — and often do so by playing down their capitalist purpose. Do these campaigns mislead the public? Do they validate the belief that for-profit entities are inherently corrupt and, therefore, injuring them is a virtuous act — not to mention a victimless crime? Doescorporate social responsibilityrepresent a good business strategy in the long run, or has reputation management become, in effect, an apology for making money? If so, does this trend ultimately pose a threat to free enterprise?

Is Nuclear Power a Solution to Global Warming and Rising Energy Prices?

October 6, 2006

Has the threat of global warming and soaring fossil fuel costs changed the prospects for nuclear energy? Advocates stress its potential cost-effectiveness and the coming generation of safe, efficient plants. Critics maintain that efficiency is a mirage and that environmental uncertainties remain. While technological advances have made nuclear power plants safer than ever, the United States has not ordered a new one since the 1970s. Yet new nuclear facilities are coming on line in India, China, and eastern Europe, while the United Kingdom and other G-8 countries have cautiously endorsed a move toward nuclear energy as an alternative to expensive and greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel plants. Whether the legacies of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and a determined political opposition will derail new construction remains to be seen.

**Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity**

May 23, 2006

Daily horror stories in the media about unfit doctors, unhealthy foods, dangerous chemicals, soaring gas prices, and incompetent child care have created a culture of fear. But is that fear well-founded? A panel of AEI experts, moderated by Jon Entine, and ABC's John Stossel, author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity (Hyperion, May 2006), tackled the misconceptions, misrepresentations, and plain inanity that plague our society, including the role of law, genetics, and environmental activism in today's world.

:{**Is Corporate Social Responsibility Serious Business**?

March 3, 2006}:

Is Corporate Social Responsibility really a win-win situation as its promoters claim for both corporations and the public? Corporate leaders struggle with determining to whom their social responsibilities extend: to shareholders, employees, local communities, the environment, humanity as a whole, future generations? This conference examined the complex global CSR phenomenon and took an in-depth look at Wal-Mart, which has been under fire for some of its corporate, social, and environmental practices.

Check out press coverage in **Tech Central Station** and **National Review**.

**Panic Attack: The New Precautionary Culture, the Politics of Fear, and the Threat to Innovation**

February 14, 2006

Our culture is in the grip of the "precautionary principle." From agricultural biotechnology and biomedicine to geopolitics, international business, education, and our most intimate relationships, risk aversion has become a defining and paralyzing ethic of our time. The notion that we should forsake the products and benefits of new technologies until it is proven that no adverse effects could result reflects an obsessive fear of the unknown. This conference, organized in cooperation with the UK Institute of Ideas, suggested that only by challenging the wider risk-averse culture that permeates contemporary society can we hope to rediscover a sense of purpose about progress and a desire to experiment with new ways of doing things.

**NGOs: Indispensable or Unaccountable?**December 7, 2005

Government and international aid agencies have come to depend on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to implement their development policy programs. Corporations are increasingly expected to consult with NGOs prior to making investments in the developing world. Yet the long-term impact and effectiveness of NGOs is largely unknown. Does the U.S. government rely too much on NGOs in its aid efforts? Or are NGOs the only way to stop corrupt governments from lining their pockets with aid money? What should the relationship between corporations and NGOs be?

**Science Wars: Should Schools Teach:{ Intelligent Design:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:**?

October 21, 2005

What should public schools teach about life's origins? This debate has erupted anew because of the growing interest in intelligent design (ID) the notion that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of life in all its diversity. Proponents of teaching alternatives to evolution are now lobbying state legislatures and pressing school districts to incorporate ID into science curricula. Alarmed scientists and educators see ID as a disguised form of creationism and a direct attack on the scientific method and critical thinking. Is intelligent design religion or science? Would the teaching of intelligent design violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause?

Check out press coverage by the National Center for Science Education, the **American Geological Institute**.

The Business of Stem Cells: Re-Examining Federal, State, and Private Funding and Regulatory Initiatives

March 9, 2005

Because of limitations on federal support for human embryonic stem cell research, the regulatory and research funding picture has become increasingly complex. Many states, led by California with the passage of Proposition 71, have begun setting up their own initiatives. There are concerns about the impact of the restrictive federal policy and the repercussions of private-public initiatives with limited federal oversight.

The conference sparked many articles, including in Chemical and Engineering News, the Newark Star-Ledger, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, BNA Medical Research News.

Race, Medicine, and Public Policy

November 12, 2004

Should “race” be considered in medical diagnoses and research? Check out the details about the AEI forum that Jon organized and view Jon's presentation on “Jewish Diseases,” a key part of his upcoming book, Abraham's Children, which will be published during 2005. (Read the UPI interview with Jon, "Tracing Jewish History Through Genes,” on his upcoming book.)

Read an article on the AEI "Race and Medicine" conference in American Medical Newsand a thoughtfulUSA Todayeditorial on the issue of ‘race and science' by Michael Crane, who attended the AEI conference.

:{Risk,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: Science, and Public PolicyOctober 12, 2004

How to Save the Planet (Really) (.pdf)

The American Enterprise Magazine

January 2005 (Quoting Jon about the conference)

**"Socially Responsible" Investing and Pension Funds** Welcome Reform or Fiduciary Nightmare?

June 7, 2004

Socially responsible” investing (SRI), which incorporates nonfinancial social and ethical criteria, has attracted significant publicity in recent years and sparked interest among some institutional investors, public pension funds, and Social Security reform advocates, particularly in the wake of recent corporate scandals. SRI adherents claim that one of every ten dollars in United States markets is invested using SRI principles. Although those claims are widely disputed, there is no question that public and some private pension programs are being asked to consider if and when they should include social and ideological screens when making investments. Social investing is not an exclusively American phenomenon. It is popular in Britain and Europe, and governments from Malaysia to Sweden to Canada have utilized pension funds to support stock markets or to make loans or create incentives with explicit social goals. Is this trend welcomed or a threat to fiduciary independence and responsibilities?

Critics Fear Pension Activism (quoting Jon)

David Hafetz, New York

Sunday, July 22, 2004

**Biotechnology, the Media, and Public Policy**

June 12, 2003

For more than two decades, scientists have been working to develop a range of animal, agricultural, and industrial products (such as foods and pharmaceuticals) made with the help of genetic modification. As has often been the case with the introduction of new scientific methods, gene manipulation has stirred intense and contentious debates. This sometimes-confrontational atmosphere has limited the use of this new technology by negatively shaping public attitudes and government policies toward bioengineering around the world. This conference will focus on the origins of this debate; how the dialogue on genetic modification has shaped public policy around the world; how it impacts the commercial realities of companies developing new products; how it might alter the course of future research; and what strategies might be formulated to develop a more rational public policy that would foster more constructive discussion over the costs and benefits of genetic manipulation.

**We're Not from the Government, but We're Here to Help You**

Jon's paper: "Why NGO-Stakeholder Dialogue Can Endanger Corporate Social Responsibility" American

June 11, 2003

In recent years, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have proliferated, their rise facilitated by governments and corporations desperate to subcontract development projects. While many NGOs have made significant contributions to human rights, the environment, and economic and social development, a lack of international standards for NGO accountability also allows far less credible organizations to have a significant influence on policymaking. The growing power of supranational organizations and a loose set of rules governing the accreditation of NGOs has meant that an unelected few have access to growing and unregulated power. NGOs have created their own rules and regulations and demanded that governments and corporations abide by those rules. Many nations’ legal systems encourage NGOs to use the courts-or the specter of the courts-to compel compliance. Politicians and corporate leaders are often forced to respond to the NGO media machine, and the resources of taxpayers and shareholders are used in support of ends they did not intend to sanction.

Jon's paper:"Why NGO-StakeholderDialogueCan Endanger Corporate Social Responsibility"June 11, 2003

wiki

Jon Entine is an American author and journalist. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University^[1] and a senior fellow at the think tank STATS (Statistical Assessment Service).^[2][3] He is the founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project.

After spending twenty years as a network news writer and producer for NBC News and ABC News, Entine moved into scholarly research and print journalism. Having written and edited seven books, Entine writes a column for the international magazine Ethical Corporation^[4] and Forbes magazine,^[5]and contributes to newspapers and magazines around the world.

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Background:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Entine was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 30, 1952 and later relocated with his family to the suburb ofCheltenham. He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1974 with a B.A. in philosophy. Entine co-directed the presidential primary campaign for Senator George McGovern in Sullivan County in New Hampshire in 1972. After graduation, he became the assistant director for the re-election campaign of Father Robert Drinan, a liberalDemocratic Congressman from suburban Boston. He currently lives in Cincinnati.

Television journalism:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Entine began his journalism career in high school, when he worked as a weekend copyboy for the CBS owned-and-operated TV station then known as WCAU. During his freshman year of college, he edited and produced the 11 p.m. news for the local NBC affiliate in West Hartford/New Britain. After the 1974 Congressional campaign, in January 1975, Entine was hired as a writer by the ABC News program AM America, which was renamed Good Morning America the following year. Entine worked for ABC News as a writer, assignment desk editor, and producer in New York City and Chicago from 1975-1983 for various ABC News programs, including the ABC Evening News, 20/20 and Nightline. He took a leave of absence from ABC News in 1981-1982 to study at the University of Michigan under a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in journalism.

Entine joined NBC News in New York in 1984 as a special segment producer for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, where he worked until 1990. He became Brokaw’s long-time producer. In 1989, Entine and Brokaw collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989. Entine was later named the executive in charge of documentaries at NBC News (1989–1990). He rejoined ABC News in 1991 as an investigative producer for Primetime (TV series). In 1993 Entine produced a story with reporter Sam Donaldson on eye surgery clinics that led to a lawsuit against them and Primetime alleging trespass and defamation due to the use of "test patients". The case was mostly dismissed in January 1995 and a defamation suit was dismissed in 2000.^[6][7] He produced a prime time special on the Miss America Pageant, "Miss America: Beyond the Crown" for NBC Entertainment in 1994 before transitioning to book writing and print journalism.

The Body Shop controversy:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Entine wrote the September 1994 investigative article, "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?",^[8] inBusiness Ethics magazine, created an international brouhaha and led to hundreds of stories in the international media, including articles in The New York Times and a report on ABC World News Tonight. The Body Shop, the British-based international cosmetics company, which until that point had been considered a model "socially responsible" company, tried to block the story from being published:^[9] The flurry of news stories spurred by the company's attempt to quash the article and its eventual publication led to a temporary 50% drop in the market value of the stock of The Body Shop.

Entine reported that Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, in 1976, had stolen the name, store design, marketing concept and most product line ideas from a different cosmetic chain with the same name, The Body Shop, founded in 1970 in San Francisco by two California women, and subsequently fabricated her story of traveling around the world discovering exotic beauty ingredients. (In 1989, Roddick purchased the U.S. and Israeli rights to The Body Shop name from the original Body Shop founders, and the San Francisco based chain of five stores renamed itself Body Time). He reported that Roddick's "natural" products contained extensive amounts of artificial colorings, scents and preservatives. In contrast to statements by Roddick, unverified reports in popular articles, and even some university case studies claiming that Roddick and The Body Shop "gave most of its profits to charity," documents from Britain's Charity Commission showed that the company gave nothing to charity over its first 11 years and was penurious in its philanthropy thereafter. The Body Shop also faced millions of dollars in claims by disenchanted franchisees, who believed they had been enticed to buy franchises by misrepresenting its potential revenue.

The article in Business Ethics (now defunct), which was cited with a National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism in 1994, is widely used in university business ethics classes and is generally credited with prompting companies claiming to be socially responsible to match their claims with operational practices and to increase transparency.

"Shattered Image" had originally been scheduled to be published as a 10,000 word feature in Vanity Fair earlier in 1994 but was dropped after legal threats by The Body Shop, which threatened to litigate under British libel law, which requires proof of innocence by defendants rather than proof of guilt by the prosecution. The original article was eventually published in 2004 by The Nation Books in Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print, edited by David Wallis. Business Ethics, which had featured Roddick on its cover just the year before, printed a much shorter version of the exposé commissioned for Vanity Fair. "Shattered Image" and subsequent writings by Entine on the emerging "socially responsible" business movement challenged the belief that companies that promote themselves as socially conscious necessarily operate with a higher degree of ethics or social responsibility than conventional companies. Entine's writing focused on what he called "reality rather than rhetoric" of ethical business. He is often credited for coining the term "green washing",^[10] which refers to the deceptive marketing exploits of self-professed "green" companies.

Genetics:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Entine is the founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project, which is under the umbrella of STATS at George Mason University, and is affiliated with the Center for Risk & Health Communication. It focuses on the intersection of media, policy and genetics, both human and agricultural. Entine himself is not a geneticist, and only has a BA degree in philosophy and a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in journalism.

Entine has written three books on genetics and two on chemicals. Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution addresses the controversy over genetic modification in agriculture.^[11] His first book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It was inspired by the documentary on black athletes written with Brokaw in 1989.^[citation ^needed] It was favorably reviewed by The New York Times^[12] and numerous other publications, and were some critical reviews, claiming that the subject was inappropriate as it could encourage a racialist view of human relations.^[13]

In 2007, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People was published, which examined the shared ancestry of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and addressed the question "Who is a Jew?" as seen through the prism of DNA.^[14] Kirkus Reviews called the book an epic tale of 'The Chosen People'...Engaging and informative reading for Jews and non-Jews alike. According to Library Journal, [Jon Entine's] explorations take him from his own Jewish family members' cancer diagnoses to genetic labs—both academic and commercial—across the world, with lengthy forays into Jewish history, the history of Israel and Zionism, and the split between social anthropology and biological anthropology.Harry Ostrer in Nature Genetics called it a broad, well-documented sweep of Jewish history that will inform even the most knowledgeable of readers".^[15]

Entine is a public speaker on genetics and identity for the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Federations of North America.^[16]

Think tank affiliations:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

In 2011, Entine joined the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University^[1] and GMU's STATS (Statistical Assessment Service),^[2] as senior fellow and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, which focuses on the nexus of genetics—human and agricultural—with the media and public policy. Entine joined the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as an adjunct scholar in 2002, and is now a visiting scholar. His research focuses on science and society and corporate sustainability. AEI Press has published three books written and edited by Entine: Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? (February 2011), which analyzes the impact of chemicals in agriculture; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (January 2006), which examined the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. He has also contributed to numerous academic books on a variety of subjects, including sports, genetics, leadership, and sustainability.

Personal life:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Entine has won 19 journalism awards, including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union and a National Press Club award in Consumer Journalism.

Entine has faced criticism for his alleged links to various corporate interests, though he denied this accusation. Entine said he is "an Obama Democrat".^[17]

Books:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, 2000, ISBN 1-58648-026-X
Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing, 2005, ISBN 0-8447-4218-X* Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health, 2011, ISBN 978-0-578-07561-7
Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution, 2006, ISBN 0-8447-4200-7
Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, 2008, ISBN 0-446-58063-5
No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extrajudicial Prosecution, 2009, ISBN 978-0-692-00282-7
Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? 2011, ISBN 978-0-8447-4361-5

References:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Entine#cite_ref-chrc.gmu-scholars_1-1) "Founding CHRC Faculty Scholars". The Center for Health and Risk Communication. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^a ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Entine#cite_ref-stats-staff_2-1) "STATS - Staff". George Mason University. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Jon Entine - articles". ethicalcorp.com. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Contributor Jon Entine". Forbes. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Russomanno, Joseph (2002). "J.H. Desnick, M.D. Eye Services, Ltd., et al. vs American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., Jon Entine, and Sam Donaldson". Speaking our minds: conversations with the people behind landmark First Amendment cases. Psychology Press. pp. 134–169.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Libel suit against ABC’s ‘PrimeTime Live’ dismissed". The News Media & The Law. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Winter 2001. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "The Body Shop File: Beyond "Shattered Image:{"}:". Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Dixon, Cyril (28 August 1994). "Besieged Body Shop comes out fighting". London: The Independent. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ SustainAble: A Handbook of Materials and Applications for Graphic Designers and Their Clients
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture". Goodreads. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Bernstein, Richard (January 14, 2000). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Race to the Swift. Or Is It the Swift to the Race?".The New York Times. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "BREAKING THE TABOO ON RACE AND SPORTS". New York Times. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People". Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ A genetic view of Jewish history. Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People By Jon Entine. Grand Central Publishing, 2007. 432 pp., hardcover, $27.99 ISBN 978-0-446-58063-2. Reviewed by Harry Ostrer. Nature Genetics 2008, 40:2
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ "Jon Entine". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
:{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:^ Philpott, Tom. "The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist". MotherJones. Retrieved 5 February 2014.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0px;color:#555555;;margin-left:0px"):}:[edit:{]}:

The Body Shop File: Beyond "Shattered Image"

In September 1994, Jon's article in Business Ethics on The Body Shop cosmetic company, "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?" forever shattered the 'socially responsible' business myth. The article, which was honored with a National Press Club Award, carefully documented the exploitative business practices and hypocritical marketing of many firms that promote themselves as progressive and "green." This article became an instant classic in business ethics studies. It is copyrighted by Jon and is not available for electronic viewing. However, if you are interested in reading it and can't find it in your library, you can contact Jon directly.

The Body Shop saga, as it came to be known, is one of the most intriguing case studies in modern business. Jon has since written numerous articles on this brouhaha, some of which are below. Those articles are followed by some commentaries, case studies, and analyses of The Body Shop and "green business" by others.

Researchers might be particularly interested in the "Social and Environmental Audit of The Body Shop," which I produced first in 1996, as background research on the company. At the time, Body Shop had hired the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm (which launched the tobacco lobby) and the notorious corporate British law firm Lovell White Durrant. I had only the facts on my side.

Note that this analysis was prepared without the cooperation of Body Shop. In fact, BSI has engaged in numerous covert and overt attempts to block such research and discourage its dissemination. Considering these limitations, and to the best of the author's understanding, this review of Body Shop's character and operations is factually accurate and in context.

"**A Social and Environmental Audit of The Body Shop: Anita Roddick and the Question of Character**" Jon Entine © 1996, 2003

(Note: This Body Shop Social Audit is public record and can be quoted or utilized in research without clearance from me.)

Body Flop: The Inside Story of the Hypocrisy

of Anita Roddick and The Body Shop

Jon's never-before published exposé on the ethical shenanigans of Anita Roddick and The Body Shop is now available in a new book,**Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print**(Nation Books, 2004). Read reviews in Salon, MediaBistro, Las Vegas Weekly, and the Vancouver Sun.

Read Jon's explosive "social and environmental integrity audit" > of Roddick and The Body Shop

Jon's Articles

**Anita Roddick's Body Shop Scam** (citing Jon) > *The Sunday Express* (India) January 9, 2011

**The Myth of the Green Queen**National Post (Canada), September 21, 2007

Anita Roddick's 'Unfair Trade' Started When She Copied Body Shop Formula,

Mail on Sunday, September 16, 2007

**Body Shop Ethical, Financial Woes Spread to Australia**

Australian Financial Review, December 18, 2002

**Body Flop: Anita Roddick proclaimed that business could be caring as well as capitalist.** Today The Body Shop is struggling on both counts. R.O.B. - Toronto Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine, May 31, 2002

High St Chain's Idealism Masks a Harsh Reality

Mail on Sunday, August 2001

**The Queen of Bubble Bath**

BRAZZIL magazine, December 1996

Green Lies and the "Socially Responsible Business" Movement

British Columbia Environmental Network, 1996

Caring Capitalism? * Sunday Times (UK)*, December 1995

**Rainforest Chic** > *The Globe and Mail's ROB: Report on Business*, October 1995

**Exploiting Idealism: How The Body Shop Betrayed its Customers**Utne Reader, January/February 1995

Commentaries on The Body Shop and Jon's Reporting

Anita Roddick's Body Shop: An Empire Built on a Ruse?

National Public Radio: Scott Simon's Commentary on Jon's Investigations of Green Companies, September 15, 2007

**Anita Roddick: Life after The Body Shop**

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, April 13, 2006

Grass Is Green for Amazon Farmers Tony Smith (quoting Jon)

New York Times, October 8, 2003

Unforgettable: Anita Roddick Went Against the Grain

Global Cosmetic Industry, September 1, 2002.

**The Body Shop: The Ethics of the Diesel-Driven "Queen of Green"**

Marty Venalainen, March 2002

**The Disenfranchised**, Carlye Adler

Fortune, September 6, 2001

Trade and Environment Database (TED) Body Shop Case Study November 17, 2000

**Preventing Ethical Failures in Socially Responsible Businesses**

Review of Business, Fall 1978

Le Body Shop Blues

Jeremy Josephs, 1999

**London Greenpeace Analyzes The Body Shop**March 1998

Response to Body Shop's Statement about the London Greenpeace Campaign

Can the Body Shop Shape Up?

Fortune, April 1996

**Broken Promises: Former Brazilian Advisor to Body Shop**Brazzil Magazine, December 1996

Animal People News, 1996

Criticizes The Body Shop

Socially Responsible Business Brawl: > Business Ethics' Magazine Criticizes Cosmetic Maker Body Shop* Progressive*, March 1995

Green Cosmetics: The Definition Undergoes Broadening but Consumer Interest Remains High

Drug & Cosmetic Industry, February 1995

Body Shop International Takes Heat With Ethics Charges

National Public Radio Morning Edition, September 7, 1994

**Trillium Asset Management (formerly Franklin Research and Development) Scrutinizes the Social and Ethical Claims of The Body Shop**

September 15, 1994

http://www.jonentine.com/the-body-shop.html

punked

Roddick's Body Shop: An Empire Built on a Ruse?

by :{SCOTT SIMON:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;border-image-source:initial;border-image-slice:initial;border-image-width:initial;border-image-outset:initial;border-image-repeat:initial;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;text-transform:uppercase;background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

September 15, 2007 8:00 AM ET

Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick died this week at age 64. She created a cosmetics empire that sold good works as much as good scents: its products were branded as "pure" and not tested on animals. Alas, Roddick's ethical business claims turned to be dubious, says Scott Simon.

SCOTT SIMON, host:

What a story was Anita Roddick. The daughter of immigrants, she worked on a kibbutz and opened a cosmetic shop in Brighton, England, in 1976 with a baby on her back. She made products that she said were pure and good, and got customers to bring in their own bottles.

By the time she died this week at age 64, Dame Anita Roddick was the fourth richest woman in Britain and the Body Shop had grown to more than 2,000 outlets around the world. I remember buying stuff in one of their fragrant first stores in London's Covent Garden. The Satsuma Soap smelled terrific, but didn't seem to clean very well. I think I blamed it on the London water.

Jon Entine wrote about Anita Roddick's empire of good scents and alleged good works for Business Ethics magazine in 1994. It is one of the most devastating investigations I have ever read.

Mr. Entine established that the products the Body Shop called 100 percent pure were, in fact, only about 1 percent so. They were mostly made from cheap cosmetic petrochemicals, which the Body Shop did not list on its store signs.

Scientists pointed out that in greens like avocado, banana, green apple and grapefruit would rot within days without chemical preservatives. Those appealing stories about a pineapple face wash that was an ancient secret of Tasmanian women or the healing nut butters of Amazon tribal people, the Roddicks had never gone there, much less brought back secrets.

The stories were themselves beauty concoctions to charm customers who wanted to believe in the wisdom of ancient peoples, instead of chemists and corporations. Dame Anita scolded a meeting of the International Chamber of Commerce for not boycotting products from China.

When Jon Entine got to ask her why the Body Shop bought packaging from Chinese manufacturers, she said I was talking about what business should do, not what we actually do. My job is to inspire, but we have a bloody business to run after all.

The Body Shop famously advertised that its products weren't tested on animals, but Jon Entine pointed out that most of the ingredients in its products were tested on animals. So it changed its trademark phrase from, Not Tested on Animals to Against Animal Testing. Has a cigarette company ever come up with a more cunning slogan?

Dame Anita Roddick made green into a popular brand. Her legacy is visible on the label of every soap or shampoo that boasts of being natural, organic or pure. Some of her fans were distressed when Dame Anita sold the Body Shop stores to L'Oreal for a billion dollars.

Dame Anita said she hoped her business ethics would work their way into the French multinational cosmetics firm, instead of the other way around. Maybe they already had.

http://propagandists.org/propagandists/jon-entine/

**Introduction**

**Biography**

**Cover-up, intimidation and ‘paid-for research’**

**Entine’s involvement with ACSH (Defense of atrazine)**

**Entine connections and funding organizations**

**Entine as journalist hit-man**

**Entine’s legal issues**

**Entine refuted**

I. Jon Entine – Introduction

Jon Entine is a media-savvy corporate propagandist and pseudo-journalist who fronts the opinions and positions of chemical corporations by pretending to be an independent journalist. He has ties to biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta while playing a key role in another industry front group known as the American Council on Science and Health,a thinly-veiled corporate front group that Sourcewatch describes as holding “a generally apologetic stance regarding virtually every other health and environmental hazard produced by modern industry, accepting corporate funding from Coca-Cola, Kellogg, General Mills, Pepsico, and the American Beverage Association, among others.” (Sourcewatch.org)

Entine knowingly and repeatedly publishes false and fictitious information in mainstream publications including Forbes.com, and his posts are often retracted after being challenged on their lack of factual basis. His actions against targeted individuals or companies are systematically abusive and resemble “revenge journalism.” Entine takes a “hit man” approach to single out individuals – especially critics of GMOs – for accusations and abuse, often calling them names or implying they are sociopaths or a danger to society.

Entine’s deep involvement in the propaganda of poison-pushing corporations is also reflected in his own personal life, where he remains embattled in a bitter seven-year divorce during which he engaged in highly questionable behavior such as threatening his young daughter’s therapist with a lawsuit if he continued to provide therapy sessions. At one point during the divorce, Entine’s ex-wife pleaded with the court to demand a psychiatric evaluation of Entine, for which he refused to volunteer.

A protection order against Entine was issued by the courts in relation to his divorce battle.

II. Biography

Jon Entine is currently a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a columnist for theBritish-based international magazine Ethical Corporation,??and co-founder of E.S.G.Metrics, which advises business and NGOs on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, including sustainability and executive leadership (Sourcewatch). His most recent clients have included KKR, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Proctor & Gamble, American Greetings, Monsanto, DHL/Deutsche Post, Fischer Homes, and Pomeroy IT Solutions.

Entine writes for academic and popular publications around the world and is a frequent television and radio commentator on business issues, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox Business, NPR, and BBC. He has written and edited five books, most recently No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-judicial Prosecution (TFG Books, 2009), which focuses on the dangers of overzealous government prosecutors and the threat they pose to American civil liberties.

Before launching his consulting and writing career, he spent 20 years as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC, and was Tom Brokaw’s long-time producer atNBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries.

One of Entine’s books, “Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture”(AEI Press, 2006), purports to examine the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. But it is clear that the book is critical of anyone who questions the safety of GMO foods or otherwise supports further regulation of it, perhaps through legislation requiring GMO foods to be labeled, or by limiting the proximity of GM crops to fields planted with non-GM crops.

Though he is listed as a “visiting scholar”…http://therefusers.com/refusers-newsroom/meet-jon-entine-pro-monsanto-gmo-activist-and-pro-bill-gates-activist/#.U4zcivldWSo

III. Cover-up, intimidation and ‘paid-for research’

History of atrazine controversy. Over the past decade there has been growing controversy concerning atrazine, an herbicide of the triazine class. Atrazine is manufactured by Syngenta, a major biotechnology company, and the chemical iswidely used in the United States and Australia to stop pre and post-emergence broadleaf and grassy weeds in crops such as sorghum, maize, sugarcane, lupins, pine and eucalypt plantations, and triazine tolerant (TT) canola.

As of 2014, in the U.S., atrazine was the second-most-widely used agricultural chemical after glyphosate (which goes under the trade name of Roundup, which was developed and is sold by Monsanto). Nearly 80 million pounds of atrazine is applied to U.S. crops annually [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3733-2004Aug15_2.html]. As noted in an August 15, 2004, Washington Post story (see above link), atrazine is, according to the EPA, “the most prevalent herbicide in ground and surface water, remaining stable and toxic for decades in some environments.”Further, “It is also a major source of revenue for Syngenta, a Swiss company with U.S. headquarters in Greensboro, N.C., that sells hundreds of millions of dollars’worth of the chemical every year.”

The Post story noted that for years, the primary concern regarding atrazine was cancer,noting that “the chemical clearly causes cancer in rats.”Further, the Post reported, “male workers in Syngenta’s production facility in Louisiana have experienced much higher rates of prostate cancer than other men statewide. But studies supported by Syngenta recently convinced the EPA that the mechanism by which atrazine causes cancer in rats probably does not occur in people.”The company’s reasoning for the higher rates of prostate cancer among its Louisiana workers “is that it has an aggressive screening program that finds cases that would otherwise go undetected.”

The Post story further reported that previous studies on frogs were performed by biologist Tyrone Hayes, a U.C./Berkeley professor who found that tiny doses of atrazine affects frogs’sexual development. When Hayes “sought to publish his work and have the data considered by the EPA, the company told him to run the tests again, said Hayes and Tim Pastoor, a Syngenta vice president. When repeated studies confirmed the worrisome link, Hayes was reminded that his contract forbade him to publish without Syngenta’s approval. He was told that his data ought to be passed to a company-selected statistician for double-checking.”Hayes quit the company he was working for at the time, EcoRisk, and published his findings on his own in a pair of peer-reviewed journals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2003)

Enter Entine, Syngenta intimidation and the American Council on Science and Health.

Intimidation. (Per Wikipedia) “In 2014, New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv reported that Syngenta might have been orchestrating an attack on the “scientific credibility”of not just Tyrone Hayes, the lead critic of atrazine use, but other scientists as well whose studies have shown atrazine to have negative effects on the environment and/or human and animal health [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all].

“Paul Winchester, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, wrote a paper that was published in Acta Paediatrica [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2008.01207.x/full] reviewing national records for thirty million births, found that children conceived between April and July, when the concentration of atrazine, mixed with other pesticides, in water is highest, were more likely to have genital birth defects. Professor Winchester subsequently received a subpoena requesting that he turn over to Syngenta every e-mail he had written about atrazine in the past decade.

“Deborah Cory-Slechta, a professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and a former member of the EPA’s science advisory board, said that she, too, had felt that Syngenta was trying to ‘undermine’her work, after she published a study showing that the herbicide paraquat may contribute to diseases of the nervous system. “The folks from Syngenta used to follow me to my talks and tell me I wasn’t using ‘human-relevant doses’,”Cory-Slechta said. ‘They would go up to my students and try to intimidate them. There was this sustained campaign to make it look like my science wasn’t legitimate.’

“In one of the e-mails obtained by class-action suit plaintiffs, the company’s communications consultants had written in 2005 that they “wanted to obtain Hayes’s calendar of speaking engagements,”so that Syngenta could “start reaching out to the potential audiences with the Error vs. Truth Sheet,”which would provide “irrefutable evidence of his polluted messages.”Syngenta subsequently stated that many of the documents unsealed in the lawsuits refer to “ideas that were never implemented.”

Scientific abuse. By 2012, a lot had happened regarding atrazine. As of 2001, Atrazine was the most commonly detected pesticide contaminating drinking water in the United States. By 2004 it had been banned for use by the European Union. Later, scientists would learn that the endocrine system was the system in humans and animals alike that atrazine targeted most heavily, while a 2008 study would report that tadpoles developed deformed hearts and impaired kidneys and digestive systems when exposed to atrazine in their early stages of life. Tissue malformation may have been induced by ectopic programmed cell death, although a mechanism was not identified [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235211/]. The following year, in 2009, The New York Times discussed how atrazine could be a potential cause of birth defects, low birth weights and menstrual problems when consumed at concentrations below federal standards [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23water.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&].

In 2012 an epidemiological study showed that women who lived in counties in Texas with the highest levels of atrazine being used on agricultural crops were 80 times more likely to give birth to infants with choanal atresia or stenosis compared to women who lived in the counties with the lowest levels [https://www.bcm.edu/news/hematology/study-exposure-herbicide-risk-rare-disorder]. The same year Syngenta Corporation, manufacturer of atrazine, was the defendant in a class action lawsuit concerning the levels of atrazine in human water supplies. Syngenta agreed to pay $105 million to reimburse more than a thousand water systems for “the cost of filtering atrazine from drinking water”, although the company denied all wrongdoing [http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2013/atrazine].

The EPA had conducted a number of reviews of findings regarding health risks posed by atrazine, but has still elected not to impose stricter regulations on its use.

IV. Entine’s ties to Syngenta, involvement with ACSH and defense of atrazine

Entine, the American Council on Science and Health offer to ‘help’Syngenta. An internal email disclosed in documents obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), as part of a major lawsuit against Syngenta, shows that the ACSH received regular money and even asked for additional funding from “Syngenta friends”to commission a book that would, in large part, be a defense of atrazine:

Enter screen shot of this email here:[http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/5/55/Syn_email_ACSH_Whelan_Say_Syngenta_Is_Financial_Lifeblood.pdf]

(and summarize)

“As we made clear, ACSH is eager to commission a literature review on the general subject of pesticide exposure and human health. The paper would, of course, not be exclusively about atrazine, but the recent and ongoing “controversy”would be a primary focus.”

ACSH said it was committing $100,000 to the project –funding that was “separate and distinct from general operating supportSyngenta has been so generously providing over the years, which we request to continue at current or increased levels.”

Entine was the author of the commissioned book.

In 2011 the ACSH produced its “companion friendly”paper called, “Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.”The book attacks the EPA and “harmful, unnecessary regulation”as well as the precautionary principle. It contains a chapter-long “case study”defending atrazine, just as members of the Syngenta PR team had been seeking. (http://acsh.org/2011/01/scared-to-death/)

An investigative report by PR Watch also links Entine to the book: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/02/11277/syngenta-pr%E2%80%99s-weed-killer-spin-machine-investigating-press-and-shaping-news-about

Mother Jones magazine further reported:

CMD’s investigation does not establish whether ACSH ever got Syngenta funding for that project. But CMD raises the possibility that Entine’s slim volume Scared to Death might be the very booklet that ACSH’s executive director envisioned in his letter to Syngenta. Entine flat-out denied this suggestion in an email exchange. “Syngenta is not a client and never has been. I have no clients in the agricultural or chemicals businesses,” he wrote.

Michael F. Jacobson, the executive director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said this about the ACSH in a letter to the editor at the Washington Times:“The group is a receptacle for payments from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, food and other companies who appreciate the convenience of having their grantees and former employees serve on government science panels.”And the Center for Media and Democracy discovered that Syngenta’s public relations division operated in part to protect the company’s lucrative sales of atrazine (in a two-part report here and here). Entine’s name shows up in these reports.

It’s important to further note that, before ACSH stopped revealing donors in 1991, this online source reports that the “Monsanto Fund”was a corporate donor of $25,000 and above. Another donor was “The NutriSweet Company,”which was owned by G.D. Searle & Co., which in turn also funded Enzine-linked STATS. Pfizer, which held the NutriSweet brand, was also a donor to ACSH. This source is called the “Integrity in Science Project.”

In this Forbes piece further touting atrazine, Entine claims that Hayes’research was not “reproducible,” but this assessment [http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/atrazine-and-health.html] by the Union of Concern Scientists notes that the hand-picked industry scientists chosen to “replicate”Hayes’research did not accurately copy Hayes’methods:

Dr. Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley, originally hired by the chemical company Syngenta to review studies to help certify the herbicide for re-registration with the EPA, was at first surprised when he found that African clawed frog tadpoles were “chemically castrated”when exposed to even trace amounts of atrazine –levels one-thirtieth the amount currently permitted in US drinking water. Hayes’findings were published in both Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hayes, who eventually resigned from the Syngenta review panel out of concern that his worrisome lab results were being buried, later charged that industry-supported scientists produced “a number of studies that were purposely flawed and misleading, and that changed the weight of the evidence.”The two remaining members of Syngenta’s atrazine review panel claimed that they had each tried but failed to replicate Hayes’data. In the scientific world such a claim is an insult or worse, implying that the original experiment may have been dishonest or flawed. In this case, the two scientists had both experienced difficulties raising the frogs—many of which died before metamorphosis because of being overcrowded and underfed. One scientist reported that he had contaminated the water with too much atrazine.

In other words, the new studies did nothing to disprove Hayes’results, which have been “echoed by at least four other independent research teams in three countries.”When Hayes offered to help the Syngenta panel members and the EPA repeat his experiments to see for themselves whether atrazine posed a danger, the EPA declined. Nonetheless, the failed studies served to bolster the argument that the science linking atrazine to hormone disruption was uncertain.

So, Entine’s claim that Hayes’experiments were “not reproducible”is not accurate because the research attempt at replicating Hayes’resultswas flawed from the start and was not conducted under the exact conditions Hayes first used to reach his conclusions.

Further, and under a byline stating that he was the “Director, Genetic Literacy Project, Statistical Assessment Service, George Mason Univ.,”Entine authored a piece for The Huffington Post attacking atrazine critics and defending the chemical : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/frog-day-afternoon-choose_b_853776.html

see below

And as noted here, Entine has a history of defending chemical use, GMO foods and other industry initiatives on behalf of the chemical/biochemical/biotech industries on behalf of ACSH:http://acsh.org/?s=jon+entine&cat=0&x=31&y=22

In an investigative piece, Mother Jones revealed how heavily financed ACSH is by the very industries the “independent”organization defends:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-council-science-health-leaked-documents-fundraising :

According to the ACSH documents, from July 1, 2012, to December 20, 2012, 58 percent of donations to the council came from corporations and large private foundations. ACSH’s donors and the potential backers the group has been targeting comprise a who’s-who of energy, agriculture, cosmetics, food, soda, chemical, pharmaceutical, and tobacco corporations. ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation ($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000), Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000), McDonald’s ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria ($25,000).

See the document listing these donations here: http://www.motherjones.com/documents/809483-acsh-financial-summary#document/p4/a128808

More from the Mother Jones investigation:

Dr. Gilbert Ross, the group’s executive director, declined to answer specific questions about ACSH’s fundraising. He did not dispute the authenticity of the documents provided to Mother Jones. (Multiple corporations listed as donors on these documents confirmed they had supported ACSH.) Ross says the group doesn’t disclose its backers because “the sources of our support are irrelevant to our scientific investigations.”According to Ross, “Only science-based facts hold sway in our publications, even if the outcome is not pleasing to our contributors.”

As Mother Jones reported in 2005, Ross was previously convicted for defrauding New York State’s Medicaid program of roughly $8 million. His medical license was temporarily revoked and a jury sentenced him to 46 months in prison, of which he served 23 months. Ross currently has his license and is allowed to practice.

The ACSH was founded in 1978 by Elizabeth Whelan, a Harvard-trained public-health scientist, as a counterweight to environmental groups and Ralph Nader’s consumer advocacy movement. At the organization’s founding, Whelan stated that the council “intends to remain free from financial ties with corporations with a financial interest in the topics we are investigating.”

“ACSH calls the U.S. ban on DDT one of the 20 worst unfounded health scares of the 20th century. It ridicules the risks that chemical ‘endocrine disruptors’pose to human health and fertility. In addition to pesticides and chemical food additives, it hasdefended asbestos, Agent Orange and nuclear power. Whelan’s nutritional advice has also raised eyebrows among health experts, many of whom take exception to her claims that there is ‘no such thing as ‘junk food,”and that ‘There is insufficient evidence of a relationship between diet and any disease.’”– Source

From the start, ACSH has faced questions about its funding:

By the early 1980s, ACSH’s donors included Dow, Monsanto, American Cyanamid, Mobil Foundation, Chevron, and Bethlehem Steel. In 1984, Georgia-Pacific, a leading formaldehyde maker, funded a friend-of-the-court brief filed by ACSH in an industry-backed lawsuit that overturned a ban on formaldehyde insulation.

ACSH claims it does not seek donations from corporations or trade groups that are earmarked for specific research projects –in short, there is no quid pro quo. But at Mother Jones reported:

[I]n a March 1992 internal memo obtained by Consumer Reports, Whelan wrote that ACSH staffers would ask the Calorie Control Council, a trade group backed by diet food and drink companies, and McNeil Specialty Products, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary that owned the US marketing rights to Splenda (an artificial sweetener), for contributions to underwrite the dissemination of a research paper touting artificial sweeteners. (Splenda was then seeking approval for sale in the United States.)

Entine’s book(“Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health”)and chapter singing the praises of atrazine followed along with the Syngenta PR team’s wishes.

In a piece for Forbes.com, published February 9, 2012, Entine attacked Mother Jones magazine for its earlier exposé of Hayes; Entine’s piece in Forbes was critical and an attempt as well to discredit Hayes’research, but again it was based on faulty premises.

This Chicago Now piece dissects Entine’s (and Forbes’) claims: http://www.chicagonow.com/high-gloss-and-sauce/2013/08/forbes-atrazine-jon-etine-082013/ The piece charges that an EPA-recognized study on the effects of atrazine on frogs which claimed not to be able to refute or confirm Hayes’studies is “mainly because of the limitations of the study designs and uncertainties in the data.”It was a problem with the EPA’s own processes.

In Forbes, Entine argues that atrazine is “so gentle”it can be applied right after a “crop’s first shoots”appear. But this is misdirection; the issue is that atrazine is harmful once it runs off into ground water, as Hayes’data show. Per Chicago Now: “The EPA is so aware of this and eager to dodge upsetting Syngenta, the makers of Atrazine (as well as avoid upsetting the public and showing their incompetence) that for the 2013 report on Atrazine, the EPA took the groundwater measurement in January, when toxin levels are typically low. (Atrazine is applied to farm crops in Spring.)”

As the EPA itself notes:

–“Atrazine is a commonly reported groundwater contaminant.”

–“Drinking water from a contaminated groundwater or surface water source can be a significant medium of exposure for children.

–“Exposure to children can occur primarily from ingestion of contaminated drinking water, and from dermal contact or ingestion following agricultural and lawn applications.”

–“Atrazine is the most commonly detected pesticide in U.S. surface waters, particularly in the U.S. Midwest Corn Belt region.”

The source for these EPA statements is here: http://www.epa.gov/teach/chem_summ/Atrazine_summary.pdf

In his Forbes piece, Enzine made these claims:

The EPA’s assessment reflects the consensus by many scientific bodies around the world, including the World Health Organization and regulatory agencies in Australia, Canada the European Union’s safety review: atrazine has a short half-life, does not bio-accumulate in organisms, is not carcinogenic and study after study has shown it does not cause abnormalities and deformities at levels occurring in groundwater.

As noted by Chicago Now:

– Atrazine has been banned by the EU.

– The problem is not that it bio-accumulates in organisms, the problem is that exposure around the time of ovulation can cause adverse effects on embryos including chromosome aberrations (to quote the EPA, “Reproductive effects are the most sensitive effects observed in atrazine toxicity tests”also, “Change in hormone levels is the most sensitive health effect observed in an extensive battery of atrazine toxicity tests”)

Source: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/reregistration/atrazine/atrazine_update.htm

A National Institutes of Health study found that surface water atrazine and nitrate levels were related to increased incidences of abdominal wall defects. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17560200

Also, an independent panel of scientists convened by the EPA recommended that the agency revise its assumption that atrazine “is unlikely to cause cancer.”Pointing to what it called “strong” epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer, the panel states that the agency is currently acting with “inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential.”

Entine essentially is defending the indefensible.

As reported by Mother Jones here:

Last week, the EPA released the minutes of the panel’s final meeting, which took place July 26-28. Its conclusions were stark. The panel criticized the EPA for lumping all forms of cancer together in its atrazine assessment, noting that “it would be useful and appropriate to make conclusions for individual cancers as opposed to making a blanket determination for cancer in general.” It then gave a list of cancers for which there is “suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential”: ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer. For other cancers—prostate cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancers, and childhood cancers—the panel found that “there is inadequate evidence” to determine whether or not atrazine is a cause.

At another point in the minutes, the panel pointed to “strong” epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer and “suggestive” evidence linking it to ovarian cancer. “Many on the Panel believed that the epidemiology data failed to provide compelling evidence that atrazine is not carcinogenic,” the minutes stated.

Documents in the atrazine lawsuit revealed that Entine was one of the “**third party outreach**” people that Syngenta’s PR contractor, the White House Writers Group, was in communication with over a pesticides conference that the AEI hosted.

This report by PR Watch confirms the “third party outreach”allegation. Here is the relevant passage:

“Unsealed e-mails reveal (PDF) that earlier that same week WHWG had reported to Syngenta that a third party the PR team was in communication with was Jon Entine of the American Enterprise Institute. Entine is a former producer with NBC and ABC News, whose books attacked the idea of socially responsible investing and the precautionary principle (Let Them Eat Precaution).”

V. Entine connections and funding organizations

Entine is founder of ESG MediaMetrics, “an alliance of strategic partners, to address an unfilled frustration voiced by corporations, business groups and civil society organizations: how

to manage the complex nexus of media, public policy and sustainable management. This is a PR group aimed at attacking anyone and any group or company that dares to challenge the “scientific orthodoxy”of ESG clients.

Source: http://www.esgmediametrics.com/founder.htm

One of EGR’s clients is Monsanto, according to this source.

Entine’s EGR site discusses the firm’s role:

One of the company’s specific roles is “Communications and Public Relations Strategy,”but in an email to Mother Jones, Entine denied EGR was a PR firm:

I consult with organizations, from fair trade groups to the Environmental Defense Fund to corporations. I’m committed to science. I do no corporate PR work. You can misrepresent what I do and call it PR work, but that would be deceitful. People who do what I do are generally called “green consultants,” which I’m sure you’d never use as then I’d seem like a good guy and it’s much easier to put people and what they do in neat little boxes that prevent real thinking.

As for listing Monsanto as a client on the ESG website, Entine wrote: “Nine years ago, I did a $2000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That’s the entirety of my Monsanto relationship.”

Entine has also worked with Jay Byrne’s PR firm v-Fluence, which was set up by former Monsanto executives.

Genetic Literacy Project. :{Entine is also executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project }:[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project:{], which is affiliated with George Mason University.}::{ }:One of the organization’s purposes is to promote GMOs:{. The GLP is also associated with STATS, or the Statistical Assessment Service and the}::{Center for Media and Public Affairs}::{. GLP has another “sister”organization besides STATS, and that is}::{ }::{EconoSTATS, which promotes privatization and discourages government}::{ regulation}::{ }::{}:[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service:{].}:

STATS has been funded in the past by Searle Freedom Trust, an organization founded by Big Pharma G.D. Searle & Co., makers of (among other things) aspartame (trade name “NutriSweet”) and is now part of Pfizer :{}:[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Searle_Freedom_Trust:{]. The Searle Freedom Trust funds a number of organizations and think tanks aimed at promoting corporate bottom lines, even over sound science.}:

According to an email he sent Mother Jones magazine, Entine derives the bulk of his income from the GLP:

To hear Entine tell it, his defenses of atrazine and other pesticides are entirely pro bono and driven by his own initiative. He told me he gets “almost all” of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project, which, he added, is funded by what he called theTempleton and Searle foundations.The project is housed at the Statistical Assessment Service program at George Mason University, where Entine is a fellow. Though Entine would not specify which Searle trust funded the GLP, theSearle Freedom Trust’s 2010 tax form lists a $154,000 grant to STATS for a “Gene Policy and Science Literacy Project,” which sounds an awful lot like Entine’s.

Entine is also listed as a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute [http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute] Entine uses his AEI platform as a “visiting fellow”to give himself credibility [http://www.aei.org/scholar/jon-entine/], but he says he receives no money from the organization.

VI. Entine as journalist hit-man

The Body Shop.One of Entine’s crowning achievementswas the “take-down”of a business known as The Body Shop (TBS) during his waning days as a news program producer at ABC, in 1994. Unable to get the program aired at ABC, Entine eventually convinced a small-time journal, the Minneapolis-based Business Ethics magazine, to publish what can only be described as a hit piece against TBS. This was a long-term “investigation”by Entine, who seemed locked into TBS for some reason. Immediately prior to the publication of his piece in Business Ethics, TBS responded to his reported allegations, which were reported by Britain’s Independent newspaper: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/besieged-body-shop-comes-out-fighting-1386286.html]

“Mr. Entine is alleged to have described Anita Roddick, the company’s founder, as a ‘schizophrenic and a sociopath.’

“He is said to have denounced the company in approaches to investors, franchisees and potential supporters. Yesterday’s statement also accused him of pestering Anita Roddick at home, a claim Mr. Entine denies.

Among allegations to surface in the past 10 days are claims that the company’s ‘Trade not Aid’policy of buying goods from indigenous peoples was not as vigorously pursued as The Body Shop had claimed, that Ms Roddick ‘stole’the company’s concept from a tiny American outfit, and that it had been responsible for pollution in New Jersey.”

TBS’share prices fell on news of the report.

However, according to environmental activist, writer, lecturer and organizer Lorna Salzman [Source:http://www.lornasalzman.com/collectedwritings/unwise.html] there was more to Entine’s TBS episode behind the scenes. She writes:

Entine’s lengthy CV on the web emphasizes his television news experience prominently. His last full-time TV stint was at ABC television’s Primetime Live, but what Entine doesn’t report is that he was fired from ABC during his investigation of TBS for “mistakes in methodology.” In a letter from London’s The Sunday Times, the Deputy Editor explains how his paper was misled by Entine and how he misrepresented himself.

“We now know what we did not know then: ABC discovered Entine had made a number of mistakes in his methodology so serious that they had in effect fired him some ten days before. Entine, probably unknown to ABC, was however still picking up his messages from a phone on his old desk in the ABC building. We now understand from ABC sources that Entine is regarded as out of control and has been running around saying some wild things”(Ivan Fallon, letter from Deputy Editor of The Sunday Times, October 8, 1993).

Entine then sold the idea to Vanity Fair, a publication with many cosmetic advertisers who compete with TBS (Sandra Earley, “The Woman Who Wants to Save the World”, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). They rejected the story but paid Entine a $15,000 kill fee and $18,000 in expenses. (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996).It isn’t as if Entine is some Norman Mailer; his bio up until this article shows no other published stories but a recent book on black athletes got some media attention.

Entine tried to bring the story to other magazines without success, and finally Business Ethics, a small financially struggling publication, paid him $300 for the story and published it. Entine then turned around and made a $1000 donation to the magazine (S.Earley, Corporate Report Minnesota, June 1996). The publication of this story, to which Business Ethics would not allow a rebuttal, damaged TBS’image and stock value. Two years after the article appeared, Entine’s wife Ellen Turner was hired to be a marketing executive for The Limited, the parent company of TBS’largest US competitor, Bath and Body Works.

Then, to use a favorite Entine word, a bizarre thing occurred during a 1997 lecture at Trent University in Canada: Entine stated that “Of course, The Body Shop is better than 99% of companies”. But why doesn’t he WRITE that? When pressed at Trent about why he doesn’t pursue corporate criminals like Shell Oil over their Nigerian operations (an issue TBS has campaigned on since 1993), he had no answer.

Salzman adds this regarding Entine’s TBS “investigation”:

In Entine’s TBS attack, he referred to a Food & Drug Administration (FDA) investigation of a small shampoo spill from TBS’New Jersey operations. But he failed to say that it was HE who called in the complaint (later whiting out his name, a fact he concealed), that FDA found the TBS facility to actually be well-run, and that FDA, upon completing all inspections, is bound by law to make recommendations regardless of how clean the facility may be. (FDA Report Summary of Findings, 1123).

Walter Ritte.Writing in The Daily Kos, “Karen from Maui”dissects another hit piece written by Entine, in which he attempts to disparage another environmental activist: [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/21/1240329/-Corporate-PR-The-War-on-Environmentalists#]

[**Technique #5: Blacken the personal reputations of environmental leaders.**:{ :(style="color:#242424;"):}:[Searle funded STATS shill, Jon Entine, wrote an entire article filled with unsubstantiated accusations against GMO activist, Walter Ritte. Walter Ritte is a long time Hawaiian activist who is respected for his role in reclaiming the island of Kaho'olawe from military bombing. In the article Jon Entine mixes up Ritte's activist causes with his unsuccessful run for Office of Hawaiian Affairs. This article is a textbook example of this PR technique in action. It not only uses Destroying Personal Reputations but it is done through a corporate-sponsored Front Group.]]

Searle funded STATS shill, Jon Entine, wrote an*entire article*filled with unsubstantiated accusations against GMO activist, Walter Ritte. Walter Ritte is a long time Hawaiian activist who is respected for his role in reclaiming the island of Kaho’olawe from military bombing. In the article Jon Entine mixes up Ritte’s activist causes with his unsuccessful run for Office of Hawaiian Affairs. This article is a textbook example of this PR technique in action. It not only uses Destroying Personal Reputations but it is done through a corporate-sponsored Front Group.

In his capacity as Genetic Literacy Project, Entine levels non-specific and, at the time of his writing, unsubstantiated charges against Ritte:

Activist leaders opposed to crop biotechnology, such as Walter Ritte, the Molokai-based political activist, have attempted to frame this battle as David vs. Goliath, threadbare grassroots campaigners fighting Big Ag. Although they claim their opposition to the innovative technology is home grown, a Genetic Literacy Project investigation, still in its infancy, suggeststhat the opposition is flush with cash, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from mainland anti-GMO organic organizations that have an ideological stake in blocking new farming technologies.

And, as the headline introduction to one portion of his piece, Entine prominently, and rhetorically, insinuates:

Did Walter Ritte violate Hawaii’s campaign spending law?

In a subsequent investigation by a local newspaper, The Molokai News, in reference to a piece Entine wrote at Forbes.com, in which he accused an anti-GMO group Ritte is associated with of illegally receiving more than 80 percent of its funds from non-Hawaii donors, a charge that records filed by Ritte with the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission appear to substantiate. What Entine does not mention in his charges –either in his Forbes.com piece or on his GLP website, is that, according to The Molokai News, despite Hawaii law on the matter, it is moot:

Gary Kam, legal counsel for HCSC, would not comment on whether there is an active investigation being conducted on Ritte. This will not be public information, he said, unless it is referred to the Commission for action. He did say that there has been no past enforcement action taken against Ritte.

Kam also mentioned that the violation may be moot and unenforceable anyway. Apparently, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided, prior to 2012, that it was unconstitutional to limit contributions from out of state sources, said Kam. This was based on a case in which a University of Hawaii student contribution was considered valid even though the student had a permanent address on the mainland.

A report from the organization Campaign Freedom further found in April 2014 that, because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling inMcCutcheon v FEC, which invalidated the federal aggregate limit on contributions by individuals to candidate campaigns and political committees as unconstitutional under the First Amendment, “states with aggregate limits and proportional bans should strongly consider repealing these speech-stifling regulations in order to comply with the precedent set in the McCutcheon decision and avoid a likely successful legal challenge.”

A case that challenged a number of Hawaii’s campaign spending laws was being appealed by the state of Hawaii, but the state dropped its appeal in June 2011.

Gilles-Eric Saralini. Entine has also set his sights on French Prof. Gilles-Eric Saralini, whose University of Caen study found that GM maize and Roundup at very low doses caused organ damage, tumors and premature death in rats over the long term.

GM Watch reported that these articles are dishonest in the extreme. “For example, Entine described Seralini’s findings as “anomalous” even though Seralini’s was the only long-term toxicity study ever carried out on this particular GM maize and the herbicide it is grown with. It’s hard not to produce “anomalous” findings if there is only one experiment.”

Entine has also worked to undermine Saralini on Wikipedia, using the handle “runjonrun”(Incidentally, Entine’s email address isrunjonrun@earthlink.net). GM Watch was alerted by Wikipedia users to the fact that Entine was one of the early editors on a one-sided and originally potentially libellous Wikipedia article called “The Seralini affair”, which denigrated Seralini’s study and Seralini himself.

Entine, under the Wiki user name “runjonrun”, was active in vandalizing the article by rapidly deleting balancing information, for example, about the scientific support for Seralini’s study and the conflicts of interest among critics of the study.

In a previous Wiki spat, “runjonrun” had revealed his true identity as Jon Entine after upsetting other Wiki users by allegedly contravening Wiki conflict of interest guidelines and vandalising articles without justification.

VII. Entine’s legal issues

Entine has been involved in a seven-year divorce battle with his wife. And, according to court documents, there has been an order of protection filed against him:

Each party supplemented its position with a subsequent affidavit. And Humbert introduced the affidavit of Entine’s ex-wife, along with copies of her application for protective orders against Entine made in the course of their recent divorce.

[Enter screen shot of page two of Entine's court case against Bruce Humbert and his estranged wife, Ellen Turner]

VIII. Entine refuted

– One of Entine’s books, “Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We Are Afraid to Talk About It,”has been called the “go-to”piece of work for mainstream sports writers when the subject turns to race in sports. But in a scholarly work countering Entine’s claims, Ian B. Kerr from Western Michigan University concluded “that science and genetic experimentation have proven that natural biological variation amongst and between peoples cannot be used to validate claims of innate racial superiority in athletic competition.”

Kerr further notes:

When Entine does cite supposed “genetic”data on the differences between Blacks and Whites, he is in fact citing biological data. These include studies on African fast twitch muscle fibers and development of motor skills. Entine includes these studies to demonstrate irrevocable proof of embedded genetic differences between populations but refuses to accept the fact that any differences may be due to environmental factors or training. Entine then is unfairly giving an undue strong preference to genetic factors while disregarding social and environmental factors (Harpalani, 2004).

Moreover, external differences like height or weight, which play an instrumental role in helping define an individual’s athletic prowess, have not been proven to be exclusively rooted in biology or genetics. Genetic differences among people cannot solely account for why certain people are more athletic than others, as scientists cannot find any specific genetic markers that define the characteristics of athleticism (speed, height, strength) in one group or “race”more than any other.

Further:

Yet why has the genetic theory of Black athletic dominance been so difficult to debunk? Part of the problem are the roles of professional athletes and the media in reinforcing negative stereotypes regarding race and athletic ability.

He makes this conclusion, among others:

Entine and other quasi-genetic determinists fall into a mode of thinking wherein physical differences between individuals are read as proof that separate races of people exist. By focusing on physical differences and insignificant genetic variations rather than providing insight into the biodiversity among humans, Entine muddies the waters of racism and racial superiority.

Writing in American Scientist, University of Georgia’s Paul Achter and Celeste Condit also refute Entine’s conclusions:

The bulk of the book blends historical anecdotes about the intersection of race, science and sports with genetic research underwritten by a supposed objectivity of observation. Entine refutes deterministic environmental explanations for athletic superiority. Too often, he argues, such accounts completely ignore the contribution of genes in our ability to dunk a basketball, run long distances or elude a defensive back. But Entine goes too far in the opposite direction. Although he occasionally gives lip service to the idea that nature and nurture both contribute to athletic ability, Entine ultimately dismisses substantive consideration of environmental factors as ideological or self-censoring. He leaves the impression that there are clear racial differences in athletic abilities and that all such differences are traceable to genes.

Regrettably, Entine’s version of genetics constitutes a caricature of that science. His account of the debate over the “out-of-Africa” hypothesis is lopsided and reflects the hastiness and sloppiness that also bedevils the proofreading, organization and argumentative structuring throughout the book. Ultimately, Entine takes what may be a kernel of truth—that there are very small differences in frequencies of particular physical structures in some geographically localized populations—and distorts it into the claim that “blacks” are universally better athletes because of their genes.

The flaws in this larger claim are illustrated by Entine’s use of Tiger Woods as an example of the physical superiority of black athletes. Entine admits Tiger Woods’s multiracial origins but then lumps him back into a mythical racial group called “blacks.” Throughout,Entine plays fast and loose with categories in this fashion. He proves that a local group of Kenyans dominate middle-distance running, then uses this to make generalized statements that “blacks” are better “athletes.” Sports where “blacks” do not dominate (swimming, cricket, gymnastics, polo) are quickly dismissed on grounds of nurture or environment (for instance, blacks don’t have access to polo ponies), but in either case, the difference somehow is treated as support of his claim that “blacks are innately superior athletes.”

If taken seriously, Entine’s claims could only support the silliest of propositions. Entine maintains that the “disparity between blacks and whites in sports is at least as pronounced” as the disparity between women and men. Do we need, therefore, a separate “white men’s league” for basketball and tennis? Should Title IX agents worry about the inadequacy of opportunities for young white boys to play basketball or go bowling? Any other suggestions? As long as white-skinned boys, even those who are relatively untalented, continue to have greater opportunities for athletic self-development than boys of all other cultural and geographic heritages and than all girls, Entine’s argument will remain one undeserving of much concern

– Arthur E. Berman, a petroleum geologist and consultant to the energy sector; editorial board member of The Oil Drum; Associate Editor of the AAPG Bulletin; Director of The Association for the Study of Peak Oil, wrote a letter to George Mason University dated July 4, 2011, that he also posted online on his blog, in which he sought to refute claims and assertions made by Entine in his Real Clear Politics column published a few days earlier, on July 1, “Natural Gas “Bubble” Report: Market Tinkering or Shoddy Reporting?”

Berman writes:

His post contains errors, exaggerations and untrue statements that cannot be substantiated, and thereby jeopardize George Mason University’s legal position and reputation as an honest broker of information.

I demand that Mr. Entine post public corrections to the many incorrect and unsubstantiated claims that he makes in this post. I further request that he write to me directly acknowledging that his post contained the many incorrect and undocumented claims that I specify below. He never contacted me or my clients to verify these claims and, apparently, did no research to document his many specious allegations.

Berman then goes on to list the errors, exaggerations and statements he says are untrue. Those are here : http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/2011/07/letter-to-george-mason-university-re.html

2x? entine huffopo attack on hayes:

Frog Day Afternoon: Choose Science Over Politics to Conserve the Endangered Amphibian Population

Posted: 04/26/11 10:36 AM ET

It's not a good time to be a frog. The dodo was just one species of bird when it went the way of T-Rex. But according to some conservation scientists, we may be in an early stage of the extinction of an entire class of animals -- amphibians, including frogs, toads and salamanders.

More to the point, say anti-pesticide campaigners mixing animal metaphors, amphibians are canaries in the mine. Big Agriculture, they say, is polluting the world with chemicals, slaying our helpless aqua buddies. Humans, you're next.

If you haven't yet heard this narrative, be prepared. Friday is the 3rd annual "Save the Frog Day," billed as a worldwide event. It's a good cause, in theory. One-third of amphibian species are threatened. Some 200 species have completely disappeared since 1980. But what's causing this phenomenon? How do we tease science from ideological politics to settle on reasonable public policy responses?

Earlier this year, what appeared to be an independent website, FrogTV: The Story of a Frog, His Mutation and Your Health, premiered on the Internet, promoting the 'blame pesticides' line. Along with Save the Frogs, it features a rogue's gallery of alleged poisons: atrazine, Roundup, chlorothalonil. The takeaway: "Over half of the DNA found in frogs is also found in humans, so if these pesticides kill frogs, imagine what they do to us!"

The answer, almost certainly, is "nothing serious". The common use of pesticides does not harm frogs, let alone people. Basic science: Humans and nematodes (worms) are 70 percent genetically similar, but shared DNA does not equate to functional similarity. Heck, we share one third of our genes with daffodils. Amphibians are not proxies for humans. Frogs are permeable beings. They don't swallow water like we do. They absorb most of the moisture and some of their oxygen through their skin.

Why are frogs dying? Scientists agree the overwhelming cause is chytrid fungus, which is thought to have emerged from Africa. It coats a frog's porous skin, which cuts off its water supply and limits its oxygen. Climate change and habitat loss almost certainly make up most of the rest of the explanation. What about chemicals? Pesticides are concentrated in agricultural areas, which by and large are nowhere near sizable amphibian habitats. The frog population falloff is occurring at similar levels in all regions of the world, including in areas where extensive pesticide use is minimal or even nonexistent.

The pesticides-are-dangerous theory originated with and substantially rests on thecredibility of the research of controversial University of California endocrinologist Tyrone Hayes. He's published numerous studies purporting to show that clawed frogs exposed to low doses of atrazine produce males with ambiguous genitalia and soprano-like croaks--hermaphrodites.

Hayes labels atrazine an "endocrine disruptor"--a novel, widely-circulated notion that exposure to certain chemicals can radically alter sexual development. The key issue: At what level of exposure might estrogen modifiers, which range from chemicals to nuts, tofu and dozens of other foods known as phytoestrogens, effect development? Could they be contributing to the decline in the frog population and by proxy to human health problems?

These are serious science questions. The endocrine disruption notion targeting pesticides andplastic additives is gradually losing favor among scientists. As for Hayes's work, theEnvironmental Protection Agency and independent scientists from around the world have determinedly tried to replicate Hayes's findings to no avail. Studies have consistently shown that "a risk to human health [from atrazine is] essentially nonexistent."

Most recently, in March 2010, Hayes authored a paper arguing that atrazine demasculinized frogs throughout all life stages. If pesticides are misused or overused, humans could be endangered and restrictions would be warranted.

But the science community is unconvinced by Hayes' singular contention that exposure to miniscule doses of pesticides is dangerous--the low dose endocrine disruptor theory.Australia's Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts carefully reviewed the study, finding the lab work flawed, and recommending no change to its conclusion that atrazine is safe as used.

Biologist Werner Kloas of Berlin's Humboldt University, who believes chemicals should be banned for precautionary reasons if the evidence is merely ambiguous, has found no impact on frogs at concentrations comparable to those investigated by Hayes.

Most recently, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies professor David Skelly, who had long promoted Hayes' work, was flabbergasted to discover that deformities among frogs in field studies were lowest in farmlands, where pesticides are common, as compared to cities and suburbs. "[W]e found that in those kinds of landscapes where corn is being grown, the great majority of the ponds we sampled didn't have any deformities at all," he wrote. "To my knowledge (and I have participated in two EPA panels that reviewed available results) nobody else has been able to get this ultra low concentration effect."

So what's behind this broadside? Consider Frog TV, the anti-chemical attack forum thatpromotes Hayes' controversial findings as the rationale for its campaign. It appeared mysteriously in January to much viral fanfare. A little digging outed the source: It's a promotional campaign cooked up by Organic Valley, a key member of the Organic Trade Association, whose marketing philosophy is to exploit the crisis in the frog population and demonize conventional agriculture.

Environmental challenges are complex. Data is more important than ideology. If we don't rely on science to guide us, we might make the day for Whole Foods Market devotees, but it would have a devastating effect on the nutritionally poor and the world food supply. And by diverting the focus on the real problem, ameliorating the fungus, frogs will be no better off.

Jon Entine is director of the Genetic Literacy Project and Senior Fellow at STATS and theCenter for Health and Risk Communications at George Mason University.

Follow Jon Entine on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JonEntine**

2011 acsh book: http://www.pavementcouncil.org/pavementcouncil/americancouncil.pdf

Thomas S. Allems, M.D., M.P.H.

San Francisco, Calif.

Joshua Bloom, Ph.D.

American Council on Science and

Health

Dean O. Cliver, Ph.D.

University of California, Davis

Wolfgang Dekant, Ph.D.

University of Würzburg

Germany

Julie Goodman, PhD., DABT

Gradient Corp.

Rudolph J. Jaeger, Ph.D., DABT

New York University Medical

School

John W. Morgan, Dr.PH.

California Cancer Registry

Gilbert Ross, M.D.

American Council on Science and

Health

David Schoenfeld, M.D., M.Sc.

University of Michigan

!omas P. Stossel, M.D.

Harvard Medical School

Elizabeth Whelan, Ph.D.

American Council on Science and

Health

Calvin C. Willhite, Ph.D.

California Department of Toxic

Substances Control

Executive Summary ............................. 1

Introduction ................................... 4

The Rise of the Environmental Movement ........... 10

Evolution of the FDA .................................. .11

Silent Spring ......................................... .13

Birth of the EPA ...................................... .16

Environmental Risk ............................ 19

Carcinogenic Risk .................................... .21

NonJCarcinogenic Risk ................................ .24

Endocrine Disruptors ................................. .25

Green Chemicals—Natural v. Synthetic .................. .28

Politics of the Precautionary Principle ............. 33

Environmental NGOs and the Media ..................... .37

Reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act ............... .39

President’s Cancer Panel Annual Report for 2008J2009 ...... .42

Case Study: Bisphenol A—Precautionary Regulation . . 44

Campaigns Against BPA ............................... .45

Low Dose Theory ..................................... .48

Ideological Regulation ................................ .52

FDA and EPA Weigh In. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

===

sci am "royal pains" art points to various pesticideshttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/royal-pains-why-queen-honeybees-are-living-shorter-less-productive-lives/

entine does not point out art a mo later by same author on neo

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beeing-there-the-search-for-pesticides-effect-on-declining-bee-colonies-moves-to-the-fields/

115,103 views

Bee Deaths Reversal: As Evidence Points Away From Neonics As Driver, Pressure Builds To Rethink Ban

If the Environmental Protection Agency moves to restrict neonicotinoid pesticides because of fears that they are causing bee deaths, it will happen in spite of the mounting evidence rather than because of it.

[UPDATE NOTE: This story was revised on 8 February to reflect release of new data on neonics and bee health presented at a New Orleans entomology conference.]

Last December, the European Commission :{banned the use of neonicotinoids, often called neonics}:**:{,}:**:{ }::{for two years}:. The moratorium, support for which was :{channeled}::{ }:by the precautionary politics that now dominate science-based regulation in Europe, took effect just as numerous new studies–including one released this past week–shed increasing doubt on the belief that neonics play a central role in bee health.

Now the focus is on Canada. Farmers in the United States are worried about a domino effect if regulatory officials there buckle under pressure from anti-pesticide campaigners to ‘do something,’ which could result in copycat moratoriums.

The “crisis” prompting this hand-wringing is an age-old problem in the bee world: unpredictable bee deaths. They’ve occurred periodically for more than a century, but reemerged with a vengeance in 2004 in the California almond fields, where casualty rates briefly approached 60 percent. Beekeepers called it the ‘vampire mite scare’ because of its likely link to varroa mites—parasites that feed on the bodily fluid of bees—and on miticides used to combat them.

In 2006, there were fresh reports of unexplained bee deaths in what was known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, in which all the worker bees from a colony abruptly disappeared without a trace—no dead bodies to be found. The cause of the mysterious surge is still unclear. But as the crisis receded, attention turned to a less dramatic but more long-term challenge to bee health—sometimes also referred to as CCD, although experts believe it is a different phenomenon with different causes: the increasing number of bees that fail to survive through the winter.

On average, about 10 to 15 percent of bees die each winter. In recent years, that percentage has spiked to as high as 35 percent. Highly charged words like “beepocalypse” or “beemageddon” began turning up everywhere on the Internet. As measured a reporter as Dan Charles at NPR characterized the bee deaths as “a crisis point for crops.” But what was causing the die-offs?

Like the fictional parents in the edgy comedy show South Park who blame Canada for all of their woes, activists often coalesce around an issue and then come up with a simple but sometimes simplistic narrative to frame it. Strident opponents of modern agricultural technology initially blamed GMOs for bee deaths, and some still make that claim, although there is zero evidence to back it up. When that didn’t get traction, the focus switched to neonics.

Even their sharpest critics acknowledge that the class of pesticides is extremely effective. Often applied only to the soil or used as a seed treatment, they were introduced in the late 1990s without incident as a less toxic replacement for the mass spraying of organophosphate and pyrethroid pesticides, which are both known to kill bees and wildlife. Organophosphates in particular have been linked to health problems in workers. Despite their comparatively benign toxicological profile, however, neonics have emerged as Public Enemy Number 1 in the eyes of anti-pesticide campaigners.

“It’s time to ban dangerous neonicotinoid pesticides,” headlined Mother Earth News, after Europe imposed its two year moratorium.

“[A] growing body of evidence has pointed to a group of insecticides called neonicotinoids, widely used on corn, soy, and other US crops, as a possible cause [of bee deaths],” wrote Tom Philpott in Mother Jones.

“EPA should cancel all uses of neonics where they can lead to harm for bees and other beneficial insects,” wrote Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Are we facing a global bee crisis?

The intense rhetoric obscures two separate but intertwined questions. Are we facing a bee pollination crisis? And, what’s the cause of the recent spate of bee deaths? The answers should drive appropriate regulatory and scientific responses.

Close to one third of our food supply—blueberries and papaya, almonds and apples, and other fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts—is linked to pollination, and the honeybee is nature’s most celebrated pollinator. Though not all these foods are 100 percent dependent on honeybees and would not by any means disappear without them, without the bee our diet would be less nutritious and less tasty.

However, while bees face challenges, the numbers simply don’t support the “beepocalypse” narrative nor identify neonics as the driver of die-offs. AsScientific American’sFrancie Diep noted in a recent article sub-headlined “why colony collapse disorder is not that big a deal anymore,” North American honeybee colony numbers have been stable for years at about 2.5 million even as neonics usage became more widespread.

The US picture echoes global trends. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of beehives worldwide, after a plunge in the early 1990s, well before the introduction of neonics, has been rising steadily.

While honeybee-keepers have been able to replace most lost hives, there are concerns that future bees may not be able to sustain a high replacement rate. But this is a complicated issue. Bees, whose normal life span is measured in weeks, generally regenerate quickly; a whole hive can come up to full strength again in six weeks. Some beekeepers with no colony problems have been known to replace 100 percent of their bees in early spring.

However, if beehives are not given proper time to rejuvenate, major problems can occur. Every February, two out of every three hives in the US are shipped to California for the almond bloom, which puts enormous unnatural stress on colonies. There is often no time for hives to emerge from normal winter declines and rebuild to full strength.

What’s the role of neonics in bee health?

A split has developed in the research community as to the potential link of neonics to bee deaths. Just this past week, entomologists at a New Orleans conference released details from a soon-to-be published field study that concluded that neonics may not be as harmful to bees as portrayed in the media because they are not being expressed in plant pollen or the plant’s reproductive parts at levels that are high enough to hurt the bees.

seems legit site, but comments solidly against: eg Note that the only plants tested are corn, soy and cotton – very low on flower and pollen abundance. Bees find very little to forage anyways on these crops. The experiment was designed to yield the “no significant trace result. Studies on more abundant flower and pollen producing plants are likely to produce different results. note also no author on main post

link to [http://www.usda.gov/documents/ReportHoneyBeeHealth.pdf USDA (sort of) 2012 report]. Note CropLife.

“When we look at the literature and the Internet, what it says is that neonicotinoids applied as seed treatments are then taken up into the plant and expressed in the pollen and in the nectar,” said primary researcher Gus Lorenz, an extension entomologist with the University of Arkansas. “Well, that’s not so much what we found.”

The researchers evaluated treated corn, soybeans and cotton. When they tested soybean flowers and cotton nectar, they found no traces of neonics at all. They did find microscopic traces of neonics in corn at what the EPA and toxicologists say are insignificant impact levels, with the highest having a mean of 2.3 parts per billion. To put that into perspective, one part per billion equals one second in 32 years. “It’s not being expressed in the reproductive parts of the plants,” concluded Dr. Lorenz.

Yet those direct field observations conflict with some laboratory-based studies in leading journals and others in pay-to-play type publications in which bees treated in the lab with neonics are then released into the environment. In a French based studypublished in Science, a small percentage of free-ranging honeybees whose brains were doused with the neonic thiamethoxam got confused, failing to return to the hive. Another Science study, focusing on bumblebees, found those exposed to high doses of the neonic imidacloprid had reduced colony growth rates and produced significantly fewer queens to found new colonies. Just last month, research in the low-impact journal Excotoxicology concluded that bumblebees exposed to imidacloprid were somewhat worse at gathering pollen than untreated bees although the nectar foraging efficiency of treated bees was not significantly different than the controls. Last year, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released three studies, none conclusive, raising questions about the potential role of neonics in bee health.

While concerning, the way some of the research was conducted raises caution about how much weight to place on their findings independent of real world confirmation. For example, the French thiamethoxam study came under sharp criticism because bees do not encounter the chemical by having their brains directly exposed. Any pesticide, if misapplied to crops, could collaterally impact bee function; that’s one key reason why farmers, at the urging of scientists, phased out organophosphates. But that doesn’t answer the question driving the current regulation frenzy: Are neonicotinoids as they are used in the real world the driving force behind bee deaths?

The US Agriculture Department and the EPA convened a working group two years ago to address that very question. Theirreport, issued last May, put activists back on their heels. It concluded that neonics, while a contributor, were way down the list of possible causes.They cited as the primary drivers colony management, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, genetics and habitat loss. By far the biggest culprit—the report called it “the single most detrimental pest of honeybees”—was identified as the parasitic mite varroa destructor—the likely cause of the 2004 die-off.

The federal report echoed findings published last year by the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which evaluated the cause of bee deaths as the European Union was debating whether to institute a ban. DEFRA noted that the bees used in many of these lab experiments were exposed to doses hundreds of times higher than what they encounter in the wild, and they were often administered by injections.

“Laboratory-based studies demonstrating sub-lethal effects on bees from neonics did not replicate realistic conditions, but extreme scenarios,” the study concluded. “[E]ffects on bees do not occur under normal circumstances. Consequently… the risk to bee populations from neonicotinoids, as they are currently used, is low.”

DEFRA’s caution about basing regulations on preliminary data was underscored last fall with the release of the most comprehensive peer reviewed field study on thiamethoxam, published in Apidologie. It concluded: “[A]t realistic (mean) exposure rates…no adverse impacts on brood production [of bumblebees] were found.”

The conflicting data were not enough to slow the regulatory express in Europe. In voting for a moratorium, European Commission politicians ignored DEFRA’s analysis. It later emerged that EFSA appeared to have deliberately suppressed evidence of the relative safety of neonics after insider political lobbying by French officials. After the vote, Director-General of EFSA, Catherine Geslain-Lanéele :{resigned}: to take up a job at the French Ministry of Agriculture, which had lobbied for a ban over the objections of Britain, Germany and other countries.

Yet another study released just last month raises further doubts about the neonic-bee death connection. A joint report issued by scientists affiliated with USDA and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences concluded that honeybee deaths (and likely bumblebee deaths as well) stem from the tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV), not from pesticides. It’s long been known that foraging bees pick up the virus; what’s new is that researchers discovered that the virus has evolved the ability to infect bees, and it now attacks their nervous systems. TRSV then spreads to other bees—a process known as “host shifting”—by the mites that feed on them.

In an unlikely embrace of nuance, Mother Jones’ Tom Philpott now grudgingly acknowledges that varroa mites could be the driver of bee deaths. “Disturbingly,” writes Philpott “in his review of the study, [the scientists] found that the virus also replicates in varroa mites, an established bee pest, and that the infected mites could help spread the virus.” This adds a new layer to the emerging consensus in the scientific community that the mites, in combination with other factors, are the central threat to bee health.

Canadian wild card?

But Canadian officials seem resistant to the emerging research trends. After the European Commission voted to ban neonics, anti-GMO, green and farm groups turned their focus on Canada, pressuring Ottawa to follow suit. The responsible agency, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), aware that the evidence fingering neonics was spotty, vacillated, issuing an ambiguous assessmentof reported bee deaths in Ontario and Quebec and a vague “notice of intent” order to regulate neonics, without providing details.

It’s not as if PMRA does not have comprehensive research on neonics to rely upon. If bee health problems were critical in Canada, they would certainly have surfaced in the country’s 19 million acres of canola farms, which are mostly in the west. Beekeepers who forage their bees in the canola fields, where neonics are used far more heavily than on Ontario and Quebec farms, say their hives are generally thriving. Apart from a single, ambiguous case, there have been no reports of bee kills attributable to neonics in all of western Canada in recent years.

PMRA could also have drawn upon previous studies, including three major field investigations on neonicotinoid pesticides in 2002, 2005 and 2012 by environmental biologist Cynthia Scott-Dupree of the University of Guelph and entomologist Chris Cutler of Dalhousie University. The researchers noted residues of neonics in ailing bee hives, but at levels hundreds of times lower than scientists believe would have any impact on bees. Their conclusion echoed recent findings by DEFRA, USDA and EPA: many factors contribute to bee deaths, but neonics in particular had “no effects” on their poor performance.

Scott-Dupree and Cutler’s field research is widely recognized as among the most robust in the world in evaluating real world impacts of these pesticides. But under pressure from the Sierra Club allied with organic-focused beekeepers, the Ontario provincial government ensured that the two experts with the most detailed research on the issue would not be invited to participate. Although excluded from the Ontario study group, Cutler, Scott-Dupree, and David Drexler, an agrology consultant, published an analysisof all bee-kill incidents reported in Canada from 2007-2012. Their key finding: “[V]ery few of the serious bee kills involve neonicotinoid pesticides. Five times as many ‘major’ and ‘moderate’ pesticide-related bee kills were sourced to other non-neonic chemicals.“

Let’s be clear: the Ontario group was mostly for show. The main ‘output’ for this initiative—apart from the politicians’ imperative of appearing to ‘do something’—has always been to ‘light a fire’ under PMRA to capitulate to the complaints of the Sierra Club and Ontario beekeepers.

What would happen if PMRA moved to heavily restrict neonics? The failure of the federal agency to do elementary cost-benefit analysis and its apparent inclination to downplay field evidence could set the wheels of unintended consequences spinning into motion.

In Europe, where the neonics moratorium just took effect, farmers have had no choice but to return to older and less effective pesticides: organophosphates and pyrethroids. The dangers of organophosphates, which are highly toxic to bees, are widely known. Now, just last month, a study of pyrethroids by the Royal Holloway University of London published in the Journal of Applied Ecology—the first to examine the impact of the pesticide across the entire lifecycle of bumblebees—found that its use impairs brood reproduction and stunts growth, which is disastrous for bee health.

“Our work provides a significant step forward in understanding the detrimental impact of pesticides other than neonicotinoids on wild bees,” said co-author Nigel Raine. The scientists expressed particular concern that patchwork bans and moratoriums could result in stressing bee colonies even more.

In reviewing the emerging evidence on challenges to bee health, University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, chairwoman of a major National Academy of Sciences study on the loss of pollinators, said recently that she was “extremely dubious” that banning neonics would have any positive effect. The key challenges to bee health going forward, entomologists say, are colony management issues, the blood-sucking varroa mite, the miticides beekeepers themselves use to control varroa infestations and various viruses, like TRSV.

Viewed from afar, it appears PMRA is tottering on a dangerous political and scientific tightrope. In panic mode, the default of agencies under the microscope is often, “When in doubt, regulate.” If Canadian officials should capitulate to the ban pressure, the decision would not be based on science—the evidence is moving gradually but decisively away from neonics as a culprit for bee deaths. The question for Canada and ultimately for US regulators: Will they examine the evidence? Or will politics drive the science?

More on science literacyat the Genetic Literacy Project

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OPINION 5/28/2014 @ 12:39PM 4,610 views

'No Such Thing As GMO Contamination' Rules Australian Court in Landmark Decision, Rebuffing Organic Activists

As the Genetic Literacy Project reports,in an endorsement of the co-existence of genetically modified and organic farming, the Western Australian Supreme Court today rejected claims by a farmer who contended that his organic certified farm was “contaminated” by a neighboring farmer growing GM canola.

“I am not satisfied that in 2010 Mr. Baxter breached any (lesser) duty of reasonable care,” Justice Kenneth Martin wrote in his judgment.

Organic farmer Steve Marsh had sued his neighbor and former friend, Michael Baxter, claiming that GM canola from Baxter’s land had drifted onto his organic oats, rye and sheep farm in Kojonup, Western Australia. The National Association of Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) temporarily suspended Marsh’s organic certification on about 70 percent of his property in late 2010. Marsh sought financial compensation of $85,000 (AU) from Baxter, as well as a permanent court injunction banning Baxter from planting GM crops.

...

Unlike the United States, the European Union and Japan, which allow trace amounts of GMO crops in organic foods in acknowledgement of cross pollination by wind or pollen transfer, Australia maintains a zero threshold.

Anti-GMO groups have gotten a lot of traction by branding cross pollination as “contamination.” Cross pollination occurs naturally but is considered unacceptable to organic purists, who want organic crops to be completely free of pollen from GM crops and want those demands incorporated into legislation.

Recently, voters in two southern Oregon counties approved measuresto ban the cultivation of GM crops based on “contamination” concerns. The Marsh versus Baxter case has attracted global attention as it sheds light on how “contamination” claims by organic farmers might be received in other courts.

In the 150-page judgment summary, Justice Martin wrote there had been no unreasonable interference with Marsh’s crops. He found that the decision to withdraw organic certification was made by the Australian organic certifying bodies NASAA/NCO and it was that decision and not natural cross pollination that cost Marsh about $85,000 (AU) in reduced income.

“Mr. Baxter was not to be held responsible as a broadacre farmer merely for growing a lawful GM crop and choosing to adopt a harvest methodology (swathing), which was entirely orthodox in its implementation,” he wrote. “Nor could Mr. Baxter be held responsible, in law, for the reactions to the incursion of the Marshes’ organic certification body, NCO, which in the circumstances presented to be an unjustifiable reaction to what occurred.” Martin added there was “a very strong body of evidence in this trial to suggest that there was no legitimate contractual basis for NCO to decertify” Marsh’s farm.

During the 11-day hearing in February, scientists also testified that Roundup Ready canola swathes were harmless to animals, people and land even if consumed.

Organic tolerance standards challenged

The court case has highlighted contradictions in current Australian farming and organic certifying regulations. Professor Rick Roush from Melbourne University’s School of Land and Environment said he believes the case is unique to Australia, because the Australian organics industry has a zero tolerance to the presence of any GM material in certified organic products.

“In other countries, there is a tolerance for very small levels of legally approved seeds, or pollen, or whatever, to be found in a crop, even in organics,” he said. “In the United States, for example, there are broad-scale examples of GM and organic crops being grown in close proximity. In fact, in some farming operations in the United States the same farmer will be using both GM and organic production.”

The Australian court ruling has no direct impact upon U.S. law. While similar concerns and fears of “GMO contamination” are also widespread among organic farmers in the US, there has been no case in which an organic farmer has lost organic certification because of cross pollination. However, conventional growers have had grain rejected for shipment because of the presence of GMO seeds.

The US Department of Agriculture says there is no threshold for the amount of acceptable cross pollination, and handles the concern as such:

Unlike many pesticides, there aren’t specific tolerance levels in the USDA organic regulations for GMOs. As such, National Organic Program policy states that trace amounts of GMOs don’t automatically mean the farm is in violation of the USDA organic regulations. In these cases, the certifying agent will investigate how the inadvertent presence occurred and recommend how it can be better prevented in the future.

During a major review in 2011-12, the USDA Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21) endorsed coexistence between farmers growing conventional, organic and genetically modified crops and rejected calls by organic activists for “zero tolerance”:

Many commenters suggested that we establish a “threshold” for the unintended or adventitious presence of products of excluded methods in organic products. Some commenters argued that a threshold is necessary because, without the mandatory labeling of biotechnology-derived products, organic operations and certifying agents could not be assured that products of excluded methods were not being used. Others argued that, without an established threshold, the regulations would constitute a “zero tolerance” for products of excluded methods, which would be impossible to achieve.

We do not believe there is sufficient consensus upon which to establish such a standard at this time. Much of the basic, baseline information about the prevalence of genetically engineered products in the conventional agricultural marketplace that would be necessary to set such a threshold-e.g., the effects of pollen drift where it may be a factor, the extent of mixing at various points throughout the marketing chain, the adventitious presence of genetically engineered seed in nonengineered seed lots-is still largely unknown. Our understanding of how the use of biotechnology in conventional agricultural production might affect organic crop production is even less well developed.

Also, as was pointed out in some comments, the testing methodology for the presence of products of excluded methods has not yet been fully validated. Testing methods for some biotechnology traits in some commodities are becoming commercially available. Without recognized methods of testing for and quantifying of all traits in a wide range of food products, however, it would be very difficult to establish a reliable numerical tolerance.

That’s similar to the policy adopted by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movement (IFOAM):

Organic certification shall not imply it is a ‘GE-free’ certification. Rather it shall be presented as guaranteeing ‘production without GE/GMOs’. As there is no guarantee that organic products are 100% free … Organic producers and associations shall actively inform the consumers of this fact to insure fair marketing claims and to avoid future debates about consumer deception.

Ben Copeman, general manager with Australian organic certifying organization NASAA, said his organization is working with farmer groups to figure out how different types of farming, including GM and organic farming, can co-exist in harmony going forward. He added that he is not opposed to a review of organic standards, including the zero tolerance on GM organisms, provided it takes into consideration what organic consumers want.

Anti-GM campaigners reacted in outrage, claiming that the verdict sets a dangerous precedent because it leaves the use of GM crops largely unrestricted. Scott Kinnear, director of the Safe Food Foundation which funded Marsh’s campaign, said he is very disappointed and gravely concerned for the farmer, his family and farm, and for the future of organic and non-GM food in Australia remaining GM-free. Marsh said that he is considering an appeal.

John Snooke, director of Pastoral and Graziers Association in Western Australia, welcomed the court’s decision, as there were more than 1,000 GM farmers in the region. He added thatMarsh should have pursued the organic certification process, and not his neighbor.

“What it means is the grains industry has certainty, that the protocols and the regulations we operate under cater for every type of farming in Australia,” he said. “The court has vindicated all farmers who choose to grow GM canola.”

NOTE: XiaoZhi Lim, agricultural editor of the **Genetic Literacy Project**,co-authored this report

More on biotechnology, genetics and science literacy**at the Genetic Literacy Project**

Follow**@JonEntine**on Twitter

***Jon Entine***, executive director of the***Genetic Literacy Project***, is a senior fellow at the***Center for Health & Risk Communication***and***STATS***(Statistical Assessment Service) at George Mason University.

Recently, voters in two southern Oregon counties approved measures to ban the cultivation of GM crops based on “contamination” concerns. The Marsh versus Baxter case has attracted global attention as it sheds light on how “contamination” claims by organic farmers might be received in other courts.

During the 11-day hearing in February, scientists also testified that Roundup Ready canola swathes were harmless to animals, people and land even if consumed.

Organic tolerance standards challenged

The US Department of Agriculture says there is no threshold for the amount of acceptable cross pollination, and handles the concern as such:

Unlike many pesticides, there aren’t specific tolerance levels in the USDA organic regulations for GMOs. As such, National Organic Program policy states that trace amounts of GMOs don’t automatically mean the farm is in violation of the USDA organic regulations. In these cases, the certifying agent will investigate how the inadvertent presence occurred and recommend how it can be better prevented in the future.

Many commenters suggested that we establish a “threshold” for the unintended or adventitious presence of products of excluded methods in organic products. Some commenters argued that a threshold is necessary because, without the mandatory labeling of biotechnology-derived products, organic operations and certifying agents could not be assured that products of excluded methods were not being used. Others argued that, without an established threshold, the regulations would constitute a “zero tolerance” for products of excluded methods, which would be impossible to achieve.

We do not believe there is sufficient consensus upon which to establish such a standard at this time. Much of the basic, baseline information about the prevalence of genetically engineered products in the conventional agricultural marketplace that would be necessary to set such a threshold-e.g., the effects of pollen drift where it may be a factor, the extent of mixing at various points throughout the marketing chain, the adventitious presence of genetically engineered seed in nonengineered seed lots-is still largely unknown. Our understanding of how the use of biotechnology in conventional agricultural production might affect organic crop production is even less well developed.

Also, as was pointed out in some comments, the testing methodology for the presence of products of excluded methods has not yet been fully validated. Testing methods for some biotechnology traits in some commodities are becoming commercially available. Without recognized methods of testing for and quantifying of all traits in a wide range of food products, however, it would be very difficult to establish a reliable numerical tolerance.

That’s similar to the policy adopted by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movement (IFOAM):

Organic certification shall not imply it is a ‘GE-free’ certification. Rather it shall be presented as guaranteeing ‘production without GE/GMOs’. As there is no guarantee that organic products are 100% free … Organic producers and associations shall actively inform the consumers of this fact to insure fair marketing claims and to avoid future debates about consumer deception.

Ben Copeman, general manager with Australian organic certifying organization NASAA, said his organization is working with farmer groups to figure out how different types of farming, including GM and organic farming, can co-exist in harmony going forward. He added that he is not opposed to a review of organic standards, including the zero tolerance on GM organisms, provided it takes into consideration what organic consumers want.

Anti-GM campaigners reacted in outrage, claiming that the verdict sets a dangerous precedent because it leaves the use of GM crops largely unrestricted. Scott Kinnear, director of the Safe Food Foundation which funded Marsh’s campaign, said he is very disappointed and gravely concerned for the farmer, his family and farm, and for the future of organic and non-GM food in Australia remaining GM-free. Marsh said that he is considering an appeal.

John Snooke, director of Pastoral and Graziers Association in Western Australia, welcomed the court’s decision, as there were more than 1,000 GM farmers in the region. He added thatMarsh should have pursued the organic certification process, and not his neighbor.

“What it means is the grains industry has certainty, that the protocols and the regulations we operate under cater for every type of farming in Australia,” he said. “The court has vindicated all farmers who choose to grow GM canola.”

NOTE: XiaoZhi Lim, agricultural editor of the **Genetic Literacy Project**,co-authored this report

More on biotechnology, genetics and science literacy**at the Genetic Literacy Project**

Follow**@JonEntine**on Twitter

***Jon Entine***, executive director of the***Genetic Literacy Project***, is a senior fellow at the***Center for Health & Risk Communication***and***STATS***(Statistical Assessment Service) at George MasonUniversity.

===

...Frank has some powerful friends. This video is being promoted on Twitter by CropLife International, a trade association containing all of the "Big 6" pesticide and GMO corporations -- Monsanto, BASF, Bayer, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, and Syngenta -- some of the biggest companies in the world. CropLife America is an activemember of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force.

Frank is also a friend of Jon Entine, founding executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project and one of the GMO and pesticide industry's favorite PR tools. He wrote his 2011 Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health for the American Council on Science and Health. ACSH requested $100,000 in funding for the book project from the GMO and pesticide corporation Syngenta as part of the company's PR campaign around its weed-killer atrazine, which was the subject of a major lawsuit, as CMD has reported. ACSH also receives regular operating support from Syngenta, which the email pitch called the organization's "lifeblood."

Frank's creator, Karl Haro von Mogel, recently met up with Entine in Puna, Hawai'i on their way to meet Dr. Dennis Gonsalves, the developer of GMO papayas. von Mogel wrote a gushing blog on his encounter with Entine "In Dennis, I had met the highest concentration of Aloha yet on the entire trip. If he were a plant, his leaves and roots exuded Aloha into the surrounding air and soil. It was infectious," before planting Frank in the papaya fields for a photo op. The two had presented together previously at a June 2013 GMO panel organized by the Cato Institute. And Entine has mentioned von Mogel in articles published in Forbes and elsewhere at least four times in recent months.

Entine's and von Mogel's primary organizations -- Genetic Literacy Project and Biology Fortified, Inc., respectively -- both claim not to accept corporate fun...

http://www.prwatch.org/node/12426

did entine ghost the syngenta book? he's at AEI

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/09/over-regulation-fever-at-the-white-house/

Over-Regulation Fever At The White House

Jon Entine is director of the Genetic Literacy Project and senior research fellow at STATS and the Center for Health and Risk Communications at George Mason University.

Don’t drink tap water. Beware the coming environmental apocalypse. It’s election season, and advocacy groups are turning up the heat on the Environmental Protection Agency. Will the Obama Administration buckle in this über-political time and give in to alarmism?

The target du jour is atrazine, the American farmer’s most popular weed killer, but it’s really modern chemistry that’s under assault. In case you missed it, Mother Jones magazine’s February issue rained frogs on American farmers for using atrazine. On Tuesday, PR Watch released a three-part series attacking its manufacturer, Syngenta, for attempting to “shape” news reports—in other words, to defend itself against the attacks exemplified in these articles.

This sudden burst of advocacy journalism shares a common theme besides End of Days hysteria:a devastating lack of respect for science. Mother Jones and PR Watch are known for channeling anti-chemical organics producers and working closely with class action lawyers, who in this case are attempting to back the EPA into a political corner for vast financial gain.

The agency is expected to complete its latest review of the chemical later this year. Will it follow the expected recommendations of its own science panel and relax out-of-date standards, or will it cave to political pressure in an election year and punt the decision, or even tighten restrictions?

Frogicide?

Atrazine is an odorless powder applied to control weeds that would otherwise choke a crop and starve it of nutrients. It degrades quickly, does not bio-accumulate in organisms and is considered so comparatively gentle to crops that it can be used even after the first shoots appear above the ground. A study :{commissioned by:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: the EPA concluded that it boosts yields by 6 percent or more, saving corn farmers as much as $28 per acre—more than $2 billion in annual economic benefits. But to anti-chemical activists it’s a ticking time bomb.

The atrazine-will-destroy-us-theory rests substantially on the credibility of the research of Tyrone Hayes. The controversial University of California endocrinologist—and Hayes almost alone among experts—claims that microscopic levels of atrazine found in some drinking water supplies are carcinogenic and distort human development.

The protagonist of his theory and both the Mother Jones and PR Watchhit pieces is Darnell, one of Hayes’ colony of male African clawed frogs that are literally swimming in high levels of atrazine. In the latest of a series of such papers, in March 2010, _Hayes and his student co-authors_ argued that atrazine produces males with ambiguous genitalia and soprano-like croaks—hermaphrodites, like Darnell. Hayes claims that humans are equally as vulnerable.

This decade-old narrative, horrific if you’re a frog trapped for life in Hayes’ laboratory atrazine brew, has been the staple of _Environmental Working Group_, _Pesticide Action Network_, _Natural Resources Defense Council_ and other activists calling for its ban. After all, if it can turn Jack tadpoles into Janes, would you risk your child with tap water?

The science answer, which is more complicated and less emotionally satisfying than knee jerk reactions and hysteria: Extensive research concludes there is no substantial risk to humans or frogs for that matter from atrazine. In fact, international regulators are relaxing standards on atrazine as evidence accumulates of its comparative safety.

The _Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority_ reviewed the most recent Hayes study, finding the lab work flawed, reaffirming its conclusion that atrazine is safe as used. Scientists have determinedly _tried to replicate Hayes’s findings to no avail_. An unprecedented state of the art study by biologist _Werner Kloas_ of Berlin’s Humboldt University(hayes cites?) —who is an outspoken supporter of precautionary bans on chemicals—showed no impact on frogs from atrazine exposure, low doses or high.

There is no field evidence to support his claims, either. “[W]e found that in those kinds of landscapes where corn is being grown, the great majority of the ponds we sampled didn’t have any deformities at all,” _wrote Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies professor David Skelly_, who Mother Jones bizarrely tries to portray as an admirer of Hayes. “To my knowledge (and I have participated in two EPA panels that reviewed available results) nobody else has been able to get this ultra low concentration effect.”

Yes, we should be concerned about the ecological impact of environmental chemicals, but the real heat in this debate revolves around claims that frogs are good proxies for humans. They’re not. Amphibians are permeable beings that absorb moisture and some of their oxygen through their skin. We don’t swim our lives away in atrazine. They don’t swallow water like we do.

High tech detection equipment may help scientists identify a thimble full of a chemical in Lake Erie, but the mere presence of a compound in water does not necessarily present a threat. According to the National Institutes of Health, studies have consistently shown that “a risk to human health [from atrazine is] essentially nonexistent.” But you’d never be presented with these eye-opening facts from reading the blogosphere echo chamber, or the New York Times, for that matter.

Let me walk you through the process of how hysteria over atrazine is manufactured. In 2009, the NRDC made headlines with “_Poisoning the Well_,” a widely challenged investigation promoted in an equally problematic Times report soberly titled “_Debating How Much Weed Killer is Safe in Your Water Glass_.” Their key revelation: three water systems in the United States had occasional atrazine “spikes” above 3 parts per billion—which they said posed grave threats to humans. (For context, one part per billion is equivalent to ½ teaspoon of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool … or 2.5 seconds in a lifetime.)

Following the lead of the Times, the media exploded with breathless stories of killer atrazine cocktails in our water supply. A few months later, the EPA cited the NRDC investigation in announcing it would again evaluate atrazine, barely three years after it had completed one of the most exhaustive scientific investigations ever undertaken, exonerating the chemical.

Are we in danger? Scientists, almost universally, say ‘no’. In 1989, the Safe Drinking Water Act set what is in effect “guideline values” for atrazine. That’s the 3ppb level that prompted the NRDC to yell fire in a movie house. But let’s be clear here. This is not the level at which a person would be harmed by atrazine exposure. It’s a level designed to signal authorities that they should attempt to identify the source of a chemical and take action to prevent further incursions.

What then is a safe drinking water level? Regulators call that a “no observed effect” level. A basic principle of toxicology is that at a high enough dose, all substances are toxic. Although chemicals are often referred to as “dangerous” or “safe”, as though these concepts were absolutes, in reality, these terms describe chemicals at various does that cause toxic effects. The no effect level is the lowest possible point at which no harm, including endocrine disruption, is detectable on the most sensitive known animal exposed to a chemical. For atrazine, it’s not the 3ppb guideline value brandished by advocacy groups. It ranges from 30,000 to more than 100,000 times less stringent—figures confirmed by the EPA.

Said another way, while the EPA says that water systems should address possible atrazine contamination when supplies average more than 3ppb for a full year, humans are not in harms way, based on animal tests, unless exposure levels are far far higher—as much as 350,00ppb!

Poisoning frogs—or facts?

Why the huge discrepancy? Because regulators add safety buffers beyond the no effect level. It’s standard for international regulators to increase the safety margin for chemical exposure by a factor of 100. In the case of atrazine, additional safety buffers were added years ago that exaggerate concerns. For example, the EPA added an additional buffer of 10 because it was originally believed atrazine causes cancer. They’ve since determined it doesn’t. Regulators also multiply by five times based on the assumption that 20% of our daily exposure comes from water, when the actual figure is 100%. (No atrazine is found on crops because it’s a pre-emergent weed killer.) The EPA’s Science Advisory Panel has taken voluminous testimony that the agency should follow the lead of other international regulators and dial back on these outdated, exaggerated multipliers.

So let’s go back to those field tests on atrazine. More than a decade of EPA data shows the average running exposure to atrazine in drinking water is less than 1 ppb. NRDC found—OMG—three water systems in which atrazine levels spiked for one day into the 20-30ppb level. In fact, the highest level ever recorded in treated water is 64ppb. Compare those numbers with the no effect levels for atrazine of 63,000-350,000ppb. Calling the NRDC’s claims, now mindlessly re-circulated by Mother Jones and PR Watch, hysterical is giving a genuine psychological disorder a bad name. It’s plain dishonest.

Recognizing the absurdity of current standards, the _World Health Organization_ recently relaxed its guideline threshold from 2ppb to 100ppb. _WHO_ also noted that the potential danger of endocrine disruption—the centerpiece of Hayes’ argument—are almost non-existent in humans at this level.

“I consider even that 100ppb figure very, very conservative,” said _Les Davies_, principal scientist with the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, who was part of the team that reassessed the chemical for WHO.

“Members of the overly-concerned public often think that they are absolute health cut-offs and that anything above the guideline will be poisoning them,” said Davies, who is concerned that advocacy groups stir unnecessary fears by promoting thresholds thousands of times more conservative than pose genuine danger.

“All compounds are toxic, everything,” Davies told me. “Activists just see a toxic study and immediately jump to recommending bans. There would be chaos if regulators responded to those fears. We are mandated to set levels that reflect real health problems, not fear levels.”

Environmental challenges are complex. Data is more important than ideology. If the EPA capitulates to hysteria, it will have a serious impact on the world food supply and the nutritionally poor, who depend on plentiful crops. It will hurt our economy. Most devastating, it will be a decisive, perhaps irreparable blow against sound science.

Jon Entine is director of the Genetic Literacy Project and senior research fellow at STATS and the Center for Health and Risk Communications at George Mason University.

---

This article is available online at:

http://www.:{forbes:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/09/over-regulation-fever-at-the-white-house/

labelled as op ed

solomon a guelph appears to support, but also did research on roundup for coca erradication, does seem to be peer reviewed

===

The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist

Atrazine has no fiercer defender than author and "sustainability consultant" Jon Entine. What's behind his support for the controversial herbicide?

By Tom Philpott | Fri Feb. 24, 2012 1:18 PM PST

---

### The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist | Mother Jones

www.motherjones.com/.../atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:4px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:8.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

Mother Jones:{:(style="border-style:solid;border-width:4px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;top:8.5px;position:absolute;margin-left:6px;margin-top:-3px;border-color:#aaaaaa;"):}:

:{:{:(style="color:#808080;"):}::(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:by Tom Philpott - Feb 24, 2012 - Earlier this month, Forbes.com published an op-ed by Jon Entine in which he purported to debunk Dashka Slater's must-read recent Mother ...

Earlier this month, Forbes.com published an op-ed by Jon Entine in which he purported to debunk [1] Dash

ka Slater's must-read recent *Mother Jones*profile [2] of Tyrone Hayes, the UC Berkeley professor who found that tiny doses of the widely used herbicide atrazine affects frogs' sexual development.

Entine, who describes himself [3] as an "author, think tank scholar, leadership and sustainability consultant, media commentator, and public speaker on the DNA of human behavior," accused Slater of blatantly overstating the dangers of atrazine, which shows up at low levels in drinking water [4] in farming-intensive areas in the Midwest and South. According to Entine, as it's currently used on American fields, atrazine poses no risks to people or farms. Entine called out Mother Jones for promoting "End of Days hysteria" and displaying "a devastating lack of respect for science." Now, Entine's critique of the science indicting atrazine is sophisticated and deserves to be answered. I have written critically about atrazine before, and much of Entine's critique of Slater's piece applies to my work as well. I'll be digging into that in a forthcoming post.

But what caught my eye about Entine's post in the first place is that his name had shown up in a recent report by the Center for Media and Democracy (part one [5],part two [6]) about the efforts of Syngenta, the globe's largest agribusiness firm and the maker of atrazine, to protect its lucrative chemical from possible regulatory action by the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA is currently reviewing the herbicide's registration. Last year, a panel of independent scientists convened by the EPA recommended that the agency revise its assumption that atrazine is :{"unlikely to cause cancer."}: [7] Pointing to what it called "strong" epidemiological evidence linking atrazine to thyroid cancer, the panel states that the agency is currently acting with "inadequate information to assess carcinogenic potential." The European Union banned atrazine in 2004, based mainly on its tendency to run off into drinking water. A similar move by the EPA would cut into Syngenta's profits in the United States, where :{atrazine sells briskly}: [8] as an herbicide for our massive corn crop.

The CMD's report is based on Syngenta documents that show how the company's PR operation has tried to influence news coverage—while also keeping tabs on journalists who have reported on atrazine's potential health risks. These internal documents, according to CMD, expose the company's campaign "to influence the media, potential jurors, potential plaintiffs, farmers, politicians, scientists, and the Environmental Protection Agency." One Syngenta document [9] reveals that in 2009, the company toyed with the idea of obtaining "the services of a well-know [sic] investigative reporter to probe around the EPA…At the very minimum to utilize the advice of an Investigative Reporter to council [sic] us on what buttons to push and cages to rattle."

Jon Entine: "author, think tank scholar, leadership and sustainability consultant, media commentator, and public speaker on the DNA of human behavior"

Wikimedia Commons [10]Entine turned up in the Center for Media and Democracy's investigation because last year he authored a book, published and promoted by the American Council on Science and Health, called***Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health*** [11]. "In response to the growing level of chemophobia—the irrational fear of chemicals—among the American public, ACSH compiled this resource book and position to educate legislators, industry, media, consumers and parents on the actual risks of chemical exposure and use in everyday products," apress release [11] for the book states. The book mounts a brief (nearly 30 of its 120 pages are bibliography) yet vigorous defense of industrial and agricultural chemical use, backed up by two case studies, one of which is on atrazine.

Syngenta has funded the American Council on Science and Health, CMD found. Anemail dated August 28, 2009 [12] (PDF) from ACSH's executive director to his "Syngenta friends" refers to the "general operating support Syngenta has been so generously providing over the years, which we request to continue at current or increased levels." It adds: "Such general operating support is the lifeblood of a small non-profit like ours, and is both deeply appreciated and much needed." The letter doesn't specify the level at which the company has supported ACSH. The organization, according to CMD, has annual revenues of more than $2 million a year; its president, the high-profile pro-agrichemical polemicist Elizabeth Whelan, draws a salary of $350,000.

The ACSH email to Syngenta stated that "separate and distinct" from Syngenta's operating support, the group was seeking funding for a paper on the "general subject of pesticide exposure and consumer health." The paper, the budget for which ACSH put at $100,000, wouldn't focus exclusively on atrazine, but the "recent and ongoing 'controversy'" over Syngenta's herbicide would be a "primary focus." The email went out less than a week after the New York Times ran an investigative piece [13] on the presence of atrazine in Midwestern drinking water and shortly after the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report [14] (PDF) called "Poisoning the Well: How the EPA is Ignoring Atrazine Contamination of Drinking and Surface Water in the Central United States." ACSH said it would "consumerize" its pro-atrazine paper into a "consumer-friendly booklet," which then would be widely distributed to media, and "used as the basis for Op-eds, letters to the editor, media appearances, etc."

CMD's investigation does not establish whether ACSH ever got Syngenta funding for that project. But CMD raises the possibility that Entine's slim volume Scared to Deathmight be the very booklet that ACSH's executive director envisioned in his letter to Syngenta. Entine flat-out denied this suggestion in an email exchange. "Syngenta is not a client and never has been. I have no clients in the agricultural or chemicals businesses," he wrote. As for publishing a book with the Syngenta-funded ACSH, Entine responded:

No relationship with ACSH. I read a draft of an early version of a manuscript on chemical risk and thought it wasn't balanced—too critical of advocacy groups. They asked if I would write a new one. I said yes only if I had complete editorial independence. They agree. [sic] After publication I declined to be involved in any PR involving it. I hold the copyright not ACSH.

He added that he had "no idea" that ACSH had received Syngenta cash until he read the CMD story.

Though he denies being a hired gun for Syngenta, Entine cuts an odd figure as an independent ally of atrazine. Since 2003, he has been listed as avisiting fellow [15] at the American Enterprise Institute, the pro-business, anti-regulation think tank. [16] Entine told me that he organized a 2009 conference on pesticides for AEI [17], moderating a panel featuring a Syngenta researcher; a rep from Croplife America, the main agrichemical industry lobbying group; and prominent pesticide critic Jay Feldman of Beyond Pesticides. Despite his affiliation, Entine said his title with AEI is "honorific." He explained in an email, "I don't work for AEI. I get zero dollars from AEI."

Something in the water: Predicted Atrazine occurrence in shallow ground water in farming areasUS Geological Survey [18]Entine also runs a consultancy, ESG MediaMetrics. The firm'shomepage [19] lists Monsanto as a "select client." Among its "core services," itlists [20] "Media strategy, writing, speechwriting, and engagement with critics." Describing itsmedia [21] services, it declares, "We manage and create reputations. We bring to every challenge our vast experience as active journalists, public relations and media specialists, international scholars, and advisers for Fortune 500 corporations." On the bio [22] of personal web page, Entine has this to say about ESG MediaMetrics: The group "advises corporations and NGOs on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, and on brand reputation and strategic communications." It adds: "Recent clients have included KKR, The Carlyle Group, The Alliance of Merger and Acquisition Advisors, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,P&G, American Greetings, Monsanto, DHL/Deutsche Post and Nicor."

However, when I referred to ESG MediaMetrics as a PR firm in an email to Entine, he objected forcefull

I consult with organizations, from fair trade groups to the Environmental Defense Fund to corporations. I'm committed to science. I do no corporate PR work. You can misrepresent what I do and call it PR work, but that would be deceitful. People who do what I do are generally called "green consultants," which I'm sure you'd never use as then I'd seem like a good guy and it's much easier to put people and what they do in neat little boxes that prevent real thinking.

To hear Entine tell it, his defenses of atrazine and other pesticides are entirely pro bono and driven by his own initiative. He told me he gets "almost all" of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project, which, he added, is funded by what he called the Templeton and Searle foundations. The project is housed at the Statistical Assessment Service program at George Mason University, where Entine is a fellow [23]. Though Entine would not specify which Searle trust funded the GLP, the Searle Freedom Trust's 2010 tax form [24] lists a $154,000 grant to STATS for a "Gene Policy and Science Literacy Project," which sounds an awful lot like Entine's. Founded by pharmaceutical and Nutrasweet magnate Daniel C. Searle [25], the Searle Freedom Trust funds all manner of conservative and free-market think tanks, including the Manhattan and Heartland Institutes.

According to an earlier version of the Genetic Literacy Project's website [26], it "fosters dialogue about the scientific, social and ethical implications of genetic technologies…It respects the uncertainties inherent in science but is grounded in the belief that genomic research is an engine of innovation and job creation." But the site included almost no information about what the project actually does. A "news [27]" tab opened a page featuring links to several Entine op-eds on topics that have nothing to do with genetics: pieces defending plastics [28],fracking [29],atrazine [30], andBPA [31].

Entine had an explanation for this, too:

Until I got your email, I had no idea that the holding site for GLP had ANY articles on it, as it's supposed to just be a single page, and I haven't looked at it in a year. It's supposed to just have a summary…and as of later this afternoon [Feb. 16] it will only have that until the full GLP site goes up in a few weeks, as I just called the webmaster, who apparently had been rotely posting some of my articles.

And indeed, the GLP website has been reduced to astub [32]; the links I provided above are to archived pages. The real Genetic Literacy Project site will be brimming with information about genetic science and related social issues, Entine assured me. "Unlike advocacy genetic sites," he added, "it will not have a specifically pro or anti genetics agenda. It's meant to be a transparent information site for policy and media people."

But then again, according to Entine, neither he himself, nor the organizations he affiliates with, ever have an agenda. At one point in our correspondence, I asked him about the famously right-wing, pro-corporate American Enterprise Institute. "I don't know your beef with AEI, but anybody who affiliates with them is totally independent," he wrote. "I'm an Obama Democrat and there are many non-ideologues there."

---

Source URL: http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine

[29] http://www.ethicalcorp.com/environment/methane-more-heat-energy-debate

[30] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/frog-day-afternoon-choose_b_853776.html

[31] http://american.com/archive/2011/april/milwaukees-best-no-longer

[32] http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE http://www.nationalreview.com PRINT

The Home Front

Politics, culture, and American life — from the family perspective.

BPA Found Safe . . . By Researcher Who Doesn’t Want to Admit It

ByJulie Gunlock

November 6, 2012 4:54 P.M.

I’ve written on this site several times before about bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in everyday products like baby bottles, storage containers, and in the lining of canned food and the bad science surrounding efforts to ban it. Now science writer Jon Entine has a must-read article in *Forbes* that confirms long-held suspicions about the motivations of activists opposed to the use of BPA.

Entine explains that University of California-San Diego researcher Michael Baker hyped the results of his BPA research in a press release – a press release that Baker himself now renounces (how convenient for him to backtrack after his specious press release generated dozens of terrifying headlines).

Baker actually admitted his error to Entine, saying “I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused by some.”

Oopsie.

Just a tiny little mistake that causes moms like me to gnaw off their fingernails at the thought that we might be poisoning our children with chemicals. But that’s okay; regular moms and dads (already struggling with high food and fuel costs) can just run out and support the cottage industry that has sprouted up in the wake of these terrifying headlines — the BPA-free industry. Parents won’t mind that these products are much more expensive. After all, isn’t your baby’s health worth it? Surely parents aren’t already cash-strapped with the truck-load of diapers they purchase on a monthly basis along with the toys, books, and other baby items one simply must supply a child with these days.

Of course, what parents won’t hear about is Baker’s mea culpabecause if there’s one thing parents can count on from today’s science writers it is an absolute dearth of Entine-esque journalism when it comes to BPA. Baker’s study might not have generated such dramatic headlines if these journalists had revealed, as Entine does, that Baker has zero prior expertise in studying BPA or that his study didn’t include humans or even animals but rather was a computer simulation. Even more stunning, Entine discovered that Baker was unaware of the quite impressive body of researchthat shows BPA is safe.

In fact, thousands of studies conducted have shown BPA to be perfectly safe, yet those with an evangelical interest in continuing the hand-wringing about BPA cling desperately to any shred of information, no matter how far-fetched, supporting their position. And now, the very researchers who study BPA can’t be counted on to stick by their own findings that BPA is safe.

Don’t expect anti-BPA activists to be bowed by this latest blow to their religious crusade. Their ideology might still be intact but the science is proving them wrong. That’s a good thing for parents who have grown weary of these alarmist claims and who just want to keep their kids safe without spending a fortune.

---

on Entine

"He is a visiting fellow at the**:{American Enterprise Institut:(style="color:#ed1c24"):}:e**for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., a columnist for the British-based international magazine**Ethical Corporation**, and co-founder of **:{E.S.G.Metrics}:**, which advises business and NGOs on Environmental, Social, and Governance issues, including sustainability and executive leadership. Recent clients have included KKR, The**Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation**, P&G, American Greetings, Monsanto, DHL/Deutsche Post, Fischer Homes, and Pomeroy IT Solutions.

"Before launching his consulting and writing career, Jon spent 20 years as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC (on the Miss America Pageant!), and was Tom Brokaw’s long-time producer at NBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries.

"In 1989, Tom and Jon collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989), which led to his best-selling book,Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It (Public Affairs, 2000), which was recently reissued. AEI has published two books written and edited by Jon: Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (AEI Press, 2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, 2006), which examines the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. In 2007, Jon publishedAbraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), which merges genealogy, genetics, and religion to vividly bring to life a new understanding of Western identity and the shared biblical ancestry of Jews and Christians. It addresses efforts to identify cures for diseases that disproportionately impact specific populations and the social and political tempest that a renewed focus on “race” research is stirring...

"Jon has participated in and organized dozens of public forums on policy issues at the AEI, the Brookings Institution, and the Hudson Institute. He has served as a lecturer at various universities, including Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, New York University, and most recently Miami (Ohio) University, where he was scholar-in-residence. Jon graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 1974 with a degree in philosophy and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan in 1980-1982. He was recently named to the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Cincinnati, where he resides." ^[1]

See his critiques of Anita Roddick's Body Shop.

Contents[hide]

External links

Jon Entine, "Let Them Eat Precaution", The American Enterprise, American Enterprise Institute, March 2004.

Resources and articles

References

↑ Biography, Jon Entine, accessed November 13, 2009.

Categories: People | United States

===

crypto:

Searching for a Defender of Atrazine on HuffPo

In response, Syngenta CP's Steven Goldsmith sent an email to Josh Gilder of WHWG and Mike Burita at Quinn Thomas :{asking an interesting question}: (PDF).

"Is there anyone at HP [HuffPo] who we could cultivate on this issue rather than continuing to get bashed by everyone on their payroll?"

WHWG and Quinn Thomas had already been hard at work for six months on an array of tactics to advance Syngenta PR's third party strategy on atrazine.

One was to have Syngenta's chief scientist, Dr. Mike Bushell, ghostwrite a chapter for a book challenging the idea of regulating atrazine by applying the "precautionary principle."

This standard, which is embedded in U.S. and EU consumer law, places the burden of proof on manufacturers to establish that their products are not harmful if science points to significant risks to human health or the environment. WHWG :{said}: (PDF) it would "find someone else willing to put their name" on Syngenta's "Ghost Author" story about atrazine and challenge the potential embrace of the precautionary principle by the Obama Administration's EPA.

The ghostwritten chapter was for a book to be published in conjunction with someone at the :{**American Enterprise Institute**}:, a DC think tank that is funded in part by large donations from corporations. It is not known whether Syngenta has funded this think tank or any of its "fellows," directly or indirectly.

Also Needed: An Investigative Reporter to Rattle the EPA's Cages

On December 3, 2009, Syngenta's in-house PR staff held a planning meeting to deal with the fallout from the New York Times investigation, the :{agenda}: (PDF) was to "[o]btain the services of a well know (sic) investigative reporter to probe around the EPA" and, at a minimum get advice "on what buttons to push and cages to rattle."

As part of the effort to influence EPA's review, another tactic was to identify long-term needs for published materials and which third parties "should be approached/retained."

Unsealed e-mails reveal (PDF) that earlier that same week WHWG had reported to Syngenta that a third party the PR team was in communication with was Jon Entine of the American Enterprise Institute. Entine is a former producer with NBC and ABC News, whose books attacked the idea of socially responsible investing and the precautionary principle (Let Them Eat Precaution).

-...

ACSH Gets "Lifeblood" Funding from “Dear Syngenta Friends”

As the e-mails uncovered in the litigation reveal, Whelan had also submitted a new financial proposal from ACSH for a special project from Syngenta. The proposal began “Dear Syngenta friends” and proposed that ACSH produce a publication on pesticide and Atrazine exposure and human health.

She was seeking $100,000 to publish and consumerize a discussion of “myths and realities” about agribusiness chemicals and health.

Her proposal concluded by noting that her request was separate from the “general operating support Syngenta has been so generously providing over the years, which we request to continue at current or increased levels. Such general operating support is the lifeblood of a small non-profit like ours, and is both deeply appreciated and much needed.”

Whelan, the president of the non-profit ASCH, is paid over $350,000 a year out of the organization’s $2 million in annual income, as of 2009. It is not clear how much "lifeblood" Syngenta pays each year as its generous contribution to ACSH budget and Whelan’s large salary.

ACSH’s published materials include a boilerplate disclaimer that it accepts grants from any source but that it is solely responsible for its research andthat it “does not accept support from individual corporations for specific research projects.”

Spinning the Idea of “Chemophobia”

While aiding in attacks on Duhigg’s New York Times reporting, Whelan pushed the idea that people expressing concerns were engaged in “chemophobia,” an irrational fear of chemicals.

The e-mails contained in the court record are incomplete regarding ACSH’s project grant proposal, the total funding it has received over the years, and the subsequent funding for ACSH, WHWG, and others post-spring 2010.

Nevertheless, it is plain that Syngenta’s PR operations did not suddenly cease that spring, with the EPA’s decision on atrazine still pending along with ongoing litigation in the state and federal courts.

And just last month a long-time friend of Syngenta announced the release of a new book.

It was finalized in 2011 along with a “companion friendly” paper called “Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.” The book attacks the EPA and “harmful, unnecessary regulation” as well as the precautionary principle.

It has a chapter-long “case study” defending atrazine, just as members of the Syngenta PR team had been seeking.

The publisher? ACSH, consistent with the pitch Whelan made to Syngenta.

The book? Designed to rattle the cages at the EPA, which was on the Syngenta PR team's wishlist.

The author? John Entine, described as a highly regarded science reporter from the American Enterprise Institute, a third party Syngenta’s PR team had been cultivating.

The HuffPo contributor who wrtote about the book and its attack on critics of atrazine? It was Entine, whom Syngenta trusted. HUH?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine

~ haynes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/frog-day-afternoon-choose_b_853776.html

Bisphenol A or BPA, molecular formula C₁₅H₁₆O₂, is an organic compound that is used to make polycarbonate plastic and epoxy resins, among other things. BPA is an estrogenic - it has properties which can mimic the effects of the human hormone estrogen - it is an endocrine disruptor.

BPA is added to the lining of foods and drinks cans and, according to studies, interferes with reproductive development in animals, including humans. BPA levels in humans have been associated with a higher risk of developing several diseases and conditions, including obesity, diabetes type 2, and cardiovascular diseases.

BPA has also been found in polycarbonate bottles, which are identified by recycling number seven, as well as dentistry sealants and composites.

In 2008, concern regarding BPA became a public theme in the media after the governments of several nations questioned its safety - many retailers in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australasia made moves to remove BPA-containing food products from their shelves.

A 2010 US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) report expressed concern regarding exposure of BPA to fetuses, infants and young children. Canadian authorities declared BPA a toxic substance in 2010 - the first country to do so. BPA is banned in baby bottles in the European Union and Canada.

Prenatal exposure to BPA has been associated with subsequent neurological difficulties.

wiki BS:

Jon Entine is an American author, journalist, think tank scholar and consultant. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at :{George Mason University:(style="background-color:#ed1c24"):}:^[1] and a senior fellow at GMU's STATS (:{Statistical Assessment Service}:),^[2] where he is founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project.^[3] He has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C^[4] since 2002. He writes a column (since 2001) for the British-based international magazine Ethical Corporation, Forbes.com and contributes to newspapers and magazines around the world. Entine is also the founder of ESG MediaMetrics,^[5] which offers crisis management and sustainability WTF consulting in environmental, social and governance areas, and he advises organizations on brand reputation and strategic communications....In 2011, Entine joined the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University as a senior fellow and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, which focuses on the nexus of genetics—human and agricultural—with the media and public policy. He is also a senior research fellow at GMU's Center for Health & Risk Communication. Entine joined the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as an adjunct scholar in 2002, and is now a visiting scholar. His research focuses on science and society and corporate responsibility/sustainability. AEI Press has published three books written and edited by Entine: Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? (February 2011), which analyzes the impact of chemicals in agriculture; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (January 2006), which examined the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. He has also contributed to numerous academic books on a variety of subjects, including sports, genetics, leadership, and sustainability.

Jon Entine is an American author, journalist, think tank scholar and consultant. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University^[1] and a senior fellow at GMU's STATS (Statistical Assessment Service),^[2] where he is founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project.^[3] He has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C^[4] since 2002. He writes a column (since 2001) for the British-based international magazine Ethical Corporation, Forbes.com and contributes to newspapers and magazines around the world. Entine is also the founder of ESG MediaMetrics,^[5] which offers crisis management and sustainability consulting in environmental, social and governance areas, and he advises organizations on brand reputation and strategic communications.

Entine is known for an independent and distinctive public identity, often taking contrarian or controversial stands but not strictly ideological ones. He is a speaker at universities and civic organizations, and is a frequent guest on national news and political commentary television and radio shows in the United States and Europe. He lives in Cincinnati.

Contents

Biography

Entine was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 30, 1952 and later relocated with his family to the suburb of Cheltenham. He graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1974 with a B.A. in philosophy. Entine had briefly dropped out of college in 1972 to run the presidential primary campaign for Senator George McGovern in Sullivan County in New Hampshire. After graduation, he became the assistant director for the re-election campaign of Father Robert Drinan, a liberal Democratic Congressman from suburban Boston.

Television Journalism

Entine joined NBC News in New York in 1984 as a special segment producer for NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, where he worked until 1990. He became Brokaw’s long-time producer. In 1989, Entine and Brokaw collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989. Entine was later named the executive in charge of documentaries at NBC News (1989–1990). He rejoined ABC News in 1991 as an investigative producer for Primetime (TV series). In 1993 Entine produced a story with reporter Sam Donaldson on eye surgery clinics that led to a lawsuit against them and Primetime alleging trespass and defamation due to the use of "test patients". The case was mostly dismissed in January 1995 and a defamation suit was dismissed in 2000.^[6][7] He produced a prime time special on the Miss America Pageant, "Miss America: Beyond the Crown" for NBC Entertainment in 1994 before transitioning to book writing and print journalism.

Awards

Entine has won 19 journalism awards, including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union and a National Press Club award in Consumer Journalism.

The Body Shop Controversy

Entine's first print piece, the September 1994 investigative article, "Shattered Image: Is The Body Shop Too Good to Be True?,^[8]" in Business Ethics magazine, created an international brouhaha and led to hundreds of stories in the international media, including articles in The New York Times and a report on ABC World News Tonight. The flurry of news stories led to a temporary 50% drop in the market value of the stock of The Body Shop, a British-based international cosmetics company, which until that point had been considered a model "socially responsible" company.

Entine reported that Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, in 1976, had stolen the name, store design, marketing concept and most product line ideas from a different cosmetic chain with the same name, The Body Shop, founded in 1970 in San Francisco by two California women, and subsequently fabricated her story of traveling around the world discovering exotic beauty ingredients. (In 1989, Roddick purchased the U.S. and Israeli rights to The Body Shop name from the original Body Shop founders, and the San Francisco based chain of five stores renamed itself Body Time). He reported that Roddick's "natural" products contained extensive amounts of artificial colorings, scents and preservatives. Despite Roddick's claims and unverified reports in popular articles and even some university case studies that Roddick and The Body Shop "gave most of its profits to charity," as Roddick had proclaimed, documents from Britain's Charity Commission showed that the company gave nothing to charity over its first 11 years and was penurious in its philanthropy thereafter, despite Roddick's claims. The Body Shop also faced millions of dollars in claims by disenchanted franchisees, who believed they had been enticed to buy franchises by misrepresenting its potential revenue.

About The Body Shop Story from Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 4 [1]

Article in the Berkeley Daily about Body Time (The original Body Shop) [2]

How The Body Shop tried to stop this information from getting mainstream:[3] The article in Business Ethics (now defunct), which was cited with a National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism in 1994, is widely used in university business ethics classes and is generally credited with prompting companies claiming to be socially responsible to match their claims with operational practices and to increase transparency.

"Shattered Image" had originally been scheduled to be published as a 10,000 word feature in Vanity Fair earlier in 1994 but was dropped after legal threats by The Body Shop, which threatened to litigate under British libel law, which requires proof of innocence by defendants rather than proof of guilt by the prosecution. The original article was eventually published in 2004 by The Nation Books in Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print,^[9] edited by David Wallis. Business Ethics, which had featured Roddick on its cover just the year before, printed a much shorter version of the exposé commissioned for Vanity Fair. "Shattered Image" and subsequent writings by Entine on the emerging "socially responsible" business movement challenged the belief that companies that promote themselves as socially conscious necessarily operate with a higher degree of ethics or social responsibility than conventional companies. Entine's writing focused on what he called "reality rather than rhetoric" of ethical business. He is often credited for coining the term "green washing",^[10] which refers to the deceptive marketing exploits of self-professed "green" companies.

Genetics

Entine is the founding director of the Genetic Literacy Project,^[11] which is under the umbrella of STATS at George Mason University, and is affiliated with the Center for Risk & Health Communication. It focuses on the nexus of media, policy and genetics, both human and agricultural.

He has written three books on genetics. Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution^[12] addresses the controversy over genetic modification in agriculture. His first book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It^[13] was inspired by the documentary on black athletes written with Brokaw in 1989. It was favorably reviewed by The New York Times^[14] and numerous other publications. There were some critical reviews, claiming that the subject was inappropriate as it could encourage a racialist view of human relations.

In 2007, Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People,^[15] which examined the shared ancestry of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and addressed the question "Who is a Jew?" as seen through the prism of DNA, was published. Entine also addresses the controversial issue of why Jews are disproportionately successful and reviews studies that show that Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQ test scores than other population groups, writing that IQ is mostly heritable. Kirkus Reviews called the book an epic tale of 'The Chosen People'...Engaging and informative reading for Jews and non-Jews alike. According to Library Journal, [Jon Entine's] explorations take him from his own Jewish family members' cancer diagnoses to genetic labs—both academic and commercial—across the world, with lengthy forays into Jewish history, the history of Israel and Zionism, and the split between social anthropology and biological anthropology. Harry Ostrer in Nature Genetics called it a broad, well-documented sweep of Jewish history that will inform even the most knowledgeable of readers".^[16]

Entine is a public speaker on genetics and identity for the Jewish National Fund^[17] and the Jewish Federations of North America.

Think Tank Affiliations

In 2011, Entine joined the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University as a senior fellow and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, which focuses on the nexus of genetics—human and agricultural—with the media and public policy. He is also a senior research fellow at GMU's Center for Health & Risk Communication. Entine joined the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research as an adjunct scholar in 2002, and is now a visiting scholar. His research focuses on science and society and corporate responsibility/sustainability. AEI Press has published three books written and edited by Entine: Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? (February 2011), which analyzes the impact of chemicals in agriculture; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (2005) on the growing influence of social investing in pension funds and Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (January 2006), which examined the debate over genetic modification (GMOs), food, and farming. He has also contributed to numerous academic books on a variety of subjects, including sports, genetics, leadership, and sustainability.

Books

Crop Chemophobia: Will Precaution Kill the Green Revolution? 2011, ISBN 978-0-8447-4361-5
Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health, 2011, ISBN 978-0-578-07561-7
No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extrajudicial Prosecution, 2009, ISBN 978-0-692-00282-7
Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, 2008, ISBN 0-446-58063-5
Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution, 2006, ISBN 0-8447-4200-7
Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing, 2005, ISBN 0-8447-4218-X
Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We’re Afraid to Talk About It, 2000, ISBN 1-58648-026-X

References

^ http://chrc.gmu.edu/scholars
^ http://stats.org/about_staff.htm
^ http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org
^ http://www.aei.org/scholar/100007%7Ctitle=Jon Entine|work=Scholars & Fellows|publisher=AEI}}
^ http://www.esgmediametrics.com
^ Russomanno, Joseph (2002). "J.H. Desnick, M.D. Eye Services, Ltd., et al. vs American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., Jon Entine, and Sam Donaldson". Speaking our minds: conversations with the people behind landmark First Amendment cases. Psychology Press. pp. 134–169.
^ "Libel suit against ABC’s ‘PrimeTime Live’ dismissed". The News Media & The Law. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Winter 2001. Retrieved 4 October 2011.
^ http://www.jonentine.com/the-body-shop.html
^ http://www.amazon.com/Killed-Great-Journalism-Too-Print/dp/1560255811
^ http://books.google.com/books?id=EzWq4npYzY4C&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=%22Jon+Entine%22+term+greenwashing&source=bl&ots=YQYazV5ZHT&sig=Zn8IUpv2hJ1x7YfqBW7U1LxH3qY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=f14YT_3MBoba0QGq9Lm1Cw&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Jon%20Entine%22%20term%20greenwashing&f=false
^ http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org
^ http://books.google.com/books/about/Let_them_eat_precaution.html?id=K60fAQAAIAAJ
^ http://www.amazon.com/Taboo-Athletes-Dominate-Sports-Afraid/dp/1891620398, (PublicAffairs, 2000; re-released 2007)
^ http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/entine-taboo.html "Breaking the Taboo on Race and Sports"
^ http://www.abrahamschildren.net/
^ A genetic view of Jewish history. Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People By Jon Entine. Grand Central Publishing, 2007. 432 pp., hardcover, $27.99 ISBN 978-0-446-58063-2. Reviewed by Harry Ostrer. Nature Genetics 2008, 40:2
^ http://www.jnf.org/about-jnf/in-your-area/speakers/perspectives-on-israel/jon-entine.html

External links

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Socially responsible business brawl.('Business Ethics' magazine criticizes cosmetic maker Body Shop)

The Progressive

http://web.ebscohost.com.oca.ucsc.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=126&sid=bff964fd-bf6b-4c9c-98d6-27f1f76a4eeb%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=9503017683

...

The article, by Emmy-award-winning journalist Jon Entine, alleged that some of the Body Shop's "natural" products contained cheap, petrochemical-laden ingredients; that lax quality-control resulted in the sale of some contaminated products; that charitable giving fell short of even the national corporate average; and that journalists who had tried to challenge the company's marketing hype had been silenced with libel threats.

As if to demonstrate this last point, Body Shop lawyers sent Kelly two letters containing "strongly worded legal threats" before she went to press with "Shattered Image," she says. But Kelly refused to back down. "The Body Shop story had to be told, chiefly for the lessons it provided those who seek to promote ethical business practices," Kelly says. She checked and rechecked Entine's sources and scheduled the piece for her September/October 1994 issue.

In March 2006, The Body Shop agreed to a £652.3 million takeover by [L'Oréal [National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award: 1995 Honorable Mention..]

"I went to press in the face of threats from an enormous company because I knew that what we printed was true," she says. "Even if I was 100 percent correct, however, I could be put out of business. The cost of getting to the summary-judgment phase--where the judge says there is no basis for this charge--would run $100,000," an amount that would take the business right out of Business Ethics.

The Body Shop's litigiousness helped persuade Vanity Fair to nix a version of Entine's investigation. With help from public-relations giant Hill and Knowlton-particularly from vice-chairman Frank Mankiewicz, a former president of National Public Radio--the Body Shop launched a full-scale counter-attack on Entine's credibility.

The Body Shop denied the charges, dismissed the credibility of Entine's sources, and characterized Kelly's decision to publish the piece as an irresponsible attempt to garner attention for her small magazine.

Shortly after publication, National Public Radio interviewed Entine on the air. After the program, Mankiewicz helped persuade NPR to run a follow-up story that included comment from Body Shop supporters.

"Like any other company, we should go to any length to protect ourselves when we feel like we're being dealt with unjustly," says Body Shop spokesman Bryan Weaver.

Kelly stands by the story she published: "For all its bluster, the Body Shop has failed to document a single error of fact in our article," she says.

Other organizations have since published independent research that corroborates many of En-tine's conclusions. Franklin Research and Development, a Boston-based ethical investment firm, awarded the Body Shop its highest social ratings in 1991. But in 1994, Franklin's newsletter supported many of Entine's charges against the company and rebuked the Body Shop for its combative stance toward critics: "The Body Shop's bombastic tactics have set back any legitimate attempts by the company to change."

In late September, Kelly discovered to her amazement that the Body Shop had acquired her subscriber list without her authorization. The Body Shop used the list to send out a ten-page refutation to the magazine's readers. Signed by chairman Gordon Roddick, the letter stated that Entine's article was "filled with lies, distortions, and gross inaccuracies," with "almost no attempt to observe the normal standards of journalism." The Business Ethics list manager, Stevens-Knox and Associates, learned of the mailing through employees whose names were planted on the list as decoys--a customary practice to guard against misuse of subscriber addresses.

...

heartland review bk

http://blog.heartland.org/2011/03/heartland-book-review-don%E2%80%99t-be-%E2%80%98scared-to-death%E2%80%99-of-chemicals/

The author charts every imagined environmental disaster such as **:{Times Beach}:** and **:{Love Canal}:**, every law that has been passed — and, of course, the impact of the terribly flawed book Silent Spring. Best of all, Entine unveils the manner in which the federal EPA determines how Maximum Contaminant Levels are determined for all human exposures — making clear that one could comfortably consume a hundred times more of most chemicals without fearing negative impacts. He also points out how many chemicals and drugs are withheld from society when their benefits far outweigh their risk.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_beach#Dioxin_contamination

The problem began when Bliss took a contract with a local company called ICP to dispose of toxic waste.^[2] ICP was being paid $3,000 per load to remove toxic waste from Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company (NEPACCO). ICP in turn paid Bliss $125 to eliminate the waste.^[2] NEPACCO operated a facility producing hexachlorophene in Verona, Missouri. Some parts of the facility had been used for the production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and the waste clay and water contained levels of :{dioxin}: some 2,000 times higher than the dioxin content in Agent Orange.^[2] Bliss claimed he was unaware that the waste contained dioxin, having even sprayed it around his own home.^[2]

Bliss had first used the technique of spraying waste oil to control dust in horse stables after discovering it worked well at his own home.^[2] When a March 1971 spraying resulted in the death of 62 horses, the owners of the stable suspected Bliss, who assured them he had sprayed used engine oil.^[2] Bliss, however, had mixed the NEPACCO waste with the oil.^[2] The owners followed Bliss's activities, and after other stables experienced similar problems, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began investigating. In late 1979, a NEPACCO employee confessed the company's practice of disposing of dioxin.^[2] The government sued NEPACCO in 1980.

The EPA visited Times Beach in mid-1982, and, in November 1982, stories began to appear in the press about the discovery of dioxin in Times Beach. Another soil sample was taken December 3, 1982, and the test result showed dioxin levels some 100 times higher than the one part per billion generally considered to be hazardous to humans.^[2]

On December 5, 1982, the Meramec River flooded, causing an evacuation as more than 95% of the city was covered with 10 feet (3.0 m) or more of water.^[2] Flood stage was 18.5 feet (5.6 m) and the water crested at 42.88 feet (13.07 m).

On December 23, 1982, the EPA announced it had identified dangerous levels of dioxin in Times Beach's soil. Panic spread through the town, with many illnesses, miscarriages, and animal deaths attributed to the dioxin.^[2] President Ronald Reagan formed a dioxin task force. At the time, dioxin was hailed as "the most toxic chemical synthesized by man," based on its extreme toxicity in guinea pigs.

Fracking

About Jon

ESG Metrics and Sustainability

**American Enterprise Institute Conferences**

Books

Articles

**Keynotes**

bs:

Jon Entine

Jon founded ESG MediaMetrics, an alliance of strategic partners, to address an unfilled frustration voiced by corporations, business groups and civil society organizations: how

to manage the complex nexus of media, public policy and sustainable management.

Jon is the founder of the Genetic Literacy Project and a Senior Fellow at the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University. He is also a columnist for

the British-based international magazine Ethical Corporation and a frequent writer for publications around the world, from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post,

Forbes and Business Week to The Times of London, The Australian Financial Review and

the Toronto Globe R.O.B. (Report on Business). He is also author and editor of seven

books and has appeared as a guest commentator on hundreds off TV and radio shows, on every major US news network, and on many international programs, and has been profiled on ABC News 20/20. Jon has been a scholar since 2003 at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., where he writes on science and society.

Before launching his consulting and writing career, Jon spent 19 years as a network news producer, winning 20 awards, including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC, and was Tom Brokaw's long-time producer

at NBC News, where he was also the executive in charge of documentaries. Jon has served as a lecturer at various universities, including Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, NYU and most recently Miami (Ohio), where he was scholar-in-residence. Jon graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 1974 with a degree

in philosophy and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journ

Jon Entine Contributor

I write skeptically about science, public policy, media and NGOs.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

OPINION 8/19/2013 @ 6:35AM 9,564 views

Berkeley Anti-Atrazine Crusader Blames 'Big Ag', Set To Sue, After University Dispute Over Dwindling Research Funds

Comment Now Follow Comments

Has ‘Big Ag’ finally nailed a long time nemesis? Or has an activist scientist with a long history of discredited studies finally fallen victim to his own bizarre behavior?

These are the competing narratives in play as journalists and policymakers try to make sense of reports last week that Tyrone Hayes, the University of California at Berkeley herpetologist who churned out study after study about the alleged dangers of a popular herbicide—research that many scientists and the federal government have found neither convincing nor reproducible—has at least temporarily been forced to shutter his lab because of a lack of funds. Hayes suggests the university has unfairly shut him down because of outside pressure from his longtime critics, including the Swiss-based chemical company Syngenta.

This saga began in 1999, when Hayes was working as a contract researcher for the chemical company Novartis to study atrazine (in 2000, Novartis spun off its agribusiness to form Syngenta, and today the companies are unrelated). Hayes claimed he found that the herbicide might cause hormonal abnormalities. Hayes and Novartis parted ways shortly thereafter; he steadfastly claims he was blackballed because of his findings.

Three years later, Hayes published a blockbuster study, claiming that atrazine, hailed by scientists for decades because of its low toxic profile, caused sexual abnormalities in frogs and speculating that it may cause problems in humans as well. Hayes’ claims set off a firestorm despite the fact that a much larger independent study released at the very same time found no meaningful link between atrazine exposure and abnormalities. Numerous follow up studies since then have failed to find the endocrine related problems Hayes claimed to have identified.

Over the past decade, Hayes has become a major thorn in the side of the chemical industry and an annoyance for regulators who have come to view his research methodology as shoddy and his demeanor quirky—when they’re talking nice. But as Hayes tells his story—and he has found a compliant vessel in Paul Basken, a reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education [whose article is behind a paywall]—the beleaguered amphibian expert has finally fallen victim to a 14-year campaign by Syngenta to personally savage him and his work.

It’s a powerful and disturbing storyline, if true: Big, bad multinational company out to destroy courageous, whistle-blowing scientist to protect sales of a profitable but dangerously toxic chemical, public health be damned. Basken, for one, bought it hook line and sinker, portraying Hayes as a cutting edge researcher with broad and admiring support among independent scientists. The conspiracy theory was immediately disseminated without a hint of critical analysis by the usual anti-chemical crusaders, such as Tom Philpott at Mother Jones. But what’s the real story?

Atrazine over time

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, atrazine is one of the most widely used pesticides in the world. The odorless white powder is used on dozens of crops, including more than half of the country’s corn, 90 percent of its sugar cane and two-thirds of its sorghum. It’s applied to control a wide range of broadleaf and yield-robbing grassy weeds that would otherwise choke a crop and starve it of nutrients, but do not harm the plant itself. It’s considered so comparatively gentle that it can be applied even after a crop’s first shoots appear above the ground.

An EPA study concluded that atrazine boosts yields by 6 percent or more, saving corn farmers as much as $28 per acre—more than $2 billion in direct economic benefits, which could be the difference between solvency and bankruptcy for many. In other words, it is effective and is certainly a moneymaker for its manufacturer. But does it pose serious health challenges to humans as Hayes and a small coterie of scientists who are known for their political activism contend?

Atrazine is one of most scrutinized chemicals in history. There have been almost 7,000 studies of it over the past 40 years. This compares to the 100 to 200 safety studies generally required by the Environmental Protection Agency before registering a product.

“Since we concluded our last evaluation of atrazine in 2003,” the EPA writes on its website, “we have evaluated close to 150 published studies investigating a wide array of effects potentially relevant to human health risk assessment.”

Atrazine is not sold in Europe after a vote by the European Union in 2003 in response to campaigns by advocacy groups over trace amounts found in groundwater at levels well below safety cut off standards in the US and Australia. The decision came despite the fact that the EU, in its science review, had determined that when properly used, atrazine “will not have any harmful effects on human or animal health or any unacceptable effects on the environment.” Ironically, European farmers now control their weeds with the herbicide terbuthylazine that has nearly the same chemical and safety profile as atrazine—but is not in the ideological crosshairs.

The case against atrazine rests largely on the integrity of the research by Hayes, its chief critic. For example, a widely circulated joint polemic issued in January 2010 by the Land Stewardship Project and the Pesticide Action Network cites Hayes more than 50 times and includes a question-and-answer section with him in which he outlines his allegations.

While a hero to anti-chemical campaigners, Hayes has long been a perplexing figure to the broader science community. After his sensational 2002 study, government scientists and regulators were eager to do follow up experiments, drawing on his supposedly extensive data. But he was uncooperative—an oddly defensive reaction as scientists rely on data sharing and reproducible experiments to ensure that their results are not tainted or anomalous and policy decisions are grounded in ‘weight of evidence’ data.

The EPA was put in the untenable position of having hundreds, even thousands, of studies showing that atrazine was comparatively benign while one scientist, Hayes, blamed the herbicide for a decline in the worldwide frog population. Hayes claimed the supposedly shrinking number of amphibians was a canary in the mine for mysterious illnesses in humans. In fact, the decline of the frog population is a complicated phenomenon (much of the evidence is anecdotal) for which few mainstream scientists link directly to atrazine usage.

Under relentless attack by those touting Hayes’ work, the EPA examined the frog allegations in 2007, concluding, “atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies, including studies submitted by the registrant and studies published in the scientific literature.”

The dying frogs theory seems largely relegated to the Berkeley lab. “Atrazine has been used widely in South Africa for the past 45 years, and our studies showed that Xenopus are doing equally fine in agricultural and nonagricultural areas,” zoologist Louis du Preez of North-West University in South Africa noted in 2010. African clawed frogs do not appear to be suffering from the herbicide in their native habitats. “If atrazine had these adverse effects on Xenopus in the wild, surely we would have picked it up by now.”

Threat to human health?

But the most explosive charge was Hayes’ belief, echoed by anti-pesticide activists, that atrazine could cause endocrine related developmental health problems in humans. But where were the data? To support that theory and as evidence that Hayes is being persecuted, reporter Basken draws on an article published on the website Environmental Health News. EHN is run as an anti-chemical propaganda vehicle by John Peterson Myers, who the reporter positions as an independent and highly respected neutral observer.

According to the EHN piece published in June, Syngenta has run an “aggressive multi-million dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel [and] looking into the personal life of a judge.” In fact Myers is a controversial out-of-the-mainstream campaigning scientist and longtime crony of Hayes.

Both Hayes and Myers have tried over the past 15 years to pump what’s known as the “endocrine disruptor” theory. That’s a novel, widely circulated notion popular with the Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety, Natural Resources Defense Council and other anti-chemical activists, including a tiny but vocal minority of scientists, in part because mysterious illnesses can be claimed even in the absence of hard data. They’ve made a particular point of championing Hayes’ questionable findings.

According to these critics, chemicals like atrazine and Bisphenol-A (also much maligned by activists, but which a slew of new studies show is also comparatively benign) can be blamed for everything from cancer to obesity, retarded neurological development, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, infertility and disorders related to sexual development. Hayes’ deformed frogs were touted as a central piece of evidence.

These are catastrophic allegations, which if supported by the evidence would warrant immediate intervention. But the evidence falls short. Responding to alarm bells rung by activist scientists and DC-based lobby groups, the government in recent years has commissioned tens of millions of dollars of studies on the endocrine disruption hypothesis with no conclusive evidence to support it.

In the case of atrazine, without any real data from Hayes or other research supporting his contentions, the independent government oversight and mainstream science community has rejected his relentlessly alarmist conclusions.

“Dr. Hayes claims not only that his laboratory has repeated the findings many times in experiments with thousands of frogs, but that other scientists have also replicated his results,” said Anne Lindsay, then deputy director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs in 2005, in government testimony. “EPA, however, has never seen either the results from any independent investigator published in peer-reviewed scientific journals nor the raw data from Dr. Hayes’ additional experiments.”

Recently, Australia’s Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts—it’s EPA—carefully reviewed Hayes latest study, from 2010, finding the lab work flawed and recommending no change to its conclusion that atrazine is safe as used. The EPA concurs. Donald Brady, director of the EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division, stated in a publicly released letter that the agency “could not properly account for the sample sizes and study design reportedly used by the Berkeley researchers.” That’s bureaucratize and science-speak for saying Hayes peddles junk science.

The emerging scientific consensus is that restrictions placed years ago on atrazine in response to anti-chemical campaigns were too stringent rather than not tight enough. Following an extensive review of the latest scientific studies, the World Health Organization moved in 2011 to raise the allowable levels of atrazine in drinking water by 50 fold.

Of course none of this contextualized reporting found its way into Basken’s article, which portrayed Hayes as a hero-under-siege. The article also passes along some outright false statements, apparently because the reporter relied on Hayes as a reliable source. He quotes Hayes as claiming Berkeley officials may have targeted him out of a “desire to protect a $25-million, five year research agreement between Berkeley and Novartis, a parent company of Syngenta.”

That’s an explosive charge. In fact, the five-year research agreement that Hayes’ research was theoretically endangering was from Novartis and dates back 15 years, to 1998, before Novartis and Astra Zeneca spun off their agri-businesses to form Syngenta. The grant expired by 2004.That one-time grant aroused controversy at the time. Activist critics cited it as an example of a big corporation corrupting science at a public university—allegations dismissed after an independent investigation that cost the university almost a quarter of a million dollars. The Chronicle of Higher Education reporter could have easily dug out what really transpired by talking to university officials or even through a simple Google search. Instead he just passed along a discredited bogus allegation.

Hayes contends he has in effect been fired because he’s the ‘good guy’ fighting an uphill battle against the university and Big Ag conspiring against him. But what really went down at Berkeley? There is certainly no evidence of a conspiracy theory.

“I … just wanted to state in no uncertain terms that the university’s administration has not frozen his funds or taken any other steps against him,” I was told in an email from Dan Mogulof, Berkeley’s public affairs executive director. The situation is far more mundane than” Hayes claims, he adds. “The professor had a standing deficit with our animal lab as a result of unpaid care/feeding/maintenance bills. So, his departmental business manager was forced to draw from his account to pay the bill, thereby depleting his available resources given his recent challenges when it comes to attracting funding…. The university has no institutional ties, contracts or connections with Syngenta, and the contract with Novartis lapsed about ten years ago and was not renewed,” Mogulof added in a subsequent email. “In other words, not only didn’t the administration take any actions against Prof. Hayes, there is also an absence of any motive.” In fact, the university is providing bridge financing for Hayes and keeping care of his frogs in case Hayes is able to rustle up more funding.

Hayes continues to contend that the university jacked up his fees and targeted him specifically. “I must also note,” writes Mogulof, “that he [was] charged by the lab in the EXACT same manner as his faculty peers.”

By most accounts, Hayes is a celebrity obsessed and self-promoting (read his self-written Wikipedia page for a laugh) activist scientist who has a history of turning out questionable studies. It’s seems reasonable to conclude that Berkeley had had it up to here with Hayes’s antics and mismanagement. That said, they have carefully refused to take any action against him. This current brouhaha has been brewing for years as Hayes drained his research funds and failed to extract funding. Excising the professors phony “smoking gun” charge from the Chronicle of Higher Education article we are now left with a much clearer and more factually based picture of what has probably gone down in Berkeley.

Skepticism about the integrity of Hayes’ research is compounded by his erratic professional behavior. For years he has been sending abusive rap like email barrages filled with salacious comments to Syngenta employees. For example, in March 2008, after Hayes apparently turned down an offer to meet directly with the company, he emailed an executive: “everywhere i go i cause a raucus; act like you know that’s how i do it m*th* f*ck*s.” Asked to desist, Hayes responded: “I told ya, you can’t stop the rage.” Syngenta was concerned enough by the fusillades that it filed an ethics complaint with the university that included an astonishing document with 102 pages of bizarre emails.

Hayes resurfaced again this past weekend. There he was in San Francisco as the signature speaker at a “save the frogs” event—part of an ongoing series of regular presentations he helps set up to preserve and promote his now threatened status as a ‘go to’ star source for anti-chemical campaigners. Hayes also announced he had retained a lawyer to challenge the university’s decision to freeze his research budget.

Pesticides such as atrazine present challenges for regulators. They provide huge benefits, including the ability to pump yields with limited ecological damage, which has cut production and food costs and led to more nutritious foods. But because of their potential toxicity when misused, prudent regulatory oversight is essential. That requires careful balancing. The government has to rely on the work of independent researchers. If ideology becomes more important than data than the public pays the consequences.

That returns us to the role of journalists, like Basken, in this fiasco. Why have journalists refused to provide a balanced perspective on pesticides and other chemicals? Simply stated, many reporters are poorly schooled in science. They often do not have the sophistication or inclination to apply weight of evidence criteria or critically parse science from ideology.

The EPA will soon be undertaking its regularly scheduled periodic review of atrazine, but Hayes data, long since discredited, will not be part of the process. Hayes has led the international regulatory community on a wild goose chase for more than a decade, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. In a world where public research funds are limited and dwindling, that borders on criminal.

More on science literacy at the Genetic Literacy Project

Follow Jon on Twitter

Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication and STATS (Statistical Assessment Service) at George Mason University.

===

===alism

at the University of Michigan in 1981-1982.

forbes ~ NYT?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2012/03/02/new-york-times-reversal-cornell-university-research-undermines-hysteria-contention-that-shale-gas-is-dirty/

Monsanto shill Entine strikes again...almost don't want to give this guy fb airtime but IRT stands by the courageous ones like ELLE and their journalist, Shetterly

ELLE bites back against biotech apologist Jon Entine's attack on the magazine's recent piece on GM.

NOTE: For more on Entine and his connection to biotech interests see our piece:

Manufactured scientific debate, third-party experts, and Jon Entine

http://gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2013/14800

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Let's Discuss (Again): The GMO Food Debate

ELLE, August 9 2013

http://www.elle.com/news/culture/gmo-food-debate

Because the issue of the safety of genetic modified food is such a deeply contentious one, when ELLE published Caitlin Shetterly’s story "Bad Seed," we expected that some might object that it unfairly maligned GMOs. And Jon Entine, the author of Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health, has done that in Slate.

In our piece, Shetterly recounts how she and her allergist came to believe that genetically altered corn was the probable cause of the debilitating, allergic illness that afflicted her, one marked by a profusion of a kind of white blood cells called eosinophils. Her point of view was clear, but at the same time she—and ELLE—were committed to airing both sides of the GMO debate.

Entine, however, ignored passages in the piece that didn’t fit his thesis that so-called “lifestyle magazines” like ELLE “credulously stoke conspiratorial fears” about GMOs. For example, Shetterly included the perspective of Amal Assa’ad, MD, a professor at the University of Cincinnati medical school, who dismisses Shetterly’s anxiety over GMO’s safety “as almost magical thinking.” The story continues: “What’s wrong with chemicals?” [Assa’ad] asked. “We’re so afraid of chemicals because they are man-made, right? A lot of chemicals have helped us—a lot of medications are chemicals.” If anything, GMO foods have been a boon to mankind, Assa’ad said. GMO seeds “produce better crops that have increased production, that are resistant to pesticides—crops that can feed the rest of the world.”

Entine also communicated with Shetterly’s sources, some of whom took issue with how their opinions were portrayed. After reviewing the work of Shetterly and ELLE’s fact-checker—who examined the transcripts of interviews with each source and/or confirmed their statements via email or by phone—we stand by our story.

Two of the people who complained when contacted by Entine are (or were) doctors affiliated with the University of Cincinnati medical school’s Center for Pediatric Eosinophilic Disorders. Allergist Karl von Tiehl, for example, told Slate that his “voice was used inappropriately to imply that there is a scientifically substantiated link between GMO foods and eosinophilic disorders in humans.”

But, in fact, Shetterly stated, precisely, that Von Tiehl did not know if such a link existed: Von Tiehl doesn’t know if GMO crops are the culprit, but he says, “you’re eating what somebody in some office has decided is good for you rather than what your grandma would have told you is good for you.”

In the course of reporting the piece, Shetterly spoke with a number of researchers and medical professionals who told her they couldn’t go on the record about their doubts about GMOs because they feared being sued by a biotech or agriculture company, or losing grant money provided by the private sector. Von Tiehl—who also told Entine that ELLE’s article wrongly suggested that he thinks “there is something scary or obviously wrong or concerning about GMO foods”—was one of those who worried about his legal exposure.

Here is an excerpt from the taped, transcribed interview between Shetterly and von Tiehl:

CS: Do you read labels and see all those hidden places where GMO corn is like xanthan gum, citric acid, ascorbic acid, natural flavorings? [GMO corn is used to make all those substances.] Would you not buy those things?

KVT: I can’t answer that question for legal reasons.

CS: Really?...

KVT: I can’t tell you how I have personally changed my diet.

CS: Because you’re afraid of being sued?

KVT: Because I’m afraid of being sued by big agribusiness.

As for Entine, he clearly believes that the science proves that GMOs are harmless, which is also the position of the FDA, which we acknowledge in our story. Based on the Slate piece and his body of work, we presume that Entine would take issue with any article that devotes sustained attention to questioning GMOs. And that’s his prerogative, of course.

I’d stop here, but Entine got a little ad-hominem—or should I say ad-feminen—in his rebuttal of our piece. Writing that, in the same issue in which Shetterly’s piece appeared, our editor in chief Robbie Myers “bragged” about women’s magazines’ commitment to serious journalism, Entine wrote, “If ELLE has the journalistic integrity that it claims for itself, Ms. Meyers [sic.] would withdraw the Shetterly piece and publish an article that sets the record straight.”

Since we’re setting the record straight, Entine also runs a consulting business called ESG MediaMetrics. “We manage and create reputations,” its website says. “We bring to every challenge our vast experience as active journalists, public relations and media specialists, international scholars, and advisers for Fortune 500 corporations.” In other words, he’s a hired gun who, it happens, counts Monsanto—one of the biggest producers of GMO seeds in the world—as a “select client.”

Or at least that’s what his website said until at least February of last year, when Mother Jones reporter Tom Philpott wrote a piece about Entine called “The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist.” Philpott directly asked Entine about the Monsanto connection. “Nine years ago,” Entine responded in an email, “I did a $2,000 research project for v-Fluence, a social media company formed by former Monsanto executives. That’s the entirety of my Monsanto relationship.”

Okay, but if they were really “former” Monsanto execs, perhaps Entine shouldn’t have “bragged” on his website that Monsanto was among his “select clients.” Or perhaps the most principled act with regard to Shetterly’s piece would have been for Entine to disclose his former connection to Monsanto when he attacked ELLE's journalistic integrity.

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Manufactured scientific debate, third-party experts, and Jon Entine

GMWatch is an independent non-profit making organisation founded in 1998. We seek to counter the enormous corporate political power and propaganda of the biotech industry.

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Manufactured scientific debate, third-party experts, and Jon Entine

on 20 June 2013.

Manufactured scientific debate, third-party experts, and Jon Entine===

OPINION 5/29/2013 @ 1:38PM 9,213 views

Anti-GMO Scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, Activist Jeffrey Smith Withdraw from Food Biotech Debate

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As the Genetic Literacy Project reports, over the weekend, the cartoonish ‘March Against Monsanto’ played out in many cities across the United States and the world, invariably to small crowds—although the organizers and anti-biotech NGOs did their best to claim inflated numbers in an attempt to garner headlines.

One of the biggest disappointments for organizers was in foodie central, Denver, where an estimated two hundred people (organizers had predicted 5,000) turned out to hear anti biotech author and activist Jeffrey Smith rail against Monsanto.

That’s the same Jeffrey Smith who earlier last week withdrew from the planned “Great Biotechnology” debate scheduled for June 4 at the CATO Institutein Washington, DC. The event was shaping up to be a genuine first—a civil discussion between pro-science advocates sympathetic to the role of biotechnology in food and farming and dedicated opponents who believe transgenic foods are a violation of nature and harmful to humans and animals.

Smith, if you’re not familiar with him, founded an organization known as the Institute for Responsible Technology. He’s written two anti-biotech self-published books and produced a documentary narrated by the wife of Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose show he has appeared on numerous times to rail against Monsanto and crop biotechnology.

Oz often characterizes Smith as a “scientist.” However his employment history reflects no formal training in any aspect of science, let alone biotechnology. Keith Kloor, who writes a respected blog for Discover, refers to him as a prototypical purveyor of pseudo-science. “He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information,” Kloor writes.

As Kloor notes, Smith’s Wikipedia bio seems a fair representation of his cult following and importance among anti-GM campaigners:

Jeffrey Smith, flying yogic instructor

A variety of American organic food companies see Smith “as a champion for their interests”, and Smith’s supporters describe him as “arguably the world’s foremost expert on the topic of genetically modified foods”. Michael Specter, writing in *The New Yorker*, reported that Smith was presented as a “scientist” on *The Dr. Oz Show* although he lacks any scientific experience or relevant qualifications. Bruce Chassy, a molecular biologist and food scientist, wrote to the show arguing that Smith’s “only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party.” The director of the Organic Consumers Association says Smith is “respected as a public educator on GMOs” while “supporters of biotechnology” have described him as “misinformed and misleading” and as “an activist with no scientific or medical background” who is known for his “near-hysterical criticism of biotech foods.”

Organizing opposites

When I was putting together this panel, I had originally sought out the Center for Food Safety and the Union of Concerned Scientists to participate, but they declined. In controversies, you don’t get to choose your opposition; the public does that for you. So I turned to Smith to represent the “other side.” For whatever reason, Smith has become wildly popular among the antis, and his books—however dubiously written and sourced—are cited as canon by rank and file protestors.

Despite his questionable reputation among serious scientists (he is often referred to in conversations with top geneticists as a ‘scam artist’) over the course of the months planning this event we talked many times. I found Smith to be engaging, witty, and in his own way very smart. I too wondered if he was a huckster, cashing in on his new celebrity; I can say, honestly, I found him nothing if not sincere. At every step along the process, he demonstrated integrity. I believe his understanding of science, risk and genetics are frighteningly thin, but I don’t believe the misinformation he is spouting is entirely calculated. I like him to this day, and hope at some point we can re-engage in a civil and open discussion.

Smith and I are communicators, although of two very different kinds. As we were planning the event, we agreed it would be best to bring scientists into the mix. He opted to recruit French professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of the University of Caen, whose paper released last fall claiming that rats fed Monsanto’s genetically modified corn developed multiple cancerous tumors turned him into a global celebrity among anti-biotech campaigners. The anomalous study wassavaged by mainstream scientists and rejected by every major independent research organization in the world that reviewed it. It was rife with methodological problems and obvious ideological biases. Nonetheless it has become a poster child for “GMOs will kill you” and Monsanto conspiracy theorists. Seralini, who agreed to join us via Skype, was the best the anti-biotech campaigners had to offer.

To counter Seralini, I originally recruited Anastasia Bodnar, a biotechnologist with a degree in sustainable agriculture who previously was a President’s Management Fellow and worked at the National Institutes of Health. Most notably she is co-director of the non-profit Biology Fortified a site popular among young sustainability focused scientists, geneticists and food experts.

However, because of a work conflict, she had to pull out. On short notice, I recruited a more than capable replacement in Kevin Folta, Interim Chair of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. He’s published two seminal texts on genomics and dozens of articles, and actively engages biotech issues in public. Like Bodnar, he is one of an emerging group of post-ideological scientists who understand the constructive potential of biotechnology.

Smith pulls out; Seralini follows

The debate began to unravel just two weeks before the scheduled event. Smith objected to the unexpected substitution of Folta, who is an active online presence, engaging and debating campaigners and carefully laying out counter, science-based arguments. Smith immediately balked at the substitution. According to Smith, Folta had “crossed the line” in some criticisms of him, although he didn’t provide any examples. His nerves clearly jangled, Smith ultimately decided he was not comfortable with Folta, and said he would not debate. He then said he had too many commitments, and could not prepare for the event even if he had wanted to. He then promptly flew off to Denver to address a relative handful of fellow anti-Monsanto conspiracy theory protesters missing out on the opportunity to talk with tens of thousands of people through this Internet streamed debate.

Seralini’s withdraw was equally messy. After Smith’s decision, he suddenly decided that my previously published criticisms of his studies were “libelous” and that he would never be involved in a debate with me. In fact, I had posted a number of articles inForbesabout the Seralini Affair seven months ago; he was well aware of those, as he had reference them in communications in the weeks prior to his pullout.

Why the sudden turnaround? Seralini sent a torrent of bizarre notes, saying he would not debate Folta because he was not a toxicologist and only a toxicologist would fairly review his work. Folta, of course, is a prominent plant geneticist who reviews and edits scholarly work across disciplines. The Great Debate was never going to focus entirely on Seralini’s controversial study; it was about the future of food and the farm. But the hubristic French scientist apparently had been expecting to turn the debate into the Eric Seralini Show; when he finally realized he’d have to debate science—and the broad issues of biotechnology and world food security—he panicked and withdrew.

It’s only a guess, but I believe Folta scared the bejeebers out of him. Folta is a dogged defender of science, with a nuanced understanding of the benefits and the challenges that accompany this powerful but complicated technology. He’s not afraid to go on the web or into public hornet’s nests to make the case for science.

Folta and I, with CATO’s support, are committed to going on with the public event. We will present both sides of the issue—in fact we will go out of our way, for the sake of a vigorous public discussion, to “make the case against biotech crops.” This is a debate worth having. We may yet also add a third presentert. Stay tuned for updates Please do check out the event on Tuesday, June 4, 2:00-4:00 pm Eastern Time. It will be streamed live on CATO’s site as well as on the Genetic Literacy Project.

More on genetics and science literacy**at the Genetic Literacy Project**

**Follow Jon on Twitter**

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GMWatch comment, 20 June 2013

To protect profits threatened by a lawsuit over its controversial herbicide atrazine, the GM seed and chemical company Syngenta launched an aggressive multi-million dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel, looking into the personal life of a judge and commissioning a psychological profile of a leading scientist critical of atrazine. The Switzerland-based pesticide manufacturer also routinely paid “third-party allies” to appear to be independent supporters, and kept a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company. At the same time, the company provided strict parameters for what these experts would say.

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/2013/atrazine

Atrazine is a highly toxic pesticide that easily contaminates groundwater and is a reproductive toxin, causing frogs to develop both male and female sexual characteristics. It's banned in the EU, though still used in the United States.

Syngenta's "Supportive Third Party Stakeholders Database" of people the company believed it could call upon to promote atrazine, has been published on the Internet by investigative reporter Clare Howard.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/716045-100reporters-syngenta-clare-howard-investigation.html

The organisations and individuals listed will be familiar to followers of the GM debate. They include:

*CS Prakash, who appears twice, once with AgBioWorld and once with Tuskegee University

*Environmentalist-turned-corporate-spokesperson Patrick Moore

*Vivian Moses of CropGen

*GM promoter for the US government, Nina Fedoroff

*Roger Beachy, founding president of the Monsanto-sponsored Danforth Plant Science Centre, where environmentalist-turned-GM-promoter Mark Lynas was recently an invited speaker

*David Gibo of the University of Toronto, listed in the database as a "monarch specialist". Gibo was an "expert" of choice who was quoted to criticise and neutralise the Losey study, which showed that Bt crop pollen was lethal to monarch butterflies: http://www.gene.ch/genet/1999/May/msg00083.html

Syngenta also believes it has "supportive third party stakeholders" in:

*The two main US regulatory agencies: the US Food and Drug Administration (Monica Revelle); and the USDA (four experts).

*Learned scientific societies, including the American Dietetic Association, the Society of Toxicology, and the Society for In Vitro Biology.

*The American Soybean Association, which lobbies for GM crops.

*Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy

*Center for Science in the Public Interest

*"Quack"-hunting and anti-environmental regulation organisations Quack Watch, the National Council Against Health Fraud, and Michael Fumento's Myth Busters.

*The public research institute CSIRO.

The Jon Entine connection

Also among Syngenta's third party supporters is the president of the Cato Institute. This was the institution that recently planned to host a "debate" on GMOs. Speakers against GM were planned to be Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini, whose study found that GM maize and Roundup at very low doses caused organ damage, tumours and premature death in rats over the long term, and author/broadcaster Jeffrey Smith.

Seralini and Smith were to be pitched against Jon Entine -- a fellow of the pro-corporate think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and critic of the precautionary principle, who would share the platform with a second pro-GM speaker.

Seralini and Smith withdrew from the debate, leading to much gloating from Entine.

http://onforb.es/16hamxt

However, in spite of Entine's claim to want to "present both sides of the issue" (http://onforb.es/16hamxt) in the debate, his history suggests that the last thing he is interested in is a balanced discussion.

Entine was a vociferous critic of Seralini's GMO and Roundup study. He published several attack pieces on Seralini -- probably more than any single author.

http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/science/item/164-smelling-a-corporate-rat

These articles are dishonest in the extreme. For example, Entine described Seralini's findings as "anomalous" even though Seralini's was the only long-term toxicity study ever carried out on this particular GM maize and the herbicide it is grown with. It's hard not to produce "anomalous" findings if there is only one experiment!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2013/05/29/anti-gmo-scientist-gilles-eric-seralini-activist-jeffrey-smith-withdraw-from-food-biotech-debate/

Entine has reportedly also been working to discredit Seralini on Wikipedia. We were alerted by Wikipedia users to the fact that Entine was one of the early editors on a one-sided and originally potentially libellous Wikipedia article called "The Seralini affair", which denigrated Seralini's study and Seralini himself.

Entine, under the Wiki user name "runjonrun", was active in vandalising the article by rapidly deleting balancing information, for example, about the scientific support for Seralini's study and the conflicts of interest among critics of the study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=S%C3%A9ralini_affair&offset=&limit=500&action=history

In a previous Wiki spat, "runjonrun" had revealed his true identity as Jon Entine after upsetting other Wiki users by allegedly contravening Wiki conflict of interest guidelines and vandalising articles without justification:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Runjonrun

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NGOWatch&diff=292041817&oldid=251632062

Entine's defence of the toxic products of corporations didn't begin with GMOs, however. Documents revealed in the atrazine lawsuit revealed that Entine was one of the "third party outreach" people that Syngenta's PR contractor, the White House Writers Group, was in communication with over a pesticides conference that the AEI hosted.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/c/c2/Syn_email_WHWG_Roundup_memo.pdf

Entine authored a book which was published and promoted by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), one of the organisations on Syngenta's list of supportive third party stakeholders. Entine's book, called 'Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health', defended industrial and agricultural chemical use. The book included two case studies, one of them on atrazine. Syngenta has funded the ACSH.

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine

Entine has also worked with Jay Byrne's PR firm v-Fluence, which was set up by former Monsanto executives.

http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/science/item/164-smelling-a-corporate-rat

Clearly what passes for scientific debate is often nothing of the sort. It's corporate interests trying to defend their toxic products against the findings of honest scientists.

GMWATCH.ORG|BY CLAIRE

Entine, J

Fossil Fuel and Pesticide Industry Parallels

Countering the Disinformation Playbook

Genetic Literacy Project (GLP)

Stance on Climate Change

Funding

Actions

Jon Entine

Introduction

Biography

Cover-up, intimidation and 'paid-for research'

Entine's ties to Syngenta, involvement with ACSH and defense of atrazine

Entine connections and funding organizations

Entine as journalist hit-man

Entine's legal issues

Entine refuted

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Contents

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Articles

AEI Conferences Involving Jon

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The Body Shop File: Beyond "Shattered Image"

Jon's Articles

Commentaries on The Body Shop and Jon's Reporting

Roddick's Body Shop: An Empire Built on a Ruse?

I. Jon Entine – Introduction

II. Biography

III. Cover-up, intimidation and ‘paid-for research’

IV. Entine’s ties to Syngenta, involvement with ACSH and defense of atrazine

V. Entine connections and funding organizations

VI. Entine as journalist hit-man

VII. Entine’s legal issues

VIII. Entine refuted

Frog Day Afternoon: Choose Science Over Politics to Conserve the Endangered Amphibian Population

115,103 views

Bee Deaths Reversal: As Evidence Points Away From Neonics As Driver, Pressure Builds To Rethink Ban

If the Environmental Protection Agency moves to restrict neonicotinoid pesticides because of fears that they are causing bee deaths, it will happen in spite of the mounting evidence rather than because of it.

[UPDATE NOTE: This story was revised on 8 February to reflect release of new data on neonics and bee health presented at a New Orleans entomology conference.]

OPINION 5/28/2014 @ 12:39PM 4,610 views

'No Such Thing As GMO Contamination' Rules Australian Court in Landmark Decision, Rebuffing Organic Activists

Over-Regulation Fever At The White House

The Making of an Agribusiness Apologist

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Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

References

Searching for a Defender of Atrazine on HuffPo

Also Needed: An Investigative Reporter to Rattle the EPA's Cages

Biography

Television Journalism

Awards

The Body Shop Controversy

Genetics

Think Tank Affiliations

Books

References

External links

Socially responsible business brawl.('Business Ethics' magazine criticizes cosmetic maker Body Shop)

Manufactured scientific debate, third-party experts, and Jon Entine

OPINION 5/29/2013 @ 1:38PM 9,213 views

Anti-GMO Scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, Activist Jeffrey Smith Withdraw from Food Biotech Debate

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