“First, do no harm”: The role of medical professionals in corporate wind energy-sponsored torture (forthcoming)
Dec 14, 2012
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For the sake of the redemptive promises of Green Energy, we self-righteously torture and torment people even as we pretend it’s not happening. As the epidemic of systematic torture unfolds, physicians turn a blind eye and deaf ear to people’s pleas for medical intervention—medical common sense—to stop it. Physicians who speak out are vilified, threatened with harm, and defamed, while their medical colleagues by the thousands stand silently by—uninvolved, indifferent, frightened.
This disturbing yet brilliant image is borrowed, with appreciation,
from the website, fenbeagleblog.
Consider the following testimony from the Michaud family, Ontario, Canada
September 4, 2011 Six years ago we moved our family from the city, thought maybe it would be nice to live closer to nature, maybe grow our own fresh food, live off the land. It was beautiful, the night sky, the wildlife. We worked hard, built a home and a hobby farm. Then one day we found a letter in the mailbox that read “Occupant.” It was a notice about the Wind farm proposal. Little did we know it was the last of many planning meetings discussing this event. We attended but realized that these things were coming no matter what we had to say!
Two years later here we are. All four members of our family are each experiencing devastating adverse effects! Illnesses that do harm our lifestyle, effects that take away our enjoyment of life, and interfere with our work, effects that are impacting how we live day to day and how we interact with others around us. Our peaceful country home is no more!
We did not know anything about this wind syndrome until we all started getting sick and only now have I been becoming educated in this phenomenon. In reading all the controversy on this subject sickens me, how can a doctor whose oath is “do no harm” stand there and say there is no harm here? I do not understand anyone can bush off someone’s suffering so easily!
We did not ask to have these Wind Turbines placed in our back yard, nor did we ask for the illnesses you call an “Annoyance”. I believe that the symptoms that my family and I have been living with the past 5 months are real and in fact life threatening, not only to ourselves but to others. If one of us suffers a bout of Vertigo while operating a motor vehicle, that results in an accident, then it becomes pretty damn adverse, especially if we injure or kill someone! If we go to our place of employment after too many sleepless nights, and make a mistake or get injured, that may result in our job loss or again loss of life—that seems pretty adverse as well! It is a sad state we live in when we cannot trust those hired and elected to protect the little people!
Sick of being sick on the Dew Drop we call home!”
September 14, 2011 Thank you for sticking by us … we really need to raise public awareness … we were all so affected the day they filmed that piece … with the nausea and vertigo … the past two weeks our heath has declined to a constant state of unbalanced fatigue, vertigo, nausea, disorientation, unusual stomach cramps … medicated by SERC my daughter is so tired and feels unwell but still works up 6 days a week, she’s a real trooper… my husband and son have had to leave work early a number of times in the last two weeks … my son is so upset that his health has declined so much and he has no balance, it has affected his work ability and his musical talent is suffering … his greatest fear is that his hearing will be affected and he will no longer be able to play or write music … it might take 6 months for him to see an audiologist and vertigo specialist.
I never thought I would hear from either of them that they are considering moving if they don’t start feeling better soon … they both have worked so hard here and love this place so much. It’s just no fair to be run off our home & land … Canada is better than this, or so I thought.
Oh, and today I got a nose bleed … I hope I don’t get more.
Oh, and I think one of my goats had a false pregnancy … she looked pregnant and acted so then, nothing, no baby … It’s so weird.
We hope to remain strong, but I can see now why some people leave their homes and hopes and dreams behind them, and why some turn to suicide … it eats at your soul!
P.S. The wind is so strong today and the turbine behind me has been so loud, I called the MOE [Ministry of the Environment] twice in 12 hours … I have been sitting in my beautiful sunroom for about 20 minutes and I feel like throwing up … this was my favorite room in the house… my happy place but it is slowly becoming a storage area, that I have to retreat from that retreat too!”
June 27, 2012 We are unsure what to do … I have spoken to people who are in [the] direct path of these monsters … they are suffering but wish to remain out of the battle … for various reasons … part of me gets it, but part of me doesn’t … we know we need to continue to take a stand, but at the same time, unless there is a show in numbers, then is it really worth the violence that could ensue? But then, again, this area is soon to be overwhelmed with the numbers of turbines coming … it’s sickening and maddening and disheartening … what can we do?
I’m sure there will be another ERT set up for this area, but will anything come of it? So many around here are beaten down and losing hope, and that’s exactly what the MOE, the Government and the Wind Industry are waiting for! I have heard that “the head-hunters” have been out in force in our area, attempting to sign up more leaseholders … soon there will be nowhere for any of us to live!
THIS IS SO WRONG!!! WE ARE ALL BEING ABUSED IN OUR OWN HOMES … HOW LONG ARE WE GOING TO BE EXPECTED TO JUST SIT HERE AND TAKE IT? I WONDER IF THE MAYOR WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE? I THINK WE SHOULD GET TOGETHER AND LAY A LAWSUIT ON HIS DOORSTEP!
The following is from the New England Journal of Medicine review of “The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation,” ed. George J. Annas & Michael A Grodin (NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992). We feel it has relevance for the Michaud’s testimony, above.
In August 1947, 15 Nazi physicians were convicted by one of the Nuremberg tribunals of immersing concentration-camp inmates in freezing solutions, exploding them in low-pressure chambers, infecting them with typhus, forcing them to drink sea water, and killing them in order to study their defleshed skeletons, all in the name of science. In deciding the case, the tribunal enunciated a set of ethical principles for experimentation with human subjects that came to be known as the Nuremberg Code.
The first and central principle of the code states, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.” But Jay Katz, perhaps the most insightful contributor to this unusual collection of essays and documentation on the code, points out that the tribunal erroneously assumed that the principle of voluntary consent had been firmly embodied in medical ethics up to that time (which it had not) and that it was the gravamen of the doctors’ offenses. On the contrary, as is excruciatingly evident from the detailed accounts of the “experiments,” the doctors committed these crimes against humanity because they were able to deny the humanity of their subjects and even, at some level, must have been satisfying bizarrely sadistic impulses.
Another essayist, Leonard Glantz, observes: “These matters [informed consent] were of no concern to the Nazi doctors. From their perspective [it] was more akin to animal research . . . [although it] would violate current animal research regulations.” Consent was not even an issue.
Other contributors suggest the inadequacy of the Nuremberg Code’s provisions to address issues such as those in the Nancy Cruzan case and those in the controversy over the use of fetal tissue for research. Indeed, the code is not helpful in drawing distinctions between clinical research and therapy. What seems to me too sharp a focus in the book on the informed-consent principle results in an inadequate treatment of the recent court case on the propriety of a Food and Drug Administration waiver of the informed-consent requirement for use of an investigational new drug; in that case the drugs covered by the waiver might have been needed to protect troops in combat against the effects of Iraqi-dispensed poison gas.
Yet an examination of the post-Nuremberg record by still other contributors suggests that the informed-consent issue is still alive. The medico-legal community in the United States has not been without sin. Examples cited include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, continued until 1972; experiments conducted at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in which live cancer cells were injected into chronically ill and debilitated patients in 1963; the administration by the Central Intelligence Agency of mind-altering drugs to unwitting subjects beginning in 1953; and the Supreme Court-sanctioned exposure by the Army of a serviceman to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) while telling him he was testing the effectiveness of protective clothing against chemical warfare.
The book is rich in data both on the Nazi doctors’ trial and on the subsequent history of the informed-consent doctrine in clinical research. It contains the full documentation on the Nuremberg tribunal, including the impressive opening statement of Brigadier General Telford Taylor, chief counsel for the prosecution; the 1931 Reich Circular on human experimentation (as well as the 1933 law against cruelty to animals); and the text of the World Medical Association declarations on clinical research adopted in 1964, 1975, 1983, and 1989 (Helsinki I, II, III, and IV). It also contains full documentation on the FDA waiver of informed consent in the Gulf War situation described above.
For anyone interested in the problems of clinical research on human subjects, this compendium should be a valuable reference work and a source of insights as well as relevant facts. Because it addresses a complex problem from the perspective of what may be the most extreme cases imaginable, it casts deep shadows, even while illuminating parts of its subject. But at the same time it serves to remind the reader of the temptations to which even the most scrupulous physicians, operating on the frontiers of clinical research, are exposed.
Question: Do the physicians in Ontario and Nova Scotia, Canada, and in Massachusetts and Maine, USA, and public health specialists in Australia who openly deny Wind Turbine Syndrome—who in some instances go out of their way to publicly ridicule and persecute physicians like Drs. Pierpont, Laurie, and Harry—do these people, through their denial and outright ridicule of WTS and the physicians documenting it, qualify as enablers of what Dr. Pierpont has pointedly and disturbingly called the “natural experiment” of Wind Turbine Syndrome?
The following is quoted from Pierpont’s book, “Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment” (2009), pp. 5-6. Bear in mind as you read it that this “natural experiment” is no longer a mystery; Wind Turbine Syndrome has been unequivocally proven in clinical case crossover studies like Pierpont’s. Voluminous testimony from around the world by victims like the Michauds, above, amply documents what is going on.
Wind energy’s “natural experiment” might have been, at one time, inadvertent and thus excusable; now, it can no longer claim to be either of these. Now, its dirty little secret has been “outed,” exposed, as outrageously immoral and medically unethical, and it is medical doctors who should be loudest and most vehement in demanding that this torture be stopped—now. (See also here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.) To quote Pierpont: “Natural experiments . . . have an important role in clarifying the impacts of potentially toxic, man-made exposures.” The “natural experiment” known as Wind Turbine Syndrome has been demonstrated, ad nauseum, to be a toxic, man-made exposure.
“Doctors, why the hell are you not enraged that this toxic, man-made exposure continues, unabated?”
Which brings us to what is known in science as a “natural experiment”: a circumstance wherein subjects are exposed to experimental conditions both inadvertently and ecologically (within their own homes and environments). Obviously, it would be unethical to expose people deliberately to potentially harmful interventions. Hence natural experiments, while less controlled, have an important role in clarifying the impacts of potentially toxic, man-made exposures.
The ecological dimension in the phrase natural experiment is worth emphasizing, since many elements of an exposure may not be reproducible in a laboratory, such as round-the-clock exposure, exposure over months, or impacts on customary activities. For symptoms related to wind turbine sound there are also technical difficulties in reproducing in a laboratory the types of sound, air pressure variation, and vibration that my subjects’ observations suggest are involved. Failure to provoke the same symptoms in a laboratory setting may tell us more about the limitations of the laboratory situation than about real-world effects.
Comment by Marsh Rosenthal on 12/14/2012 at 11:53 pm
If I spoke my heart, you would surely think me deranged, mad, in need of psychiatric care. But, I know that’s not an issue with me. I’m calm, but I am damned angry.
“Michaud family, you have the right to enjoy the beauty and the use of your property.” I listened to Carmen Krogh at the Falmouth Human Rights Conference cite the United Nations charter that says so. Where is the United Nations now, when the Michauds, and many like them are being reduced to zombies by the monstrous machines? In the US we have a Surgeon General. Where is she now? Is she so buried in the Presidents pocket that she can’t see what his Renewable Energy initiative is actually doing to his people? I’m sure there must be a Canadian equivalent to the US Surgeon General. These people are the Chief Physicians of our nations. What the fuck is wrong with them? Who’s crazy here?
You know, this scenario looks like one borrowed from H.G. Wells. Instead of relentless gigantic “walkers” spewing death and destruction, we are faced with gigantic senseless pinwheels that roust the unsuspecting residents right out of their dream homes, kill some of them before they know what hit them, and more slowly destroy the health and quality of life of those that chose to hunker down in their now toxic homes.
I think the rubber band is about to snap back into the smart alecks’ faces who have cooked up this debacle, and it won’t be pretty. This is a bar fight that has been just waiting to break out. The pot is about to boil over.
Comment by NIABY on 12/15/2012 at 12:33 am
I’m afraid you’re right, Mr. Rosenthal. We’ve long been hoping that those who are responsible for these terrible crimes will be held to account.
People who promote dangerous policies are “dangerous people”. They are becoming increasingly desperate.
Comment by Dr Sarah Laurie on 12/15/2012 at 2:03 am
Dear Calvin,
Your reference to the Nuremberg Code is very apt. In this ongoing human experiment, where no government driving this installation of this industrial machinery causing predictable, direct and measurable harm to the health of the immediate surrounding population, is collecting the acoustic or clinical data related to this “experiment”, there are multiple provisions of the Nuremberg Code which are being broken, first and foremost that of informed consent.
Below is what I wrote in a subsequent submission to the recent Australian Federal Senate Inquiry into Excessive Noise from Wind Turbines Bill, which the Senators on the committee and the secretariat declined to make publicly available (the Labor and Green senators had a majority on this committee, and invoked the “nocebo” effect, to explain the pathology being reported).
Finally, perhaps it is timely to reflect on what is essentially a “natural experiment” being conducted on the human guinea pigs who live in the vicinity of industrial wind turbines. Currently the pleas for help from the sick and vulnerable residents are being ignored, almost universally, the world over by the governments who are imposing this technology, by way of legislation which enables the placement of wind turbines in locations where it is inevitable they will harm human health. As I referred to my in “list of symptoms” document, some of the pathology being reported by these residents and their treating doctors is life-threatening.
The human guinea pigs in this “natural experiment” have not given voluntary consent, relevant animal and human experiment results are being ignored, considerable physical and mental suffering is being reported and universally ignored by governments around the world, there is certainly a risk of death from cardiac disease, and suicide due to the severity of the mental health problems, the human subjects are not at liberty to bring the experiment to an end, and the wind industry and responsible authorities and elected representatives in the fields of health, noise regulation and planning show no signs of acting responsibly.
The international wind industry, and the acoustic consultants who work for it, have played an integral role in denying the existence and severity of the serious health problems. This behaviour has allowed this global industry to continue operating without an adequate precautionary approach being adopted by governments, to protect their citizens.”
However, acoustic and legal “enablers” are not the only professionals who are culpable.
The medical and public health non medical Professor “enablers” in the ranks of the public health government and academic departments have also perpetuated the serious harm being done to people in a variety of ways. They have ignored the pleas for help and personal accounts of harm from sick residents such as the Michaud family, they have publicly and continually ridiculed sick people, they have consistently refused to do what Dr Michael Nissenbaum has referred to as the “boots on the ground research” by conducting Health Impact Assessments as they are required to do under the provisions of various Health Acts, and they have openly blamed the clinical whistleblowers for the “nocebo effect”.
In effect, this is claiming that those currently practising and retired physicians such as Drs Harry, Iser, Pierpont, Hanning, McMurtry, Nissenbaum, Johansson, Spring, Mitric Andjic, and myself who are publicising the existence of problems, and calling for research and greater precautionary buffer distances, are themselves causing the symptoms these residents are reporting, sometimes many years BEFORE we clinical whistleblowers were even aware of the problems.
This denial of the facts is an outrageous abuse of their taxpayer funded positions of responsibility to “first, do no harm”. Failure to act, and to properly investigate, is directly causing immense harm.
Comment by Marsh Rosenthal on 12/15/2012 at 12:38 pm
First, a word of thanks to you Calvin and Doctors Nina and Sarah, and to all those with the courage to stand up. Without your dedication to humanity, I would be lost in a morass of anger and ineptitude. God knows where I would seek recompense for the sadistic evils that are now being perpetrated by the greed driven establishment and all their toadies.
The words that have been written above MUST sound out into every corner and reach of this world, every place that people call “home,” because EVERY ONE OF THEM IS COMPLICIT IN THIS NIGHTMARE.
The implications of this are dire. If allowed to go on unchecked, no place on this Earth can be assumed to be exempt from the exquisite scheme of the extermination of surplus, inconvenient human life.
AS LONG AS IT REMAINS FASHIONABLE TO TURN ONE’S BACK ON SOMEONE’S PAIN AND SUFFERING, NO ONE IS TRULY SAFE!
All the covenants and codes of ethics are now so much confetti, swept into piles by the street sweepers, to be burnt up, the ashes to be added to the garbage dump of prior failed civilizations.
Or, will we be the survivors who will resurrect human life from this obscenity?
Comment by Kaz on 12/16/2012 at 2:49 am
So, how do we put a stop to this? Are we powerless?
No. Absolutely not!
But what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Oh, I don’t mean we are ineffective. Slowly but surely we are making small inroads as we speak out and try to educate. But those who are suffering NOW need relief NOW! Not next month, not next summer, not next year. NOW! And those whose homes and lives are soon to be impacted can’t afford to wait through another election cycle, another referendum, another town meeting—hoping against hope that THIS TIME there will be meaningful changes made to protect health, home and quality of life. It won’t happen. Not soon enough. The human rights issue is still being swept under the carpet—because that is the ONE THING they cannot prevail against. They know that is their Achilles Heel. Once they are forced to acknowledge the health impacts of industrial wind—they’ll be dead in the water. So they continue to deny, deny, deny—knowing that they still have time to reap billions, due to the inevitable sluggishness of the ‘process’ and because in their conceit they know that they have intimidated many potential adversaries into complicity, instead. And we are allowing that; because we’re good people who want to believe in the inherent decency of our fellow man, and because we want to work ‘within the system’.
Well, the system was not designed for truth or justice or fairness. It wasn’t designed for the ‘little people’, but for those who care for nothing but lining their pockets. They’ve successfully brainwashed well-meaning citizens who care about the health of the planet and they’ve whipped them into a frenzy with their false mantras. Now they’re using them and the politicians they’ve corrupted and/or brainwashed into marginalizing those of us who speak out. We mustn’t allow them to disregard the truth or those who speak it.
What we’re doing isn’t enough. We’ve talked until we’re blue in the face—but it’s not enough. With our good intentions, have we not become co-conspirators with the wind industry?
Surely, there are some among our ranks who have contacts among people who are powerful? People who will be listened to when they stand up and speak out? Where are the heroes? They can be found when there is a flood, a famine, a hurricane, tornado, blizzard, fire, genocide, civil war, racial or gender bias. They’ll speak up for homeless dogs and cats, threatened spotted owls and polar bears. They’ll raise money for cancer, for farmers, for AIDS.
Where are they now? Is this an issue so big– are the players so fearsome– that no one is brave enough to stand face to face with them, for fear of losing their own power and money and influence? I don’t believe that. I can’t—for if it’s true, we’re doomed.
No, I have to believe we’ve somehow failed to educate those who could make a real difference. Those who can take this story to the worldwide media. Those who will be listened to and respected, rather than trivialized. The wind industry is full of criminals who are knowingly harming people and IT IS BEING ALLOWED. It must NOT be allowed.
God Almighty– I’m so frustrated because I don’t know the answer. Or– if I know it– I don’t have the ability or resources or know-how to get it done.
I vacillate between despair and fury. Despair because I know this industry will march across our lands no matter what I do and I worry that I’m just wasting my time…squandering time I should be spending with my family or devoting to my writing career or my little homestead. Fury because I FIX THINGS, dammit! I help people. I can’t sit back and do nothing because I’m not wired that way. But I’ve never felt so frustrated or impotent in my life. If you knew my history, you would understand the gravity of that statement.
Okay… I’ve vented. BP must have improved a little. Maybe now I won’t “pop a grommet”, as we say in these parts. Which reminds me… I think we’ve another health impact to lay at the wind industry’s door. I know for a fact that people’s health and quality of life are suffering from ‘wind’ long before the turbines are built. Over and over again I’ve witnessed good people laid low by this gargantuan battle. I have friends who have divorced because of the stress or because one partner has become so immersed in trying to ‘fix’ things. I know people who’ve lost businesses and friends. Spent more money than they could afford. Lost sleep…lost hope. I’ve seen folks burn out, give up, break down and lose control, have heart attacks… you name it. War is harmful to people’s health– whether they ever receive direct fire, or not. The wind industry has a lot to answer for.
Good night from the 45th N Lat. And thanks for being there and being strong for others. We need folks like you. All of you. :o)
Kaz
Comment by sue Hobart on 12/16/2012 at 7:43 am
How much more can we preach to the Choir?
We need a rich, powerful, and noisy Hollywood-style champion to sing this issue through the world…
Unfortunately, so far, no takers.
But, then, they don’t have to live here…
Till then, unfortunately, each victim needs to save themselves … And file lawsuits ….
Editor’s note: Erin Brockovich, maybe?
Comment by Melodie Burkett on 12/16/2012 at 8:57 am
Erin Brockovich
Dear All,
You may have heard that the two gas plants to be built in Ontario were stopped because the affluent homes nearby raised enough cash to hire none other than the real live, Erin Brockovich. The gas plants were stopped, our Liberal party admitted that they stopped these plants for political reasons to save Liberal seats and we the tax payer are left with the staggering bill as construction carried on for a long while.
This whole scenario caused our Minister of Energy to be charged with contempt for not disclosing the paper trail and this caused our Premier to retire, hide, quit, run away, step down and prorogue the Legislature!
Now, as we speak, wind turbine applications are being rushed through, fast-tracked and rubber-stamped for approval with no opposition in the legislature! Until an election this January! Surely this shows us how deep this conspiracy and/or coverup goes!
May I suggest that we all chip in and hire Erin Brockovich once more, only this time for the world stage? Surely, other famous icons will join in.
In any other situation where our land and way of life was being threatened and being taken, we would respond with all-out war, as we would feel that the enemy had broken the rules of engagement. Surely, bringing a personality as effective as Erin Brockovich on board could/would be a better alternative.
She would educate the world that plastering the planet with industrial wind turbines will not reduce emissions but rather increase those emissions by their very nature. Stop the madness. We must stop allowing unqualified politicians to make unqualified decisions that have such serious and long-term effects on the populace. We can no longer allow big business and corporations to influence lobby groups. Lobby groups should not be allowed to “embed” with politicians. Blah blah blah. As the brave men on board that plane on 9/11 said: “Let’s roll!”