http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=507
Press Release from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(PEER)
April 8, 2005
Contact: Chas Offutt (202) 265-7337
EPA GRUDGINGLY PULLS PLUG ON QUESTIONABLE
“CHEERS” STUDY
Other Human Pesticide Dosing Studies Without
Safeguards Can Continue
Washington, DC — In a defensively worded statement, Stephen
Johnson, Acting Administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency announced the end of the CHEERS study in which parents
were paid to spray pesticides in the rooms occupied by their infant
children under age 3. Johnson did not admit any ethical problems
with the study but concluded without explanation
that the study could not “go forward…in an atmosphere
absent of gross misrepresentation and controversy.” U.S.
Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) had previously
announced that they would hold Johnson’s confirmation as
EPA Administrator unless he cancelled CHEERS.
While CHEERS (which stands for Children’s
Environmental Exposure Research Study) will no go forward with
EPA funding, the exact same study can proceed with private sponsors,
according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(PEER). In fact, the American Chemistry Council, which represents
135 companies including pesticide manufacturers, had already pledged
$2 million toward the study’s $9 million overall cost.
In February, EPA published a draft policy
that opens the door for accepting any experiments conducted by
pesticide companies and chemical manufacturers using human subjects
without establishing safeguards to ensure that the studies are
conducted ethically and without harm to the subjects. Under this
policy, EPA indefinitely delays ethical rules and, instead, relies
on its political appointees to flag immoral or unsafe practices
on a “case-by-case” basis.
“The reason Stephen Johnson clung so stubbornly to this
creepy CHEERS effort is that it served as the beacon to industry
that EPA would welcome similar experiments,” stated PEER
Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the pesticide industry
wants to use human testing to trump animal studies so as to justify
relaxed exposure limits. “Stephen Johnson has become the
pesticide industry’s ‘go-to-guy’ at EPA.”
Under the overall human dosing policy advocated by Johnson, EPA
will have no protections for –
• Infants, neonates, pregnant women, and prisoners. By
contrast, all medical and drug testing overseen by the Department
of Health and Human Services has such safeguards; and
• Ensuring that companies have obtained informed consent
or have not paid undue inducements.
As evidenced by the CHEERS fiasco, EPA lacks any independent
safety or ethical review mechanism. In January, after the study
had drawn controversy, EPA published a special Federal Register
notice looking for experts in “ethical standards of research
protocols and bioethics” because the agency lacked expertise
in those areas.
To mask its lack of standards, during
his confirmation hearing, Johnson claimed that the Centers for
Disease Control had approved CHEERS. But, according to a January
18, 2005 letter from EPA to Representative Bart Gordon (D-TN),
CDC had not reviewed it.
.
“EPA should adopt the basic safeguards required by common
decency before they start using human dosing experiments,”
Ruch added. “Canceling CHEERS does not end the argument
about the need for ethical standards in human testing; it merely
opens another round in that debate.”
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Read
the statement from Acting EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson
Find
out about EPA’s open door policy on human dosing experiments
For
more information about CHEERS and human testing