FLASHBACK: Government 'health' agencies pumped lead into Washington D.C. residents' drinking water and covered it up for three years

Thursday, May 26, 2016 by: Julie Wilson staff writer
Tags: lead poisoning, water supply, Washington DC

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(NaturalNews) If you thought the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency appeared seasoned in its efforts to obscure the lead poisoning that maimed thousands in Flint, Michigan, including scores of innocent children, you would be correct, as it wasn't the first the time the so-called "health" agency engaged in such a travesty.

Former EPA scientist David L. Lewis, PhD, understands this type of misconduct all too well; in fact, he coined his own term for it: "Institutional Scientific Misconduct," a practice "in which science has little to do with the seeking of truth and serving the public good, but rather, is conscripted to perpetuate the power/policies of institutions via conjuring pseudo-scientific illusions."

Dr. Lewis is a highly respected microbiologist turned whistleblower, who exposes scientific fraud within the highest echelons of the U.S. government, including his former employer, the EPA.

In his book Science for Sale, Lewis chronicles numerous instances in which government agencies, corporations and academic institutions pushed fraudulent "science" to support government and industry policies.

Institutional scientific misconduct

Not only is fraudulent science promoted as fact, but credible science is routinely suppressed. In addition, there is the "ethical misconduct against honest scientists who document the adverse effects of government policies and industry practices on public health and the environment," Lewis explains.

The following excerpt is from the book's foreword, written by Marc A. Edwards PhD.

Institutional scientific misconduct has gone largely unappreciated and unreported because its practitioners are often the very agencies we have empowered to police scientific integrity in one way or another.

And, at least superficially, they appear to lack a direct profit motive that would explain or cause scrutiny of their unethical actions. Many still mistakenly believe that such motives are a necessary inducement to incentivize scientific misconduct.

In my opinion, the abuses and dangers of institutional scientific misconduct far exceed those arising from misconduct in industrial science, as society has developed certain checks and balances to control industrial science abuses while still preserving its undeniable benefits to society.

The Washington D.C. lead in drinking water crisis

I personally witnessed institutional scientific misconduct during an event known in the press as "The Washington D.C. Lead in Drinking Water Crisis," during which government agencies first inadvertently triggered release of hazardous levels of lead from plumbing to drinking water in tens of thousands of homes in the nation's capital, and later criminally hid the health threat from the public for more than three years.

Unaware of the health hazard in their drinking water, parents were unable to protect their unborn fetuses, children or even themselves from the best known neurotoxin (lead).

Hired to develop an understanding of the problem by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and then acting to hold the public's interest paramount over my own self-interest or that of the agencies, my funding and access to data from experiments I designed were terminated.

After the dimensions of the hazard were exposed in an award winning Washington Post investigative report in early 2004, the agencies and their minions published a series of reports relying on false or non-existent data, which created an illusion that the unprecedented exposures and the agencies' criminal actions had not poisoned a single man, woman or child.

The fact that their results contradicted over two thousand years of human knowledge and experiences regarding health harm from elevated lead in drinking water, was neither deterrent or hurdle, in their exercise of power via abuse of science.

Rewarding bad behavior

The agencies then stood by and even encouraged the spread of their pseudo-scientific lies, harming children in other parts of the United States and the world. None of those responsible were held accountable, although a few were later inexplicably given "Gold Medals" and other honors for public service by the agencies.

It took more than six years of personal effort and a U.S. Congressional investigation to finally discover that the agencies' "data," which they purportedly relied on for their landmark conclusions and publications, had strangely disappeared if it ever existed in the first place.

Other dimensions of their falsification were also exposed. Yet, to this day, agency reports and publications for which data cannot be found, and with conclusions proven to be false by numerous investigations and some of the agencies' more recent research, have still not been retracted.

Falsifying data

The Centers for Disease Control even issued a new falsified report, which in an Orwellian fashion, brazenly claimed that their prior work had actually concluded that D.C. citizens had been poisoned by the years of high lead in water, but that the CDC had communicated their results poorly and had been misunderstood by readers!

Demands to retract the falsification of a falsification, which e-mails demonstrate was crafted at the highest levels of the CDC, were completely ignored.

I mention my own experiences because they are relatively well-documented, the information has been thoroughly vetted in the press and in Congress, and before living through it myself I would never have believed it possible.

Having grown up worshipping [sic] at the altar of science, I never even thought to question the motives of government agencies, the policemen that we pay to protect us, and who would seem to have no financial motive to behave unethically.

Battling the EPA

Indeed, when I first heard of David Lewis and his battles with the EPA in the 1990s, I was too busy establishing my own career to pay any attention, much less delve into the details and sort out the truth.

That is the reality of scientific whistleblowing.

Whistleblowers and heroic scientists, are always destined for singular journeys, because even our most supportive colleagues have little choice but to be bystanders and there is no higher authority in science that can serve as an impartial judge and jury.

As David found, sadly, a courtroom run by non-scientists is often the only recourse. It takes great courage, persistence and a supportive family to see matters through to a conclusion, as David did in his years as a "successful" EPA whistleblower.

Sources:

Lewis, David L. (2014) Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits (Skyhorse Publishing)

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