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Obama promises Native Americans place on agenda  

President Obama pledged Thursday to redeem broken promises made to American Indians, saying he's empathetic because of his own history as an "outsider."

"Few have been more marginalized and ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans, our first Americans," Obama said in opening the White House Tribal Nations Conference.

"I know what it means to feel ignored and forgotten, and what it means to struggle," he said. "So you will not be forgotten as long as I'm in this White House."

The administration invited representatives from the 564 federally recognized tribes to participate in the conference, the first White House meeting of its kind since 1994. Leaders from nearly 400 tribes attended. The event came as some American Indians are locked in a long-standing legal battle with the federal government over land royalties.

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Portland will soon have 2 medical-marijuana smoking lounges  

As of next week, Oregon's medical-marijuana patients will have two smoke-easies in Portland to medicate and socialize, the first such places in the country to open since the federal government indicated that it will no longer arrest or prosecute patients and suppliers.

On Nov. 13, the Cannabis Cafe will open on the first floor of 700 N.E. Dekum St., to be operated by the state's chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Executive Director Madeline Martinez said the space has been a dream of hers for years.

"We're pretty danged excited about it," Martinez said.

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The Chemical Industry's Attack on Historians 

We think it important to put this controversy in a broader context. During the past decade or so historians have been drawn into the courtroom as expert witnesses in cases involving workers and consumers harmed by a variety of products including tobacco, lead, asbestos, silica and most immediately plastics. This issue has become widely discussed among historians of medicine but has so far escaped attention within the broader community of historians.[2] Of most significance for the historians of medicine is that Kenneth Ludmerer, past president of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Peter English, professor of medicine and history at Duke, Robert Hudson at the University of Kansas and John Burnham at Ohio State, among others, have worked for or testified on behalf of tobacco companies, lead companies and other industries that have been the defendants in lawsuits. In addition, historians such as ourselves, Robert Proctor at Stanford and Allan Brandt at Harvard have testified or worked with workers injured or diseased by their job, children damaged from lead and individuals hurt by tobacco, as well as various cities, states, and the federal government in suits brought against tobacco, lead, silica, and now the chemical industry.

It appears that the legal strategies of the law firms defending the various industries have been more or less the same, following a common pattern and a common rationale. In what historian Robert Proctor has called agnatology, industry has created a new "science" for the creation of doubt and ignorance about its actions in the past and historians have played a significant, if duplicitous role.[3]

In brief, as Robert Proctor has stated in a number of oral presentations and editorials with regard to the tobacco industry, historical experts testifying for industries have adopted a few basic techniques to undermine the historical data indicating knowledge of danger. In general, they have argued that:

* Whatever the evidence of knowledge within industries of the dangers of a product existed in the past, there was insufficient information available for there to be definitive proof of real danger.

* Therefore, there was always a need for more research before doubt could be eliminated and those who questioned that a material was dangerous meant that there was a "controversy" about whether or not it was.

* Causation is extremely difficult to prove and requires years, if not decades, of careful experimentation and observation before "controversy" about the sources of disease could cease.

* Hence, without certainty, and in the context of any on-going controversy about the danger of a product or substance, there was little or no obligation on the part of industries to act to remove their product from the market or to lower exposures to toxic materials within the factory. [4] . . .

[3] Robert Proctor has been engaged in the path-breaking research into historians' role in the tobacco cases and has coined this term in oral presentations. See, Robert N. Proctor, "Should Medical Historians be Working for the Tobacco Industry?" Lancet 363 (Apr 10, 2004), 1174-5.

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DIPIETRO: The Daily Walk of Shame: "Unbiased" Health Insurance Industry Report 

This new Motley Fool series examines things that just aren't right in the world of finance and investing. Here's what's got us riled today. . . .

This all comes out despite a report released last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stating that the legislation in question would reduce the federal deficit by $81 million by 2019 and would probably extend coverage to about 29 million Americans who currently lack insurance.

Why you should be indignant: Where to begin? There are at least three very good reasons to be apprehensive of PwC's report.

* Because the report is commissioned by AHIP, a group that represents health policies from companies like Aetna (NYSE:AET), Aflac (NYSE:AFL), and Humana (NYSE:HUM), PwC should have been extra careful to dispel any apparent conflict of interests. However, instead of performing tremendous due diligence, PwC seemed to have produced a report with too many holes to poke through and too much room left to be guessing about the legitimacy of their work. . . .

Well, you can choose to believe PwC's report or you can choose not to. Before you reach any conclusion, consider this: In the early 1990's PwC performed similar studies for the tobacco industry, which included bigwigs like Phillip Morris International (NYSE:PM) (then part of Altria) and Reynolds American (NYSE:RAI). They provided supposedly hard data that showed how a new excise tax on tobacco would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The report was apparently so lopsided that another consulting firm, Arthur Andersen, reviewed PwC's work. They found "serious methodological problems and errors of omission (one-sided analyses likely to lead to misinterpretation) in both the PW Report and the [tobacco industry's Tobacco Institute] Estimates." Ultimately, the string of blunders made by PwC led Andersen to report that "these and other serious flaws in the Price Waterhouse Report and the Tobacco Institute Estimates build upon one another in a cumulative fashion to present grossly exaggerated and misleading estimates of job loss from an increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco products."

There are some eerie similarities here considering that one of the methods considered for funding health-care reform is a tax on some very expensive "Cadillac" health-care plans. Looks to me like another case of lobbyists hiring consulting groups to find data that supports their claims instead of performing a comprehensive, objective analysis.

This report has conflict of interest written all over it. Ill-timed. Factually debatable. Contrary to reports by the CBO. I'm not buying one word of it.

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CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION (PDF) 

GENERAL KAGAN: Well, all I was suggesting, Mr. Chief Justice, is that corporations have actually a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to increase value. That's their single purpose, their goal.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: So if a candidate - take a tobacco company, and a candidate is running on the platform that they ought to make tobacco illegal, presumably that company would maximize its shareholders' interests by opposing the election of that individual.

GENERAL KAGAN: But everything is geared through the corporation's self-interest in order to maximize profits, in order to maximize revenue, in order to maximize value. Individuals are more complicated than that. So that when corporations engage the political process, they do it with that set of you know, blinders -- I don't mean it to be pejorative, because that's what we want corporations to do, is to -

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• US court questions company campaign spending limits 

Corporate spending limits in U.S. political campaigns may be too broad and silence free-speech rights of small businesses like a local hairdresser, Supreme Court conservatives said on Wednesday.

But the court's four liberals, including new Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said more harm than good could be done by overturning precedents upholding the restrictions on corporations and labor unions.

The comments came during arguments in a special session to consider ending long-standing limits on corporate and union spending in political campaigns. . . .

During the arguments, Roberts said a tobacco company might want to run an ad opposing a candidate who wanted to make tobacco illegal. The law restricts broadcast ads by companies and unions right before elections.

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• 'Watchdog' advocates for BPA  

Statistical Assessment Service, a major player in the public relations campaign to discredit concerns about bisphenol A, claims to be an independent media watchdog.

But a review of its finances and its Web site shows that STATS is funded by public policy organizations that promote deregulation. The Journal Sentinel found documents that show that its parent organization, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, was paid in the 1990s by Philip Morris, the tobacco company, to pick apart stories critical of smoking.

In June, STATS ran a 27,000-word assessment of the media's coverage of BPA and sharply criticized the coverage - especially stories in the Journal Sentinel - for ignoring the science. . . .

The Journal Sentinel in 2007 reviewed 258 scientific studies involving BPA and found the overwhelming majority determined the chemical to be harmful.

Gina Kolata of The New York Times and the Center for Health Care Journalists linked to the STATS report on their Web sites, identifying the group as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.

But documents show that STATS' parent organization has a history of working for corporations trying to deflect concerns about the safety of their products.

STATS and the Center for Media and Public Affairs are run by S. Robert Lichter, a professor of communication at George Mason University. The organizations share the same office and tax records.

Documents from the Tobacco Institute on file at the University of California-San Francisco show that Philip Morris contracted with the Center for Media and Public Affairs at least twice during the 1990s to monitor media coverage of tobacco. A draft dated March 31, 1994, lays out Lichter's proposal to the tobacco company:

"The Center will track and report on two or three case studies, examining all of the source material for claims and then review how the story was covered by the national media."

An e-mail from the Tobacco Institute's files, dated Feb. 18, 1999, quotes Philip Morris vice president Vic Han referring to Lichter's center as "a media watchdog group that we have contributed to over the last several years."

The center, according to the tobacco documents, was paid to conduct an analysis that takes into account the topical focus, sources and tone of presentation of tobacco stories in the media. . . .

Trevor Butterworth, editor of STATS, has become BPA's fiercest advocate. He combs the Internet for stories that raise concern about the chemical, even on the most obscure blogs, and he chastises those who claim BPA can be harmful.

Butterworth offers this advice on a journalism Web site:

"Forget conventional PR! If some bratty journalist gives you a whack, whack back with obscene, jaw dropping disproportion: knee him in the groin, pull what's left of his hair out, tell him he writes in clichés, and misuses the semicolon, and stomp on his iPhone! A hack is like a bully, and charming a bully is a bit like reasoning with a psychopath or writing a novel on Twitter. For the tough cases, go Dada.  . . .  Defending the brand means exacting respect and that will come from fear not charm." . . .

The Journal Sentinel reviewed IRS documents and found the Sarah Scaife Foundation reported giving STATS $100,000 in 2007, an amount that equaled all of STATS' assets - except for $435 in income interest. The Scaife Foundation funds a number of organizations that promote public policy against regulation, including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute.

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Forget conventional PR! If some bratty journalist gives you a whack, whack back with obscene, jaw dropping disproportion: knee him in the groin, pull what's left of his hair out, tell him he writes in clichés, and misuses the semicolon, and stomp on his iPhone! . . . For the tough cases, go Dada.  . . .  Defending the brand means exacting respect and that will come from fear not charm.
Trevor Butterworth, editor of STATS, who combs the Internet for stories that raise concern about BPA, even on the most obscure blogs, and chastises those who claim BPA can be harmful. According to a stellar series of Journal-Sentinel articles, secret tobacco documents reveal that STATS' parent organization is the Center for Media and Public Affairs--paid for in the 1990s by Philip Morris to pick apart stories critical of smoking. Even today, tobacco-related message boards across the country seem vulnerable to this and other techniques that may be deployed by tobacco companies and/or their hirees in this, the new world of Internet PR.

• BPA industry fights back  

For decades, the chemical industry has been able to control the debate on whether BPA is harmful to human health. Now the Food and Drug Administration, which had relied on industry-financed studies to declare the chemical safe, is reconsidering its determination. The decision is expected by Nov. 30.

"We are under attack from all fronts," Carteaux told the audience at the group's annual meeting in June.

And with increasing urgency, the industry is pushing back - hard.

The industry has launched an unprecedented public relations blitz that uses many of the same tactics - and people - the tobacco industry used in its decades-long fight against regulation. This time, the industry's arsenal includes state-of-the-art technology. Their modern-day Trojan horses: blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube.

A four-month investigation by the Journal Sentinel reveals a highly calibrated campaign by plastics makers to fight federal regulation of BPA, downplay its risks and discredit anyone who characterizes the chemical as a health threat. The newspaper examined thousands of pages of Internal Revenue Service reports, disclosure forms and e-mails between government scientists and lobbyists as well as the industry's own public relations materials.

The documents offer a rare glimpse at the hardball politics of chemical regulation, where judgments about safety are made not necessarily on the merits of science but because of the clout of lobbyists working the system. . . .

Details of meetings between federal regulators and chemical industry lobbyists are found in the archives of the Tobacco Institute, the lobby group of the tobacco industry. A court settlement in 1998 disbanded the institute and opened the records to the public.

Lobbyists for tobacco closely followed the government's assessment of BPA because of concerns that a ban on the chemical would affect cigarette filters and plastic packaging. The two industries share the same lobby firm, the Weinberg Group.

The Tobacco Institute documents show administrators from the FDA routinely turned to chemical industry scientists to establish the government's safety level for BPA. Government scientists relied on test results performed by industry scientists without independent confirmation. . . .

Chemical makers and plastics industry executives are putting up their own versions of news clips on social media outlets such as YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter and blogs. Often, they are disguised as neutral, unbiased information and rarely reveal the source.

So what might look to consumers researching BPA on the Internet as independent information are often stories written by chemical industry public relations writers.

Allegiances are not always explained. The most impassioned defense of BPA on the blogs comes from Trevor Butterworth, editor of Statistical Assessment Service, also known as STATS. He regularly combs the Internet for stories about BPA and offers comments without revealing his ties to industry. . . .

STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.

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Suicide Risk With Antidepressants Falls With Age  

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is doing its part to make sure that doctors and patients alike are aware of the latest data on the link between antidepressant use and suicide, which indicate that the risk declines steadily with age.

A review of 372 trials involving nearly 100,000 people who took antidepressants showed that the drugs increase the risk for suicide in people younger than 25, have no effect in those 25 to 64 and reduce risk in those 65 and older. A report on the findings is published online Aug. 12 in BMJ.

Information on the suicide risk linked to antidepressant use was posted on the FDA Web site some time ago, but "we thought it needed to be in a peer-reviewed publication, which would make it more useful to professionals," said Dr. Marc Stone, a senior medical reviewer in the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and lead author of the BMJ report.

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The Usual Corporate Lobbyists Pretend to Be Grassroots Groups Against Health-Care Reform  

So they're rolling out the heavy guns, hiding behind yet another astroturf front. I wonder why they're always hiding behind these fake grassroots organizations? Could it be they don't want people to know the kind of money the massive financial interests against health care reform are spending to stop it?

The new anti-health reform front group known as the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, is being managed by the lobbying firm known as the DCI Group. . . .

Tom Synhorst, a former staffer to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Bob Dole, joined fellow right-wing operatives Doug Goodyear and Tim Hyde to form DCI Group in 1996. The firm quickly flourished working for the tobacco industry, coordinating a sophisticated astroturf campaign to build public opposition to tobacco regulations. Ironically, before helping to manage this “patients’ rights” campaign, DCI founded “Smokers’ Rights” groups across the country for the tobacco lobby. Indeed, DCI has specialized in manufacturing “grassroots” support — using telemarketers, PR events, and letter writing campaigns — to achieve policy results for narrow corporate interests:

– The DCI Group was retained by the pharmaceutical industry to whip up public opposition against House legislation that would permit the reimportation of FDA-approved drugs from Canada and elsewhere. [Washington Monthly, December/2003]

– The DCI Group worked with Republicans to form various “grassroots” front-groups to amplify President Bush’s call to privatize Social Security. [Center for Media and Democracy, 3/18/05]

– Chris LaCivita, a former DCI Group staffer, took a lead role in organizing the Swift Boat Veterans campaign to smear John Kerry and his war record. [CommonDreams, 8/31/04]

– The DCI Group was behind spoof videos mocking Al Gore and global warming. The firm has been retained by ExxonMobil to lobby. [Wall Street Journal, 8/3/06; Exxon Secrets, accessed 7/28/09

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Sunbeds (UV tanning beds) and UV radiation moved up to highest cancer risk category by International Agency for Research on Cancer 

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has moved sunbeds (UV tanning beds) up to the highest cancer risk category--group 1--'carcinogenic to humans'. The use of sunlamps and sunbeds was until now classified as "probably carcinogenic to humans" (group 2A). IARC also moved ultraviolet radiation into group 1. These and other findings are revealed in a Special Report in the August edition of The Lancet Oncology, produced by Dr Fatiha El Ghissassi and her colleagues, IARC, Lyon, France, on behalf of the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group.

The authors say: "The use of UV-emitting tanning devices is widespread in many developed countries, especially among young women. A comprehensive meta-analysis concluded that the risk of skin melanoma is increased by 75% when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age. Additionally, several case-control studies provide consistent evidence of a positive association between the use of UV-emitting tanning devices and ocular melanoma. Therefore, the Working Group raised the classification of the use of UV-emitting tanning devices to Group 1, 'carcinogenic to humans'." . . .

All types of ionising radiation were also classified as Group 1. This was the first time all these types of radiation were reviewed by one working group during one meeting. Examples of ionising radiation are:

* Radon gas (seeping from soil, rocks, and building materials), which enters the lungs and causes damage (affecting the whole population). The Special Report says that radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer (8--15% of cases) after tobacco smoke

* Plutonium and its decay products, affecting the bones, liver and lungs of plutonium workers.

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Pfizer Faces First Trial on Neurontin Suicide Claim (Update1) 

Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, goes to trial next week on claims its epilepsy medication Neurontin increases the risk of suicide, in a case the judge called “very tough” for the plaintiffs to win. . . .

Pfizer hired William Ohlemeyer, a former associate general counsel for cigarette maker Altria Group Inc., to defend it in the case, Lanier said. Loder, the company spokesman, declined to comment on who will be the company’s lead defense lawyer, or to say exactly how many Neurontin claims Pfizer faces.

Ohlemeyer, from the New York office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, along with Mark Cheffo, a mass-tort defense specialist from New York’s Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, are listed as lawyers for the drugmaker on Pfizer’s court filings.

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Video game group files lawsuit over CTA ad rule 

A trade group that represents software and video game publishers sued the Chicago Transit Authority on Wednesday, saying a rule barring ads on trains and buses for "mature" and "adu

lts only" games violates the right to freedom of speech.

"The CTA's ordinance constitutes a clear violation of the constitutional rights of the entertainment software industry," said Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive officer of the Washington-based Entertainment Software Association.

The association maintains that computer and video games are entitled to the same free speech protection under the First Amendment as other forms of entertainment such as movies. . . .

CTA spokeswoman Wanda Taylor said the authority believes "that our ordinance is defensible."

"CTA does not allow ads for alcohol or tobacco products and this ordinance is consistent with that longstanding policy," she said.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, alleges that the CTA's rule unconstitutionally "restricts speech in a public forum that is otherwise open to all speakers without a compelling interest for doing so."

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Smoking heroin leads teen to deadly addiction 

Dear Straight Talk: I've been hiding my boyfriend in my basement bedroom because his parents kicked him out. What nobody knows is that he is addicted to heroin. We both began smoking it in our cigarettes, or sometimes snorting it, and now he has starting shooting it. Please help.

Medical marijuana science, through the smoke  

But in California, the first state to legalize marijuana for medical use, in 1996, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recently declared pot smoke (though not the plant itself) a carcinogen because it has some of the same harmful substances as tobacco smoke.

The active ingredient in marijuana can increase the risk for Kaposi's sarcoma, a common cancer in HIV/AIDS patients, Harvard researchers reported in the journal Cancer Research in August 2007. And British researchers reported in May in Chemical Research in Toxicology that laboratory experiments showed that pot smoke can damage DNA, suggesting it might cause cancer.

The federal government's National Institute on Drug Abuse says that it is "not yet determined" whether marijuana increases the risk for lung and other cancers.

Respiratory problems: Smoking one marijuana joint has similar adverse effects on lung function as 2 1/2 to five cigarettes, according to a New Zealand study published in Thorax in July 2007. A small Australian study published in Respirology in January 2008 showed that pot smoking can lead to one type of lung disease 20 years earlier than tobacco smoking.

Addictive potential: The National Institute on Drug Abuse says "repeated use could lead to addiction," adding that some heavy users experience withdrawal symptoms such as irritability and sleep loss if they stop suddenly. . . .

Bottom line: From a purely medical, not political, point of view, my take is that if I had medical problems that other medications did not help and that marijuana might, I'd try it -- in vaporized form.

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