Statement of ATI’s Lead Counsel on American Tradition Institute v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(US District Court, Eastern District of Virginia No. 1:12-cv-1066)
There
are few occasions in life that emerge directly from the core of an
individual and almost never are those memorialized in a law suit. On
Friday, September 21, 2012, I took five copies of a complaint to the
Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, filing one of
them with the court and having each of the rest stamped and then sent to
four senior government officials, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S.
Attorney Neil H. MacBride, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and EPA
General Counsel Scott Fulton. I sent them summons to appear and defend
themselves in part because of my first name.
I was named after
David Steiner, a man who died of starvation in Buchenwald concentration
camp on May 3, 1945. Tattooed on his body was the number 59059. He was
witness to horrors that, today, we have a hard time even contemplating,
something that I thought would never exist on this planet again – the
abhorrent practice of giving human subjects poisons in order to
determine what subsequently happens to them.
I have always been
deeply affected by the circumstances of my great-uncle’s death. It is a
heavy burden to carry the name of such a victim. As I matured, I
committed my life to giving to our civilization that which David Steiner
was never able to give himself. I have given 37 years of service to the
United States, most of that in an effort to protect human health and
the environment as a professional at the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
I was able to secure a position of responsibility and
trust at EPA in large part because the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill offered me the opportunity to obtain graduate degrees and
prepare myself for a career in public service. Until a few weeks ago, I
had been a strong supporter of each.
Then Steven Milloy asked me to
represent him and other members of the American Tradition Institute who
have stories much like mine, or otherwise cannot countenance such human
experimentation.
Steve’s story is worse than death. His uncle,
Zoran Galkanovic, was incarcerated at the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Upon threat of death, Mr. Galkanovic was forced to rise each morning
and identify those individuals at the concentration camp too ill to
work, knowing they would subsequently be executed that very day. Because
of the inhumanity forced on Mr. Galkanovic, Mr. Milloy has accepted as a
family responsibility the fight against any government who subjects its
citizens to inhumane treatment. Who knew it would be our government?
Who knew it would be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? Who knew
that human experimentation would be done on the campus of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? Who knew it would be an official body
of that University that approved this research?
On first blush, I
simply could not believe Mr. Milloy. Then I looked carefully at the
facts and at the law. This case involves the intentional exposure of
human subjects to “fine particulate” matter, also known as PM2.5. EPA
obtained their PM2.5 from a diesel truck. It is difficult to overstate
the atrocity of this research. EPA parked a truck’s exhaust pipe
directly beneath an intake pipe on the side of a building. The exhaust
was sucked into the pipe, mixed with some additional air and then piped
directly into the lungs of the human subjects. EPA actually has pictures
of this gas chamber, a clear plastic pipe stuck into the mouth of a
subject, his lips sealing it to his face, diesel fumes inhaled straight
into his lungs.
Unbelievable as that may seem, consider the
additional fact that EPA has officially concluded that this gas is a
genotoxic carcinogen and that there is no exposure level below which it
can be considered safe. In fact, EPA Administrator Jackson testified to
Congress that of all deaths occurring in the United States, 1 in 4 “is
attributable to PM2.5.” She told them “Particulate matter causes
premature death. It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying
sooner than you should.”
Under the law, under EPA regulations and
under EPA policy, this human experimentation is strictly prohibited. To
conduct human experimentation, the human subjects must be properly
informed of the risks they face and these risks must be less than the
potential benefit of the experiment. My family knows how that works too.
Few
today know the ravages of Polio, but some of us are old enough to
remember it too well. Susan Paidar was a childhood neighbor, the same
age as one of my brothers. She died in an iron lung. And, she was one of
the last victims of this terrible disease, in small part because of the
courage of one of my brothers. In 1952, at age 6, my brother Rick was
selected to be in the first human test group for the Salk vaccine. He
was offered the possibility of never having to worry about polio again.
He was a human subject and there was a real benefit from that human
experimentation.
In the section describing the mandatory benefit
that must be offered to the human subjects, EPA’s PM2.5 “informed
consent” baldly states “there is no benefit.” Worse, the form never
informs the subjects that they will be inhaling diesel fumes, never
tells them the gas is a carcinogen, never tells them about all the other
toxic substances in diesel exhaust pouring into their lungs, never
tells them that because PM2.5 is genotoxic, it might cause disease in
children they might wish to have.
Medical ethicist, Professor John
D. Dunn, MD, JD, called EPA’s human experimentation “scandalously
unethical and immoral” and said “There can be no further tolerance of
this misconduct.” This is not the EPA I knew. This is not the University
of North Carolina I knew. This is not the American Tradition of our
nation. But, this is why I travelled to the U.S. Courthouse in
Alexandria, Virginia – to put a stop to it.
David W. Schnare, Esq., MSPH, PhD.
Director
Environmental Law Center
American Tradition Institute.
Read the complaint and declarations
here.
For additional details see
here.
