Science for Sale: Corporations Pay American Council on Science and Health Big Money to Push Toxic Products
A disgruntled faction of establishment scientists who claim to have a corner on scientific truth recently attempted (and failed) to unseat Dr. Mehmet Oz from his position as head of Columbia University’s Department of Surgery, maintaining that Dr. Oz shows “disdain for science” and promotes “quackery.” What these prideful fools aren’t divulging is the fact that they themselves are the true purveyors of quackery and anti-science, blatantly endorsing industry interests for pay under the guise of “science.”
As it turns out, four of ten co-signers of an embarrassingly pompous letter calling for Dr. Oz’s removal from Columbia are current or past employees of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a corrupt industry front group that is financed by corporations like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Monsanto. Gilbert Ross, the acting president and executive director of ACSH, is actually a former felon who now has the gall to accuse Dr. Oz of nudging the medical profession towards disrepute.
Ironically, it’s ACSH that is shaming the integrity of science with its constant peddling of pseudoscience in flagrant promotion of things like electronic cigarettes, genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), alcohol and vaccines. ACSH claims to be an independent, non-profit group that upholds unbiased science as a beacon of truth in the world, all while quietly accepting huge donations from chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations.
This document[PDF] contains leaked ACSH financial records for the 2013 fiscal year. It was never intended to be publicly released, as ACSH guards its financials and the identities of its donors and sponsors under lock and key. They are right to hide such information because it clearly exposes who this sham organization truly works for.
As you’ll notice, ACSH had a goal of achieving a $2 million working budget in 2013, and this required petitioning its top donors for large cash infusions. These donors include popular industry names like Chevron, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta, McDonald’s, Monsanto, and many others who collectively contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACSH.
How can an organization that is almost completely funded by drug, vaccine, and chemical interests possibly be unbiased and scientific?
Let’s think about this for a moment: if nearly every penny that flows into ACSH comes from corporations that promote junk foods, pharmaceuticals, “fracking,” vaccines, cigarettes and alcohol, what kind of “science” do you think ACSH is going to promote? It surely won’t be independent science that dares to question the safety or effectiveness of any of these products.
“[The ACSH] platform, invariably, sides with big business, opposing science that claims products or practices are harmful to the public or the environment,” reveals the TruthWiki entry for ACSH.
“In a letter to the editor of the Washington Times, Michael Jacobson, the Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, stated that ACSH is ‘a receptacle for payments from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, food and other companies who appreciate the convenience of having their grantees and former employees serve on government science panels.'”
Also serving on the ACSH Board of Trustees is pro-vaccine quack “Dr.” Paul Offit, the infamous jab fanatic from Philadelphia Children’s Hospital who says that aluminum is healthy for a developing fetus and that injecting babies with up to 10,000 vaccines at once is completely safe. These are the same folks who, out of the other sides of their mouths, claim to promote only “science-based medicine.”
Sources for this article include:
http://www.naturalnews.com/files/acsh-financial-summary.pdf
http://truthwiki.org/The_American_Council_on_Science_and_Health
http://www.washingtontimes.com
http://acsh.org/about-acsh/meet-the-team/
