Wampum

Quick Hits

There are some simmering issues in the media and throughout a few advocacy circles with I want to address in full, but am frankly not able to at this moment due to the urgency of Maine caucus preparation. However, here are some brief hits, with hope that others will pick up the scent and broadcast these potential stories more widely.

First comes from this morning's Employment Situation Report, which purportedly gives us nothing but good news, with its falling unemployment rate and 100K+ new jobs. However, the story I've been pushing for months, the stagnation in hourly earnings for American worker bees like me, continues with a mere $0.02 gain in hourly earnings for January. This means that since July 2003, workers hourly pay has increased only 6 cents, the lowest biannual gain since records appear on the BLS web site.

The irony of the second story is how much of a non-story it is in the US press. Both the Canadian and European media have picked it up, but the deafening silence of American corporate news organizations may be telling.

Yesterday, a group of researchers from Northeastern, U of Nebraska, Tufts and John Hopkins released a study in which they not only link autism and ADHS to mercury and other heavy metals, they provided proof for the mechanism whereby such toxins effect children:

[E]xposure to toxins, such as ethanol and heavy metals (including lead, aluminum and the ethylmercury-containing preservative thimerosal) potently interrupt growth factor signaling, causing adverse effects on methylation reactions (i.e. the transfer of carbon atoms). Methylation, in turn, plays a significant role in regulating normal DNA function and gene expression, and is critical to proper neurological development in infants and children.

This is the first time a "mainstream" group of scientists has documented the link, and via laboratory, not epidemiological research. The story is even more significant, as the Institutes of Medicine hold their annual meeting on Monday, February 9th, to review the current state of autism/thimerosal research. [Note: Eric will be writing later today on what you can do to help publicize that meeting, which the IOM, Bush Administration and Big Pharma would like to keep under wraps.]

I know there are other things on my mind, but I'm now late for my first meeting of the day.

[Note: fixed date]

Posted by MB Williams at February 6, 2004 09:18 AM | TrackBack