("Quid coniuratio est?")
PROJECT CENSORED
Top 25 Censored Stories
(From The 1995 Project Censored Yearbook by Carl Jensen &
Project Censored. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995. ISSN
1074-5998)
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#25 -- Deadly "Mad Cow Disease" Spreads to North America
A new and ghastly disease which turns the brain spongelike and has been attacking dairy cows in England for years, has now appeared in North America. Nicknamed "Mad Cow Disease," bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has infected more than 120,000 cattle since it was discovered in 1985.
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#24 -- Epilepsy Drug Fiasco Ignored by Press
On August 2, 1993, FDA approved felbamate, an epilepsy drug. FDA claimed that felbamate reduced the frequency of epileptic seizures and had minimal side effects. Just a year later, Carter- Wallace Inc. warned doctors to quit treating patients with Felbatol, apparently their specific brand name for felbamate. "The story received only minimal coverage in terms of the human cost... There were no follow-ups on victims; no coverage whatsoever of withdrawal causing grand-mal seizures."
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#23 -- Buying and Selling Permits to Pollute
Under federal law, a polluting company that seeks to move into or expand in a polluted area must first obtain emissions reductions, or "offsets," from existing plants in the same locale. In some areas, it is possible for a company to reduce its polluting emissions and then "bank" those credits for later sale to a company that needs them.
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#22 -- Over-the-Counter Diet Pills Cause Deaths
Problems with over-the-counter diet pills and cold medications containing phenyl-propanolamine hydrochloride (PPA). The drug has a chemical structure similar to speed, and like speed, can trigger a sharp rise in blood pressure, sometimes resulting in stroke.
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#21 -- Illegal Toxic Burning at Super-Secret Air Force Facility
The United States government has used secrecy and over- classification to hide the illegal burning of toxic materials at an Air Force facility so secret that the federal government does not even admit it exists.
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#20 -- Legalizing Carcinogens in Our Food
Under current law (Delaney), if a pesticide is shown to be a carcinogen, the government must ban it from use in all processed foods. Yet, until 1992, the pesticide industry had found ways to circumvent this law. Then, in 1992, a federal lawsuit compelled the EPA to enforce Delaney. To avoid doing this, and to appease the chemical industry, the Clinton EPA proposed a legislative "reform" package that would replace the Delaney law.
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#19 -- Cesarean Sections Epidemic
Nearly one in four pregnant women have a c-section. The c- section is major surgery that involves entering the abdominal cavity. As many as 50 percent of c-sections may be unnecessary. In-depth coverage of this story by the mass media might have increased women's awareness of the risks associated with cesarean surgery and of the steps they can take to avoid an unnecessary c- section. [CN -- But hey! We would have missed the O.J. Simpson trial!]
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#18 -- Nationwide Collusion between Drug Companies and Pharmacists
Major drug companies have started to pay pharmacists to promote their drugs over those of their competitors. It should be noted that drug makers' kickbacks are not restricted to pharmacists; drug makers sometimes offer kickbacks to physicians who use their products.
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#17 -- Censoring Tomorrow's Journalists Today
In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment did not apply to student journalists ("Hazelwood School District vs. Kuhlmeier"). Some high school principals who want to control the student press seized upon Hazelwood as a justification for prior review or for restriction of subjects students can write about. The Student Press Law Center has reported an increase in requests for assistance with censorship problems from high school journalists since Hazelwood.
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#16 -- Fallibility of the AIDS Test
The problem of faulty HIV tests was front-page headline news in the London Sunday Times in August 1993, but did not make major news in the U.S. The Sunday Times reported: "The 'AIDS test' is scientifically invalid and incapable of determining whether people are really infected with HIV, according to a new report by a team of Australian scientists... Doctors should think again about its use, say the authors."
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#15 -- DARE Program Cover-up Continues
Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is a failure, so said the 1993 Project Censored. The story is nominated again for three reasons: 1) evidence that The Washington Post revised an article, without the author's permission, on behalf of the DARE program; 2) evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice covered up the program's failure by rejecting a study it commissioned that concluded that the DARE program doesn't work; and 3) continued failure of the news media to put the issue on the national agenda.
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#14 -- Faulty Nuclear Fuel Rods Spell Potential Disasters
The critical fuel rods in 108 of our nation's nuclear power plants are failing in increasing numbers and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission knows about it... but is doing nothing.
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#13 -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Dirty Secret
Secret internal industry documents obtained by Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project reveal that America's nuclear reactors have more serious safety, training, and equipment problems than government regulators acknowledge.
[...to be continued...]
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"