Lis­ten:
One seg­ment

This pro­gram updates a num­ber of sto­ries in the health and sci­ence fields. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of a bill intro­duced in the Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­ture to per­mit physi­cian assist­ed sui­cide, the broad­cast presents analy­sis by author Wes­ley J. Smith of flaws in reportage about the Ore­gon euthana­sia law (Prop. 16.) The alleged suc­cess of the Ore­gon law was the moral and intel­lec­tu­al premise for the intro­duc­tion of sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in Cal­i­for­nia. As Mr. Smith points out, the reportage on the Ore­gon law is fun­da­men­tal­ly fal­la­cious and mis­lead­ing.

Next, the pro­gram dis­cuss­es a new study rein­forc­ing pre­vi­ous infor­ma­tion about the car­cino­genic prop­er­ties of SV40 (a can­cer-caus­ing mon­key virus that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the pre-1963 polio vac­cine.) The focus of land­mark research by author Ed Haslam, this con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the polio vac­cine by SV40 has appar­ent­ly led to a soft-tis­sue can­cer epi­dem­ic and (pos­si­bly) the devel­op­ment of AIDS. In Mary, Fer­rie and the Mon­key Virus: The Sto­ry of an Under­ground Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry (Wordsworth Press, copy­right 1995), Ed makes an excel­lent case that research into genet­i­cal­ly alter­ing SV40 to cre­ate a benign strain (for the pur­pose of inoc­u­lat­ing against the can­cer epi­dem­ic) over­lapped the milieu of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. After the mur­der of Dr. Mary Sher­man, evi­dence sug­gests that this research into the genet­ic alter­ing of SV40 fell into the hands of David Fer­rie, a fas­cist involved with Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. The broad­cast con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the per­ils of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied food prod­ucts. The focus of a law­suit filed in ear­ly March of 1999, genet­i­cal­ly altered foods present a num­ber of per­ils, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of unfore­seen effects on peo­ple who con­sume the foods, the haz­ard of “genet­ic pol­lu­tion” in the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and the cer­tain­ty of increased eco­nom­ic suf­fer­ing for small farm­ers. One of the most sin­is­ter of the new “GM” food prod­ucts are the “ter­mi­na­tor seeds.” These seeds pro­duce plants that bear ster­ile seeds, man­dat­ing that farm­ers buy new seeds for each plant­i­ng, rather than sav­ing the seeds from the pre­vi­ous har­vest. This not only threat­ens the liveli­hood of small farm­ers in the First World, it threat­ens the very lives of Third World farm­ers and their fam­i­lies. (Record­ed on 3/7/99.)