Aw, how very special. Bush II Fraudulency wants to remove affected workers from a government compensation plan. They worked in uranium mines and/or were exposed to fallout from various government projects. They'd actually been approved for participation in the compensation program and now, suddenly, the government wants to study whether or not these people should be compensated. And of course the problem is that the type of studies they're going to do will never say that the uranium and silica dust were the cause of the illness; they can say that it's more likely, they can say that there's a higher incidence of certain types of illness in people exposed to these elements, but studies generally cannot -- and ethical researchers generally will not -- explicitly say, "Uranium exposure and silica dust in the mines caused these problems."
I suppose it's entirely too cynical to say that if the Shrub hadn't gotten his tax cut from the cowardly Congress, he might not be looking at this right now. It will be interesting to see if Congress has anything to say in the matter -- normally, this is the sort of thing that would make good enough copy so that they'd have fun slapping the Shrub down a bit, but it's also a small enough group that they may be willing to let it go.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!