Though the Reagan-area might have been important to strenghten the greed of business, it was there all along and what Montsanto is doing is nothing new.
During a training of mine, I had to read the following two books:
The second one I wasn't able to get anything much on. It appears to be a book by one Samuel S. Epstein, not a congressional report. S. S. Epstein's google record raises a number of little red flags (or little black ducks, if you will...). A lot of snake-oil peddlers seem to like him. That's not conclusive, of course, but it should give pause for thought.
To ward off misunderstanding, let me emphasise that I don't think Big Pharma is particularly squeaky clean (although my impression is that it is subject to rather firmer regulation than the agribiz). But quacks and snake-oil peddlers are not the right people to ask if you want a measure of the level of corruption in Big Pharma. For much the same reason that Enron executives are not the right people to ask if you want a measure of the level of corruption in the IRS.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The introduction to the second edition of the book was written by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. and the foreword by Congressman David Obey.
Conyers writes in the Introduction in 1998:
The work has served as a treatise for us in the Congress as we fought in the 1980s for the enactment of a half dozen landmark environmental laws, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, The Toxic Substances Control Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and much else.
Samuel S. Epstein, is or was Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois Medical School Center at Chicago. Further he was consultant to the US Senate commitee of Public Works and many more.
