Where Are They Now?
News: What ever happened to those dumped products -- and their dumpers? Eighteen years later, the MoJo Wire investigates.
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In November 1979, Mother Jones reported on a menagerie of dangerous chemicals, drugs, and consumer products that were banned or deemed unsafe in the U.S. but still happily peddled overseas by U.S. companies. This week the MoJo Wire takes a fresh look at some of those unsavory items and finds a few surprises:
Apparently, so did the Indian Health Service. In 1986 it was discovered that IHS was routinely injecting mentally retarded Native American women with Depo -- women who could hardly give informed consent -- despite the FDA ban. After a Senate investigation, IHS amended its Depo procedures.
Then in October 1992 the FDA reversed itself and finally approved Depo-Provera for contraceptive use. Dr. Felicia Stewart, director of the reproductive health program for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, puts it bluntly: "Dogs are not the same as people; beagles are more prone to tumors. There wasn't enough research on people." Tipping the balance: World Health Organization studies of more than 11,000 women concluded that Depo had no higher cancer risk than other hormonal contraceptives. Its main side effects -- irregular menstrual bleeding and weight gain of 4-5 pounds per year -- are similar to those of other approved contraceptives. Some studies have linked Depo to bone loss and osteoporosis; FDA has ordered Pharmacia & Upjohn to study this connection.
Today Depo-Provera is popular among teenage girls, who in increasing numbers ask for it by name because it's easy to use (one injection every three months) and to hide from nosy parents. Critics complain that health care providers push Depo too hard, especially to racial minorities, and that girls are not always given the information they need to make an informed decision about what birth control method is right for them. In July, Pharmacia & Upjohn began airing commercials for Depo, becoming the first company to advertise a female contraceptive on television.
Since 1979, a deluge of dangerous pacifiers have been manufactured and sold by U.S. companies. Binky (now Binky-Griptight) has continued to make unsafe pacifiers: Their Squeaky (recalled in 1984) and most recently Newborn Orthodontic (1997) models separated into small pieces that could choke infants. CPSC also urged parents to replace Evenflo's Lil Squeaker (1984), Disney character (1991), and Orthodontic (1995) pacifiers for the same reason.
And in 1994 Gerber Products Company, in cooperation with CPSC, recalled 10 million of its Nuk Orthodontic Pacifiers because they too were discovered to be separating into chokable pieces. The company said they'd fixed the problem, began manufacturing the Nuk again, then last year alerted consumers that some of the new Nuks should also be thrown away, if they had been put through the dishwasher.
A month later, Ronald Reagan revoked Carter's order, greasing the skids for manufacturers to export dangerous products. In 1983 Reagan went a step further and signed a $56 million sleepwear industry reimbursement bill -- which Carter had vetoed -- bailing out the pajama makers, distributors, and retailers who lost money when Tris was banned.
Since then, the Tris ban has become something of a whipping boy for conservatives -- this year the American Council on Science and Health, a think tank funded by corporations and right-wing foundations, listed Tris as one of "The 20 Greatest Unfounded Health Scares of Recent Times."
Today some 25,000 plantation workers from at least 12 countries are suing the U.S. pesticide makers and fruit growers they say caused their sterility, birth defects, and other illnesses. But justice has proved elusive: The manufacturers have succeeded in getting most cases dismissed back to the plaintiffs' home countries, where damages are expected to be much lower. When Bill Clinton visited Costa Rica in May, banana workers there pleaded with him to let them to sue the U.S. companies in U.S. courts.
So far, workers have had slightly more success suing the fruit companies who employed them, including Del Monte Fruit, Chiquita Brands, Dole Food, and Standard Fruit Company. In June, Standard Fruit agreed to pay $22 million to compensate 3,000 workers in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and the Philippines, who were directed to use DBCP on pineapple and banana plantations without any warnings, training, or protective clothing.
In 1992 the team looked at tetracycline again: In most countries the products carried the proper warning -- that the antibiotic generally should not be used in children below the age of eight -- but products sold in Latin America by Squibb, McKesson, Bristol, Lederle, Lepetit, and Rorer had incomplete warnings or none at all, and products sold by Hoechst and Squibb in the Philippines still included dosages for children of any age.
Critics of such policies strongly encouraged drug companies to display three clear warnings on their chloramphenicol labels: Do not use against trivial infections; Do not use to prevent infections; Do not use for prolonged treatments. In 1992 Silverman and crew found, happily, that most companies complied with this restriction, but that McKesson's product again had none of the essential warnings in Central America or Venezuela. And the good doctor noted with some satisfaction that in the labeling maze of Latin America, only one company's product carried the appropriate warnings every time: Parke-Davis.
