This just...

There are no words. The Baltimore Sun artcile is really...

Well.

In a written response, officials said that abused and neglected children were specifically singled out to create "additional protection" for them, although they did not elaborate.

And they denied there were any exceptions to the prohibitions on testing women and children. They added that the new rules meet all the requirements set by Congress last spring and summer in a series of often heated hearings.

[...]

Public health experts, including Colangelo, said they had no idea what the EPA meant by some of the language in the exemptions -- how the agency might define a "direct benefit" to a child, for example.

"The rule says it's acceptable to test children if there is a direct benefit," Colangelo said. "How can any child possibly benefit from exposure to pesticides? What was EPA thinking about?"

"This is ethically abhorrent, and the way EPA described this rule is clearly misleading," he said. "In fact, the rule expressly approves intentional chemical tests against these [at-risk groups] in several circumstances."

[...]

Physicians and lawyers offered possible explanations for some of the exemptions.

A study that could mean higher crop yields could be justification enough for the EPA to cite a "public health benefit" under the exemptions, said Dr. Alan Lockwood, an expert in human-testing ethics and past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

"This would be a public health benefit, even though the exposed children may experience an adverse effect."

So, higher crop yields = more food for Americans a fatter bottom line, which makes testing of, say, foster children okay??

Holy fucking shit.

Eeessh. Next up we'll be deliberately re-painting low income housing in lead paint and getting the kids to lick it while it's drying.

To further establish neurotoxicity guidelines of course.

I...
Well...
my god.
there are no words.
How some people can sleep at night is beyond me.

Wait...are they doing things to people or just measuring things that have already been done to them? Similar to this.

"The rule says it's acceptable to test children if there is a direct benefit," Colangelo said. "How can any child possibly benefit from exposure to pesticides? What was EPA thinking about?"
About direct benefits to the pesticide companies, of course. Duh.

Environmental Protection Agency
Environmental Profit Agency

jrossi, i thought it was about exposing them to pesticides during tests of products, no?

There was a similar thing that happened with experimental AIDS drugs tested on foster children here in NY.

Sadly, I am not surprised. The pesticide manufacturers are incredibly corrupt, but have considerable weight they can throw around.

Here's a little something I learned when my mother got breast cancer: did you know that the companies that manufacture pesticides also manufacture the drugs to treat breast cancer?

Horrifying, isn't it? Try googling "AstraZeneca", you'll find that they're one of the world's biggest manufacturers of carcinogenic chemicals as well as the manufacturer of many breast cancer drugs. They control aspects of breast cancer treatments, they control aspects of chemoprevention studies, and they control of cancer treatment centers and clinics (which of course will be prescribing the drugs they manufacture).

Little fucked up, eh?

If poisoning children is the cost of progress, I'm going back to my cave.