johnson"
Please. My daughter's "nekid" Barbie dolls in the bathroom were more
revealing.
On Nov 23, 12:14 pm, Jonathan Ashley <jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
wrote:
> Are Body Scanners Dangerous to Your Health?http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6617.shtml
>
> By John W. Whitehead
> Online Journal Guest Writer
>
> Nov 23, 2010, 00:23
>
> As the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) pushes forward with
> its plan to place full-body scanners in all American airports, experts
> in the scientific community are raising serious concerns that the
> full-body scanners are not medically safe for the millions of people
> that will be exposed to them each year. Even the Allied Pilots
> Association has urged its members to opt out of the body scanning
> measures because of the "ionizing radiation, which could be harmful to
> their health."
>
> In April 2010, four members of the University of California faculty
> relayed to Dr. John P. Holdren, President Obama's Science and Technology
> czar, their concerns about the serious health risks posed to travelers
> by the whole body back scatter X-ray scanners. Dr. Sedat is a Professor
> Emeritus in Biochemistry and Biophysics, with expertise in imaging; Dr.
> Marc Sherman is an internationally well known and respected cancer
> expert; and Drs. David Agard and Robert Stroud are X-ray
> crystallographers and imaging experts. Suffice it to say, these men know
> what they're talking about. So when they suggest that an immediate
> moratorium is needed on the use of the scanners in order to carry out a
> second independent evaluation to determine that the scanners really
> /are/ safe, our government, which is supposed to protect us from these
> kinds of dangers, should listen.
>
> Specifically, these scientists argue that the concentration of radiation
> on the skin of individuals being scanned poses a serious cancer risk
> that has been largely dismissed. The TSA has compared the radiation
> received from the body scanner to the radiation that is absorbed in
> regular airplane travel or the radiation from a chest X-ray. However, in
> their memo to Dr. Holdren, Drs. Sedat, Agard, Stroud and Shuman note
> that this comparison is "very misleading." The TSA estimates only
> consider the radiation as it would be if absorbed by the whole body, as
> opposed to how the scanner really operates, which is to concentrate the
> radiation on the skin. The scientists claim that the body scanners have
> not received a proper medical review using "key data" which would allow
> for a proper understanding of the medical impact of the technology which
> they believe could cause mutations and skin cancer. They suggest setting
> up an independent panel to review the safety concerns posed by the
> scanners, a highly reasonable suggestion for a piece of technology that
> will be scanning millions of people a year.
>
> Other scientists have also voiced their concerns over the devices, such
> as Dr. David Brenner who heads Columbia University's Center for
> Radiological Research. He states that radiation produced by the scanners
> is /twenty times/ higher than the official estimate. Physics professor
> Peter Rez at Arizona State University echoes Dr. Brenner's claims. He
> points out that there is a real possibility that a body scanner could
> malfunction, concentrating unsafe amounts of radiation on one area of
> the body. "The scary thing to me is not what happens in normal
> operations, but what happens if the machine fails. Mechanical things
> break down, frequently."
>
> On a side note, while it's bad enough that the scanners can see through
> your clothing to an alarming degree, they can also reveal quite a bit
> about your health history. As Dr. Kristin Byrne, a radiologist at Lenox
> Hill Hospital in New York City, points out, "The airport scanners show
> anything on the surface of the skin and very closely under the skin."
> This includes foreign objects close to the skin, including piercings,
> catheters and colostomy bags, as well as breast implants and prosthetic
> testicles. These are items that most people want to keep private and
> away from the prying eyes of the public and government officials.
>
> Despite all of this, Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of
> Homeland Defense insists that the full-body scanners "are safe,
> efficient, and protect passenger privacy. They have been independently
> evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National
> Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Johns Hopkins University
> Applied Physics Laboratory, who have all affirmed their safety."
> Parroting her, TSA Administrator John Pistole in testimony before a
> Senate panel on November 16, 2010, claims that the body scanners struck
> a proper balance between privacy and security and that the radiation
> exposure was "well within safety standards."
>
> Of course, the FDA, which has been criticized heavily in recent years as
> being fundamentally broken and even corrupt, has a very dubious track
> record when it comes to ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs,
> biologics and medical devices. Over the years, the FDA has been accused
> of causing high drug prices, keeping life-saving drugs off the market,
> allowing unsafe drugs on the market because of pressure from
> pharmaceutical companies and censoring health information about
> nutritional supplements and foods. For example, the FDA recently
> admitted to making a mistake in approving a controversial knee implant
> against the advice of its scientific reviewers. As the Associated Press
> reports, "The announcement comes a year after the agency first
> acknowledged that its decision to approve the device was influenced by
> outside pressure, including lobbying by four lawmakers from the
> company's home state of New Jersey."
>
> The question is: if the scanners are potentially dangerous, then why has
> the government been in such an all-fire rush to implement them?
>
> First, we have to recognize that we are ruled by an elite class of
> individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the
> average American. The government officials who have foisted these
> scanners on us -- President Obama, whose stimulus funds are paying for
> the scanners; members of Congress, who have pushed for the technology to
> be implemented in the airports; and Janet Napolitano and John Pistole,
> who have been adamant about subjecting the American people to all manner
> of indignities and rights violations for the sake of security -- don't
> have to go through the scanners (they have the luxury of flying on
> private or government planes and having security clearances that allow
> them to breeze past such barriers), so there's no risk to them medically.
>
> Second, we are -- and have been for some time -- the unwitting victims
> of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and
> aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This
> corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government -- from the
> power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate
> puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often
> that not, elitist and biased towards government entities and
> corporations. The scanners are a perfect example of this collusion
> between corporate lobbyists and government officials.
>
> Third, we are relatively expendable in the eyes of government --
> faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep
> the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars.
> Those in power aren't losing any sleep over the indignities we are being
> made to suffer or the possible risks to our health. All they care about
> are power and control.
>
> "We the people" have not done the best job of holding our
> representatives accountable or standing up for our rights. But there
> must be a limit to our temerity. Clearly, there are enough concerns
> about the health risks posed by these scanners to justify placing a
> moratorium on their use in airports. Something as potentially dangerous
> as these scanners certainly shouldn't be forced on the American public
> without the absolute assurance that it will not harm our health or
> undermine our liberties. At a minimum, Congress should establish an
> independent commission -- one not comprised of individuals connected to
> corporations that stand to profit from the scanners -- to fully examine
> these concerns and report back to the American people. And DHS and TSA
> need to go back to the drawing board and find a better way to protect
> national security without sacrificing our health and our freedoms.
>
> /About John W. Whitehead: Constitutional attorney and author John W.
> Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new
> book The Freedom Wars (TRI Press) is available online atwww.amazon.com.
> Whitehead can be contacted at //jo...@rutherford.org/
> <mailto:jo...@rutherford.org>/. Information about The Rutherford
> Institute is available at //www.rutherford.org/
> <http://www.rutherford.org/>/. /
> --
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>
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>
> *"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they
> are free."
> - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe*
>
> *Government is only as strong as those who allow themselves to be
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>
> *"We have plenty of rights in this country, provided you don't get
> caught exercising them."
> - Terry Mitchell
>
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> cannot be."
> - Thomas Jefferson***
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