Children's Health Defense By
In a blow to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a witness who claims he has direct knowledge of government agencies trying to suppress a key scientific report that concluded fluoride is neurotoxic to children may present his testimony.
The ruling pertains to a lawsuit filed in 2017 by Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) and others against the EPA after the agency denied the groups’ 2016 petition to end water fluoridation under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Since then, the parties have been engaged in an ongoing legal battle. The trial’s first phase was held in federal court in San Francisco in June 2020.
However, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen put the proceedings on hold pending the release of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) systematic review of research available on the neurotoxic effects of fluoride.
The NTP is a federal research body within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The program’s scientists studied the neurotoxic effects of fluoride for seven years before issuing a draft report concluding that “higher fluoride exposure is consistently associated with lower IQ in children.”
Although NTP scientists finalized the report in May 2022, it was March 2023 before the report was finally released, under a court order. According to emails obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the plaintiffs, top officials from HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blocked the NTP from releasing the report.
Today, almost two years after the NTP scientists finalized the report, the final draft has not yet been published. Instead, the draft report continues to be mired in an ongoing process of repeated peer review, which FAN alleges is an attempt to “weaken, delay or kill” the report.
In December 2023, the EPA moved to exclude the testimony of Brian Berridge, DVM, Ph.D., the NTP’s scientific director at the time the report was produced and a key witness for the plaintiffs.
The EPA argued that Berridge’s testimony would speak to the political influence allegedly exerted to stop the NTP report’s publication, rather than to the scientific findings in the report, which are central to the trial. EPA attorneys argued Berridge’s testimony would be “unfairly prejudicial” to the agency.
The plaintiffs countered that given Berridge’s role at the NTP in overseeing the publication of the report — which the court recognized would be the “centerpiece of the dispute” in the second phase of the trial — the court would not be justified in disqualifying his testimony because it may reveal political pressures that prevented the NTP from publishing the manuscript.
At a pretrial status meeting held Monday in San Francisco, Chen agreed with the plaintiffs and ruled that Berridge could testify.
The ruling means that the NTP’s former scientific director will be able to testify at trial about the report, the peer review process and why he signed off on the May 2022 version of the report as a final and complete report that was ready for publication, Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE… (childrenshealthdefense.org)
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment