The Seattle Times: Series shows more than science involved in defining disease
Series shows more than science involved in defining disease
By Michael R. Fancher, Seattle Times executive editor, June 26, 2005
A woman is healthy one day, but the next day she has a life-threatening disease. Nothing in her physical condition has changed. How can this be?
The answer to this riddle involves billions of dollars in health-care costs and likely touches the life of everyone reading this newspaper. It's what The Seattle Times calls becoming "Suddenly Sick," the title of a five-part series beginning today.
The woman is healthy one day, diseased the next because the definition of the disease has changed, even though her health hasn't. The series says that every time the definition for a disease is expanded, the market for drugs expands by millions of consumers and billions of dollars.
Most of us typically think of disease in black and white; you have it or you don't. For diseases such as cancer or tuberculosis, a clear determination can be made, and it is scientifically based.
But for such diseases as hypertension, obesity and osteoporosis, the determination is based on boundaries and definitions.
"We found that with the so-called 'lifestyle diseases,' forces other than science affect where the lines are drawn," said Times Managing Editor David Boardman.
"How the line is drawn and who drew it has implications for individuals and society in general," he added.
Reporter Susan Kelleher first started thinking about those implications several years ago at a medical conference in Toronto. Health-care experts were debating how to set the boundaries that define osteoporosis, with huge financial consequences for insurance companies, physicians, researchers and, especially, pharmaceutical companies.
She became fascinated by the politics of osteoporosis and what she would come to realize was the "guidelines industry," the slippery science of defining diseases.
"I had spent 10 years covering health care and I was oblivious to it," she said.
Those years included being the lead reporter on The Orange County Register's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of a fertility clinic at the University of California, Irvine. Doctors there stole eggs from infertile patients and used them for other women who needed donor eggs to get pregnant.
The guidelines industry wasn't that kind of "gotcha" investigation. Kelleher said she knew it was important, but the story didn't crystallize immediately.
She would think about it when she saw "scare-you stories" in women's magazines and other media. Those stories warn of the growing risks of diseases but seldom ask, "Who says so?"
She would think about it as more and more television commercials pushed the preventive value of new drugs. There didn't seem to be much skepticism to a system so driven by pharmaceutical companies.
She thought about the riddle — you go to sleep one night and wake up with a disease. What happened overnight?
Over time, Kelleher would gather string for the story, exploring thousands of pages of documents from the Food and Drug Administration, searching patents and examining financial records of pharmaceutical companies.
"It's like a puzzle. It's probably the most complicated story that I've ever done," she said.
Boardman said a pattern emerged as Kelleher and reporter Duff Wilson, now with The New York Times, explored various aspects of the guidelines system. The numbers always moved in the same direction, with the boundaries of disease — and the market for drugs — expanding.
"We never saw an opposite example," Boardman said.
"Suddenly Sick" reveals how the system works. There are good intentions throughout the system to help people live healthier and longer. But, there is also growing discomfort among some medical practitioners at how much influence the drug industry has obtained.
"It's a huge factor in escalating health-care costs," Boardman said.
Worst of all, the series points out, people may be taking medications that have greater risks than the underlying condition for which they are prescribed.
Kelleher believes the series will arm readers with information they can use in managing their own health care.
"When you fully understand the way things work," she said, "you automatically ask different questions."
Read at the original source
Thursday, November 03, 2005
The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis
The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis
The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis
By Susan Kelleher and Duff Wilson, Seattle Times staff reporters, June 26, 2005
You walk into your doctor's office for a physical exam and step on the scale. Last year, the doctor said you were overweight. Now he says you are obese — at the same weight.
A nurse takes your blood pressure. You have hypertension — with the same previously healthy reading you've had for years.
The doctor scans your wrist bone. You have a condition called "osteopenia" — with the same bone density that was fine last time you were measured.
You mention you are not enjoying sex as much as you used to. Diagnosis: a new kind of sexual dysfunction.
You leave the office with a head full of worry and a fistful of new prescriptions, joining more than 40 percent of Americans who take one or more prescribed drugs daily in the effort to stave off more serious trouble.
You are suddenly sick, simply because the definitions of disease have changed. And behind those changes, a Seattle Times examination has found, are the companies that make all those newly prescribed pills.
The Times found that:
• Pharmaceutical firms have commandeered the process by which diseases are defined. Many decision makers at the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and some of America's most prestigious medical societies take money from the drug companies and then promote the industry's agenda.
• Some diseases have been radically redefined without a strong basis in medical evidence.
• The drug industry has bolstered its position by marketing directly to the health-conscious consumer, leading younger and healthier people to consider themselves at risk and to start taking medications.
Every time the boundary of a disease is expanded — the hypertension threshold is lowered by 10 blood-pressure points, the guideline for obesity is lowered by 5 pounds — the market for drugs expands by millions of consumers and billions of dollars.
The result? Skyrocketing sales of prescription drugs. Soaring health-care costs. Escalating patient anxiety. Worst of all, millions of people taking drugs that may carry a greater risk than the underlying condition. The treatment, in fact, may make them sick or even kill them.
Dartmouth Medical School researchers estimate that during the 1990s, tens of millions more Americans were classified as having hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes or obesity simply because the definitions of those diseases were changed.
Today, three of every four Americans technically have at least one of those diseases. But millions of them are not truly sick and may never be, even without medication. The Dartmouth researchers said it was unknown whether those people would benefit from early detection and treatment, while it is "an open question" whether branding them diseased and feeding them drugs may be causing significant physical or psychological harm.
The medical profession's term for these people is "the worried well." They are otherwise healthy people who have risk factors, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, but may never suffer a heart attack or stroke.
Dr. Alfred Berg, chairman of family medicine at the University of Washington and a past chairman of a federal task force that fights drug-industry influence on disease and treatment guidelines, said the best advice for many people at risk of so-called "lifestyle diseases" is to simply change their lifestyles.
"Diet and exercise and righteous living — but nobody wants to hear that," Berg said.
Instead, he says, a "commercial prevention" industry has emerged, focused on selling drugs to people who don't really need them but who can pay for them.
"We have a system that nobody but Big Pharma is happy with," says Dr. John Kitzhaber of The Foundation for Medical Excellence in Portland, who was Oregon's governor from 1995 to 2003.
But the drug companies can't do it alone. They need, and receive, support from much of the world's medical establishment.
Treatment guidelines established by international and national health organizations instruct physicians on diagnosis and treatment of disease and are meant to be scientifically pristine. But many of those groups lack any process for preventing or disclosing conflicts of interest.
The Times found that for a broad spectrum of diseases, the experts writing the treatment guidelines had drug-company ties ranging from research contracts to consultancies to stock ownership.
Berg's group, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, flatly prohibits any conflicts of interest, either in money or previous research. As a result, it is consistently more conservative in its recommendations than other medical guideline-writing groups and pushes fewer drugs.
Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth medical professor and editor of Effective Clinical Practice, a journal of the American College of Physicians, agrees that his profession shares the blame for what he sees as an overdose of preventive medicine.
The problem begins, he said, with the expanding definitions of disease.
"You can't tell me that three-quarters of my population is sick before I start," he said. "That just doesn't pass the laugh test.
"Our business is in a hard place right now," Welch said. "A lot of docs know it's not right."
Read at the original source
The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis
By Susan Kelleher and Duff Wilson, Seattle Times staff reporters, June 26, 2005
You walk into your doctor's office for a physical exam and step on the scale. Last year, the doctor said you were overweight. Now he says you are obese — at the same weight.
A nurse takes your blood pressure. You have hypertension — with the same previously healthy reading you've had for years.
The doctor scans your wrist bone. You have a condition called "osteopenia" — with the same bone density that was fine last time you were measured.
You mention you are not enjoying sex as much as you used to. Diagnosis: a new kind of sexual dysfunction.
You leave the office with a head full of worry and a fistful of new prescriptions, joining more than 40 percent of Americans who take one or more prescribed drugs daily in the effort to stave off more serious trouble.
You are suddenly sick, simply because the definitions of disease have changed. And behind those changes, a Seattle Times examination has found, are the companies that make all those newly prescribed pills.
The Times found that:
• Pharmaceutical firms have commandeered the process by which diseases are defined. Many decision makers at the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and some of America's most prestigious medical societies take money from the drug companies and then promote the industry's agenda.
• Some diseases have been radically redefined without a strong basis in medical evidence.
• The drug industry has bolstered its position by marketing directly to the health-conscious consumer, leading younger and healthier people to consider themselves at risk and to start taking medications.
Every time the boundary of a disease is expanded — the hypertension threshold is lowered by 10 blood-pressure points, the guideline for obesity is lowered by 5 pounds — the market for drugs expands by millions of consumers and billions of dollars.
The result? Skyrocketing sales of prescription drugs. Soaring health-care costs. Escalating patient anxiety. Worst of all, millions of people taking drugs that may carry a greater risk than the underlying condition. The treatment, in fact, may make them sick or even kill them.
Dartmouth Medical School researchers estimate that during the 1990s, tens of millions more Americans were classified as having hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes or obesity simply because the definitions of those diseases were changed.
Today, three of every four Americans technically have at least one of those diseases. But millions of them are not truly sick and may never be, even without medication. The Dartmouth researchers said it was unknown whether those people would benefit from early detection and treatment, while it is "an open question" whether branding them diseased and feeding them drugs may be causing significant physical or psychological harm.
The medical profession's term for these people is "the worried well." They are otherwise healthy people who have risk factors, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, but may never suffer a heart attack or stroke.
Dr. Alfred Berg, chairman of family medicine at the University of Washington and a past chairman of a federal task force that fights drug-industry influence on disease and treatment guidelines, said the best advice for many people at risk of so-called "lifestyle diseases" is to simply change their lifestyles.
"Diet and exercise and righteous living — but nobody wants to hear that," Berg said.
Instead, he says, a "commercial prevention" industry has emerged, focused on selling drugs to people who don't really need them but who can pay for them.
"We have a system that nobody but Big Pharma is happy with," says Dr. John Kitzhaber of The Foundation for Medical Excellence in Portland, who was Oregon's governor from 1995 to 2003.
But the drug companies can't do it alone. They need, and receive, support from much of the world's medical establishment.
Treatment guidelines established by international and national health organizations instruct physicians on diagnosis and treatment of disease and are meant to be scientifically pristine. But many of those groups lack any process for preventing or disclosing conflicts of interest.
The Times found that for a broad spectrum of diseases, the experts writing the treatment guidelines had drug-company ties ranging from research contracts to consultancies to stock ownership.
Berg's group, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, flatly prohibits any conflicts of interest, either in money or previous research. As a result, it is consistently more conservative in its recommendations than other medical guideline-writing groups and pushes fewer drugs.
Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth medical professor and editor of Effective Clinical Practice, a journal of the American College of Physicians, agrees that his profession shares the blame for what he sees as an overdose of preventive medicine.
The problem begins, he said, with the expanding definitions of disease.
"You can't tell me that three-quarters of my population is sick before I start," he said. "That just doesn't pass the laugh test.
"Our business is in a hard place right now," Welch said. "A lot of docs know it's not right."
Read at the original source
Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
By Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath, and David Henry, April 13, 2002
"A lot of money can be made from healthy people who believe they are sick. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor diseases and promote them to prescribers and consumers. Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath, and David Henry give examples of 'disease mongering' and suggest how to prevent the growth of this practice
There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick. Some forms of medicalising ordinary life may now be better described as disease mongering: widening the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. 1 2 Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers. The social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease.
Whereas some aspects of medicalisation are the subject of ongoing debate, the mechanics of corporate backed disease mongering, and its impact on public consciousness, medical practice, human health, and national budgets, have attracted limited critical scrutiny. "
Read the entire article
Selling sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease mongering
By Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath, and David Henry, April 13, 2002
"A lot of money can be made from healthy people who believe they are sick. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor diseases and promote them to prescribers and consumers. Ray Moynihan, Iona Heath, and David Henry give examples of 'disease mongering' and suggest how to prevent the growth of this practice
There's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick. Some forms of medicalising ordinary life may now be better described as disease mongering: widening the boundaries of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments. 1 2 Pharmaceutical companies are actively involved in sponsoring the definition of diseases and promoting them to both prescribers and consumers. The social construction of illness is being replaced by the corporate construction of disease.
Whereas some aspects of medicalisation are the subject of ongoing debate, the mechanics of corporate backed disease mongering, and its impact on public consciousness, medical practice, human health, and national budgets, have attracted limited critical scrutiny. "
Read the entire article
Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies
Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies
Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies
Are “Drugged Waters” a Water Quality Threat?
By Arizona Water Resource, July-August 2000, Volume 9, Number 1
Developed to promote human health and well being, certain pharmaceuticals are now attracting attention as a potentially new class of water pollutants. Such drugs as antibiotics, anti-depressants, birth control pills, seizure medication, cancer treatments, pain killers, tranquilizers and cholesterol-lowering compounds have been detected in varied water sources.
Where do they come from? Pharmaceutical industries, hospitals and other medical facilities are obvious sources, but households also contribute a significant share. People often dispose of unused medicines by flushing them down toilets, and human excreta can contain varied incompletely metabolized medicines. These drugs can pass intact through conventional sewage treatment facilities, into waterways, lakes and even aquifers. Further, discarded pharmaceuticals often end up at dumps and land fills, posing a threat to underlying groundwater.
Farm animals also are a source of pharmaceuticals entering the environment, through their ingestion of hormones, antibiotics and veterinary medicines. (About 40 percent of U.S.-produced antibiotics are fed to livestock as growth enhancers.) Manure containing traces of such pharmaceuticals is spread on land and can then wash off into surface water and even percolate into groundwater.
Along with pharmaceuticals, personal care products also are showing up in water. Generally these chemicals are the active ingredients or preservatives in cosmetics, toiletries or fragrances. For example, nitro musks, used as a fragrance in many cosmetics, detergents, toiletries and other personal care products, have attracted concern because of their persistence and possible adverse environmental impacts. Some countries have taken action to ban nitro musks. Also, sun screen agents have been detected in lakes and fish.
Researchers Christian G. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes reported in the December issue of “Environmental Health Perspectives” that the amount of pharmaceuticals and personal care products entering the environment annually is about equal to the amount of pesticides used each year.
Concern about the water quality impacts of these chemicals first gained prominence in Europe, where for over a decade scientists have been checking lakes, streams, and groundwater for pharmaceutical contamination. American officials and scientists are taking note, with two recent U.S. professional organizations — the National Ground Water Associations and the American Chemical Society — addressing the issue at their annual meetings this summer.
What risk does chronic exposure to trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals pose to humans or wildlife? Some scientists believe pharmaceuticals do not pose problems to humans since they occur at low concentrations in water. Other scientists say long-term and synergistic effects of pharmaceuticals and similar chemicals on humans are not known and advise caution. They are concerned that many of these drugs have the potential of interfering with hormone production. Chemicals with this effect are called endocrine disrupters and are attracting the attention of water quality experts.
To some scientists the release of antibiotics into waterways is particularly worrisome. They fear the release may result in disease-causing bacteria to become immune to treatment and that drug-resistant diseases will develop.
Scientists generally agree that aquatic life is most at risk, its life cycle, from birth to death, occurring within potentially drug-contaminated waters. For example, anti-depressants have been blamed for altering sperm levels and spawning patterns in marine life. Most studies of pharmaceutical and pharmaceutically active chemicals in water have mostly focused on aquatic animals.
Read the entire article
Pharmaceuticals In Our Water Supplies
Are “Drugged Waters” a Water Quality Threat?
By Arizona Water Resource, July-August 2000, Volume 9, Number 1
Developed to promote human health and well being, certain pharmaceuticals are now attracting attention as a potentially new class of water pollutants. Such drugs as antibiotics, anti-depressants, birth control pills, seizure medication, cancer treatments, pain killers, tranquilizers and cholesterol-lowering compounds have been detected in varied water sources.
Where do they come from? Pharmaceutical industries, hospitals and other medical facilities are obvious sources, but households also contribute a significant share. People often dispose of unused medicines by flushing them down toilets, and human excreta can contain varied incompletely metabolized medicines. These drugs can pass intact through conventional sewage treatment facilities, into waterways, lakes and even aquifers. Further, discarded pharmaceuticals often end up at dumps and land fills, posing a threat to underlying groundwater.
Farm animals also are a source of pharmaceuticals entering the environment, through their ingestion of hormones, antibiotics and veterinary medicines. (About 40 percent of U.S.-produced antibiotics are fed to livestock as growth enhancers.) Manure containing traces of such pharmaceuticals is spread on land and can then wash off into surface water and even percolate into groundwater.
Along with pharmaceuticals, personal care products also are showing up in water. Generally these chemicals are the active ingredients or preservatives in cosmetics, toiletries or fragrances. For example, nitro musks, used as a fragrance in many cosmetics, detergents, toiletries and other personal care products, have attracted concern because of their persistence and possible adverse environmental impacts. Some countries have taken action to ban nitro musks. Also, sun screen agents have been detected in lakes and fish.
Researchers Christian G. Daughton and Thomas A. Ternes reported in the December issue of “Environmental Health Perspectives” that the amount of pharmaceuticals and personal care products entering the environment annually is about equal to the amount of pesticides used each year.
Concern about the water quality impacts of these chemicals first gained prominence in Europe, where for over a decade scientists have been checking lakes, streams, and groundwater for pharmaceutical contamination. American officials and scientists are taking note, with two recent U.S. professional organizations — the National Ground Water Associations and the American Chemical Society — addressing the issue at their annual meetings this summer.
What risk does chronic exposure to trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals pose to humans or wildlife? Some scientists believe pharmaceuticals do not pose problems to humans since they occur at low concentrations in water. Other scientists say long-term and synergistic effects of pharmaceuticals and similar chemicals on humans are not known and advise caution. They are concerned that many of these drugs have the potential of interfering with hormone production. Chemicals with this effect are called endocrine disrupters and are attracting the attention of water quality experts.
To some scientists the release of antibiotics into waterways is particularly worrisome. They fear the release may result in disease-causing bacteria to become immune to treatment and that drug-resistant diseases will develop.
Scientists generally agree that aquatic life is most at risk, its life cycle, from birth to death, occurring within potentially drug-contaminated waters. For example, anti-depressants have been blamed for altering sperm levels and spawning patterns in marine life. Most studies of pharmaceutical and pharmaceutically active chemicals in water have mostly focused on aquatic animals.
Read the entire article
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine
Caffeine - the world's most popular psychoactive drug
Caffeine
By T.R. Reid, National Geographic, January 2005
Slurped in black coffee or sipped in green tea, gulped down in a soda or knocked back in a headache pill, caffeine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug.
It's hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn't exist.
"For most of human existence, your pattern of sleeping and wakefulness was basically a matter of the sun and the season," explains Charles Czeisler, a neuroscientist and sleep expert at Harvard Medical School. "When the nature of work changed from a schedule built around the sun to an indoor job timed by a clock, humans had to adapt. The widespread use of caffeinated food and drink—in combination with the invention of electric light—allowed people to cope with a work schedule set by the clock, not by daylight or the natural sleep cycle."
Czeisler, who rarely consumes any caffeine, is a bundle of wide-awake energy in his white lab coat, racing around his lab at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, grabbing journal articles from the shelves and digging through charts to find the key data points. "Caffeine is what's called a wake-promoting therapeutic," he says.
"Caffeine helps people try to wrest control away from the human circadian rhythm that is hardwired in all of us," says Czeisler. But then a shadow crosses the doctor's sunny face, and his tone changes sharply. "On the other hand," he says solemnly, "there is a heavy, heavy price that has been paid for all this extra wakefulness." Without adequate sleep—the conventional eight hours out of each 24 is about right—the human body will not function at its best, physically, mentally, or emotionally, the doctor says. "As a society, we are tremendously sleep deprived."
In fact, the professor goes on, there is a sort of catch-22 at the heart of the modern craving for caffeine. "The principal reason that caffeine is used around the world is to promote wakefulness," Czeisler says. "But the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep. Think about that: We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine."
Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic
Caffeine
By T.R. Reid, National Geographic, January 2005
Slurped in black coffee or sipped in green tea, gulped down in a soda or knocked back in a headache pill, caffeine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug.
It's hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn't exist.
"For most of human existence, your pattern of sleeping and wakefulness was basically a matter of the sun and the season," explains Charles Czeisler, a neuroscientist and sleep expert at Harvard Medical School. "When the nature of work changed from a schedule built around the sun to an indoor job timed by a clock, humans had to adapt. The widespread use of caffeinated food and drink—in combination with the invention of electric light—allowed people to cope with a work schedule set by the clock, not by daylight or the natural sleep cycle."
Czeisler, who rarely consumes any caffeine, is a bundle of wide-awake energy in his white lab coat, racing around his lab at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, grabbing journal articles from the shelves and digging through charts to find the key data points. "Caffeine is what's called a wake-promoting therapeutic," he says.
"Caffeine helps people try to wrest control away from the human circadian rhythm that is hardwired in all of us," says Czeisler. But then a shadow crosses the doctor's sunny face, and his tone changes sharply. "On the other hand," he says solemnly, "there is a heavy, heavy price that has been paid for all this extra wakefulness." Without adequate sleep—the conventional eight hours out of each 24 is about right—the human body will not function at its best, physically, mentally, or emotionally, the doctor says. "As a society, we are tremendously sleep deprived."
In fact, the professor goes on, there is a sort of catch-22 at the heart of the modern craving for caffeine. "The principal reason that caffeine is used around the world is to promote wakefulness," Czeisler says. "But the principal reason that people need that crutch is inadequate sleep. Think about that: We use caffeine to make up for a sleep deficit that is largely the result of using caffeine."
Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
90 tons of earth and rock must be excavated to extract enough gold to make a 3-ounce ring
Tangled Strands in Fight Over Peru Gold Mine
The Cost of Gold | Treasure of Yanacocha
Tangled Strands in Fight Over Peru Gold Mine
By JANE PERLEZ and LOWELL BERGMAN, The New York Times, October 25, 2005
SAN CERILLO, Peru - The Rev. Marco Arana drove his beige pickup over the curves of a dirt road 13,000 feet high in the Andes. Spread out below lay the Yanacocha gold mine, an American-run operation of mammoth open pits and towering heaps of cyanide-laced ore. Ahead loomed the pristine green of untouched hills.
Then, an unmistakable sign that this land, too, may soon be devoured: Policemen with black masks and automatic rifles guarding workers exploring ground that the mine's owner, Newmont Mining Corporation, has deemed the next best hope.
"This is the Roman peace the company has with the people: They put in an army and say we have peace," said Father Arana as he surveyed the land where gold lies beneath the surface like tiny beads on a string.
Yanacocha is Newmont's prize possession, the most productive gold mine in the world. But if history holds one lesson, it is that where there is gold, there is conflict, and the more gold, the more conflict.
Newmont, which has pulled more than 19 million ounces of gold from these gently sloping Peruvian hills - over $7 billion worth - believes that they hold several million ounces more. But where Newmont sees a new reserve of wealth - to keep Yanacocha profitable and to stay ahead of its competitors - the local farmers and cattle grazers see sacred mountains, cradles of the water that sustains their highland lives.
The biggest issue is the one looming over every modern industrial gold mine: What happens when the ore that lured the miners here is gone?
Over 13 years, Newmont has moved mountains for gold - 30 tons of rock and earth for every ounce. By the time it is through, the company will have dug up a billion tons of earth. Much of it will be laced with acids and heavy metals.
Three years ago, after Newmont acknowledged that 36,700 fish were missing from a river contaminated by the mine, the World Bank hired an American geochemist, Ann Maest, to study the streams and canals flowing from the mine.
In the short term, she concluded, the water was safe for human use. But long term, she said in an interview, the company's own tests show that all the components are in place for the huge piles of rock to leak acids that will pollute surface and groundwater.
The only preventive, she said, would be 'perpetual treatment.'
Mr. Hinze, who was recently appointed head of Newmont's North American operations, insists that the company's plan for closing the mine will take care of long-term treatment and cleanup.
"We plan on being here a very long time," he said.
Newmont has yet to put aside money for long-term treatment, though it says it will comply with a Peruvian government requirement due to take effect in 2007. But to pay for cleanups, the company needs to keep profits high. To keep profits high, it needs to keep finding and mining more gold. Yet increasingly, the unmovable reality is that to keep mining more gold, it has to make peace with the people who will be here long after the miners leave.
Read the entire article
The Cost of Gold | Treasure of Yanacocha
Tangled Strands in Fight Over Peru Gold Mine
By JANE PERLEZ and LOWELL BERGMAN, The New York Times, October 25, 2005
SAN CERILLO, Peru - The Rev. Marco Arana drove his beige pickup over the curves of a dirt road 13,000 feet high in the Andes. Spread out below lay the Yanacocha gold mine, an American-run operation of mammoth open pits and towering heaps of cyanide-laced ore. Ahead loomed the pristine green of untouched hills.
Then, an unmistakable sign that this land, too, may soon be devoured: Policemen with black masks and automatic rifles guarding workers exploring ground that the mine's owner, Newmont Mining Corporation, has deemed the next best hope.
"This is the Roman peace the company has with the people: They put in an army and say we have peace," said Father Arana as he surveyed the land where gold lies beneath the surface like tiny beads on a string.
Yanacocha is Newmont's prize possession, the most productive gold mine in the world. But if history holds one lesson, it is that where there is gold, there is conflict, and the more gold, the more conflict.
Newmont, which has pulled more than 19 million ounces of gold from these gently sloping Peruvian hills - over $7 billion worth - believes that they hold several million ounces more. But where Newmont sees a new reserve of wealth - to keep Yanacocha profitable and to stay ahead of its competitors - the local farmers and cattle grazers see sacred mountains, cradles of the water that sustains their highland lives.
The biggest issue is the one looming over every modern industrial gold mine: What happens when the ore that lured the miners here is gone?
Over 13 years, Newmont has moved mountains for gold - 30 tons of rock and earth for every ounce. By the time it is through, the company will have dug up a billion tons of earth. Much of it will be laced with acids and heavy metals.
Three years ago, after Newmont acknowledged that 36,700 fish were missing from a river contaminated by the mine, the World Bank hired an American geochemist, Ann Maest, to study the streams and canals flowing from the mine.
In the short term, she concluded, the water was safe for human use. But long term, she said in an interview, the company's own tests show that all the components are in place for the huge piles of rock to leak acids that will pollute surface and groundwater.
The only preventive, she said, would be 'perpetual treatment.'
Mr. Hinze, who was recently appointed head of Newmont's North American operations, insists that the company's plan for closing the mine will take care of long-term treatment and cleanup.
"We plan on being here a very long time," he said.
Newmont has yet to put aside money for long-term treatment, though it says it will comply with a Peruvian government requirement due to take effect in 2007. But to pay for cleanups, the company needs to keep profits high. To keep profits high, it needs to keep finding and mining more gold. Yet increasingly, the unmovable reality is that to keep mining more gold, it has to make peace with the people who will be here long after the miners leave.
Read the entire article
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