Getting greener 'Glades-style

A Web site to help Mia-muh become eco-savvy.

Wanamaker's Organ

Story from the NYTimes

What do you do if you buy a famous downtown department store and find an organ with 28,482 pipes occupying thousands of square feet of perfectly good retail space?
If you’re Macy’s, you let devotees of the instrument put in 61 more pipes and give them thousands more square feet to set up an organ repair shop.
Diapasons, it would seem, are as much music to Macy’s as cash registers, coin counters and customers at its Center City store here, a Philadelphia institution that was originally a Wanamaker’s. So the company let the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, a private group of aficionados who have been helping to maintain the instrument for years, install another stop and set up a repair shop after Macy’s took over the store.

That's no ordinary organ...

The organ, the world’s largest operating musical instrument, has never sounded better, according to the store’s staff organist, Peter Richard Conte, who has been here 20 years and fills the place with warm waves of sound at noon and in the evening, daily except Sunday.
“In 1995 it was down to about 20 percent of the pipes being playable, maybe,” and only two keyboards working instead of six, Mr. Conte said. “Now it sounds loved again.”
With money from private donors and more than $100,000 from Macy’s this year, the staff curator, L. Curt Mangel III, with his assistant, the Friends and numerous organ groupies, now have 95 percent of the organ playing again. Next year they expect to have it all up and running for the first time in decades.

Built more than a century ago...

The instrument started life at the St. Louis International Exposition of 1904, when the Los Angeles Art Organ Company built it along orchestral lines, rather than according to the baroque organ ideal, as Bach and Buxtehude knew it.
It was a smash hit at the fair, but bankrupted the company. Then it languished in storage until 1909, when John Wanamaker bought it for the Philadelphia store that he was planning to open two years later.
His son, Lewis Rodman Wanamaker, saw the vast, 149-foot-high Grand Court center space in the building Daniel Hudson Burnham had designed for them as the ideal place for “the finest organ in the world,” and 40,000 people and President William Howard Taft came to the dedication ceremonies on Dec. 30, 1911.

The kicker, from Conte:

“Macy’s gets it — it understands how to use this instrument and market it to the public.”

Eye Infections tied to contact lens cleaning solution

from the NYT...

Acanthamoeba keratitis is caused by a parasite, can be difficult to detect and is hard to treat. This outbreak has involved at least 138 patients.

Last year, an outbreak of fusarium keratitis was caused by a fungus; there were 164 confirmed cases. It was linked to ReNu With MoistureLoc made by Bausch & Lomb, but how the product caused the problem is unknown.

Epidemiologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have linked the acanthamoeba keratitis outbreak to AMO Complete Moisture Plus Multi-Purpose Solution. Advanced Medical Optics of Santa Ana, Calif., manufactures the solution, which is used to clean and store soft contact lenses.

Plastic Water Bottles : Unintended Consquences

from the NYTimes mag

This year, Americans will drink more than nine billion gallons of bottled water, nearly all of it from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, plastic bottles. Water, together with other nonfizzy drinks, accounted for 90 percent of the growth of the entire beverage industry between 2002 and 2005. By the end of the decade, they are expected to outsell soda.

It's an oil issue:

Americans will throw out more than two million tons of PET bottles this year. Even when recycled, it is hard to turn scrap PET into new bottles. More virgin material is always necessary. PET is a petroleum product; it comes from oil. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that 18 million barrels of crude-oil equivalent were needed to replace the bottles we chucked in 2005, bottles that were likely shipped long distances to begin with —from Maine or Calistoga or Fiji.

Solution?

... the bottle bill is designed to hold industry accountable for the disposal of its products. This accountability has practical, not just philosophical, benefits: forcing companies to take back their empties has ensured they make their containers recyclable and build markets for the scrap. (It is because of the bottle bill that fleece jackets, mattresses and carpeting are now made from recycled plastic bottles; recycled bottles have become one of the most valuable scrap materials.) Nevertheless, defenses of the bottle bill often boil down to an insistence that the essential rightness of its principle, the idea of producer responsibility, simply outweighs its many other costs and inconveniences — particularly since the bulk of those costs and inconveniences are borne by the industry. That’s only just.

FUN FACT:

Globally, Nestlé owns 72 different brands of water, including Poland Spring, Deer Park and Arrowhead

Tribune, you suck

Cross-post with another on of my blogs. Bob Norman's post (link above)on Flower's boot from her beat at the Sun-Sentinel. Stupid newspaper penny pinchers.


Pulp writes:

And there are murmurings that this could be a Tribune Company-wide trend that could kill local movie coverage in a number of Tribune newspaper towns.

Otherr commenters note:

Tribune will have one central copy editing system operating for all of its newspapers in a few weeks. Local copy desk staffs around the country will work on the same CCI system producing their own newspapers. Once that happens, all Tribune newspapers can share previously edited stories with photos and graphics already attached. The newsroom is rife with speculation about which coverage and sections will be produced by Tribune, with a local designer to fit the chain-wide copy around the ads. Travel? TV? Books? National and international news? Business? Whatever the plan is, the Sun-Sentinel is moving to a universal copy desk to handle the changed workflow.

Yeah. Those of us in the biz know how important it is to make friends with the copy desk. Dude, how do I bring donuts to a universal desk. Not to mention -- papers are supposed to be local.

Another poster notes:

The S-S also is not replacing horse racing writer Dave Joseph, who left to work for the Bank Atlantic Center in Sunrise.

Bad, bad, bad news...

Poisoned Toothpaste in Panama -> from China

From the NYTimes:

Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China.

This is the second time this has happened.

Diethylene glycol is the same poison that the Panamanian government inadvertently mixed into cold medicine last year, killing at least 100 people. Records show that in that episode the poison, falsely labeled as glycerin, a harmless syrup, also originated in China.

Hillary and Wal-Mart

Things I didn't realize about Ms. Clinton and Wal-Mart:

• she was there for six years from 1986 to 1992, which was a long time ago. Not thrilled she was on this board, but let's keep the time frame in context for fairness. She doesn't seem proud of it:

Mrs. Clinton rarely, if ever, discusses it, leaving her board membership out of her speeches and off her campaign Web site.

Fellow board members and company executives, who have not spoken publicly about her role at Wal-Mart, say Mrs. Clinton used her position to champion personal causes, like the need for more women in management and a comprehensive environmental program, despite being Wal-Mart’s only female director, the youngest and arguably the least experienced in business. On other topics, like Wal-Mart’s vehement anti-unionism, for example, she was largely silent, they said.

• She gave back a $5,000 donation in 2005 from Wal-Mart because of “serious differences” with the company.

• Wal-Mart is based in Arkansas, duh. Forgot about that connection.There's still ties, via Bill and the company's top dog H. Lee Scott Jr.

from NYTimes. Photo credit: Richard Berquist of the 1990 board.

More on the Pet Food recall

"Also Friday, the company that produced the food expanded its recall to include all 95 brands of the "cuts and gravy" style food, regardless of when they were produced."

95 brands --- all really from the same place. That the Iams food is made by the same company that make that cat food for Food Lion's generic label.

The power of marketing. The illusion of choice.

And I wonder if the company plays a bit of a re-packaging trick. The recall notice on the site also notes:

"If you are in possession of a variety or multi-pack, please be sure to check the individual can or pouch rather than relying solely on the date coding on the side of the carton."

Why would the carton have a different date coding?

Expanded Menu Foods recall list here for Cats

For Dogs

Purina said as

"a precautionary measure, it is voluntarily withdrawing its 5.3 ounce Mighty Dog® brand pouch products that were produced by Menu Foods, Inc. from December 3, 2006 through March 14, 2007."

The product isn't on the Menu Foods recall list, but since Purina uses them for that product, it's taking that extra step as a precaution. Good for them. That's good business, as in responsible.

Hill's® Pet Nutrition is doing the same thing with it's Science Diet for cats.

P&G Pet Care did so for Iams and Eukanuba and noted of reports of illness in cats. No dogs so far.

More from Iams and anFAQ .

The Barista Bitch Session

Click link above; credit to Romensko.

Quit bitching about the names of everything. Yes, there is a “tall" size. No, it’s not the smallest size – that would be the “short.” Somewhere along the line, it got dropped from the menu, but can still be ordered. It doesn’t make much sense to me either, but I didn’t come up with the nomenclature for this shit. Order by the names on the menu, because I’ve had people ask for a "medium coffee" and get inexplicably pissed off when I give them a grande. Which is a medium coffee. If you eat at McDonald’s, you put a “Mc” in front of just about everything – get the f+ck over yourself and get used to it

Vice President of Cake

From Newsweek:

If you've ever puzzled over why packaged foods contain "polysorbate 60" or "mono and diglycerides," Ettlinger's new book, "Twinkie, Deconstructed ," is a treat you'll want to try. Chapter by chapter, Ettlinger—the author of previous food books like "Beer for Dummies"—decodes all 39 ingredients in the little crème-filled cakes. He explains their uses and the processes by which raw materials are "crushed, baked, fermented, refined and/or reacted into a totally unrecognizable goo or powder with a strange name," which then appears on a label full of other incomprehensible and barely pronounceable ingredients. Unraveling it all was a major undertaking—and Ettlinger received no help from Hostess and its parent company, Interstate Brands Corp., despite appealing directly to the Vice President of Cake.

At the heart of the book is the fundamental question: why is it you can bake a cake at home with as few as six ingredients, but Twinkies require 39? And why do many of them seem to bear so little resemblance to actual food? The answer: To stay fresh on a grocery-store shelf, Twinkies can't contain anything that might spoil, like milk, cream or butter. Once you remove such real ingredients, something has to take their place—and cellulose gum, lecithin and sodium stearoyl lactylate are a good start. Add the fact that industrial quantities of batter have to pump easily through automated tubes into cake molds, and you begin to get the idea

But it charges money

This would be so much cooler if there was no membership fee. Two versions: Bad Cop , Good Cop.

Hmm, wait ... it seems that Good Cop is for free.

"What the newspaper industry needs right now is a good publicist"

In January, the Newspaper Association of America announced it was launching a new marketing campaign. Sample copy: "Wait till you see what's in tomorrow's newspaper.... It's not the paper you grew up with. America's newspapers are now delivering their product on Web sites, podcasts, and e-mails." The tagline: "Newspaper. The Multi-Medium."

Catchy, huh? Forget the journalism; it's all about media platforms. Here's another idea: Big picture of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, with an inset photo of the wounded Iraq veterans who spilled their horror stories on Capitol Hill this week. Below, in an enormous bold red letters: "WHO GOT THIS STORY? A NEWSPAPER, THAT'S WHO."

As every good flack knows, public image is a precious thing. Use it or lose it.

~ William Powers, National Journal

A Wal-Mart November

I doubt there is a connection but it's kinda ironic.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) on Thursday forecast flat November sales at U.S. stores open at least a year, sounding a sour note for the start of the vital holiday shopping season and sending its stock lower in early electronic trading.

The world's biggest retailer also said October U.S. same-store sales rose a paltry 0.5 percent, its smallest gain in more than two years and below its lowered expectations.

Total sales rose 11.7 percent to $25.71 billion for the four-week period ended October 27.

Good luck to those kids doing the Wal-mart November thing. I hope it picks up for them in the coming years,

Starbucks, O Starbucks

Yeaaaah.... you know ....

The Starbucks Aesthetic

October 22, 2006
By SUSAN DOMINUS

WHEN Bette Gottfried, a 48-year-old regular at a Starbucks in Ardsley, N.Y., saw that her favorite coffeehouse was promoting a film, she wasn’t immediately interested. “At first I was leery,” said Ms. Gottfried, dressed in workout clothes, wearing her hair in a ponytail and sitting near the window with her daily decaf mocha (“low-fat milk, no foam, no whipped”). “I thought, ‘Who are they to get involved in the movies?’ ”

Ultimately, however, she decided to take her 9-year-old daughter to see the film, “Akeelah and the Bee,” precisely because of the involvement of Starbucks. “I trusted seeing the movie, because it was promoted here,” she said. After all, she liked the company’s coffee; she had already bought and liked several CD’s it produced and sold, compilations of music by Carole King, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. Why wouldn’t she like a Starbucks movie? She did, and now she’s considering picking up its latest cultural sales item: “For One More Day,” a book by Mitch Albom.

But Ms. Gottfried’s question is a valid one. Starbucks is clearly very good at selling coffee, but why should it become involved in the movies — and books and CD’s, for that matter? And why would consumers trust its taste in books and films any more than they’d trust, say, Simon & Schuster’s taste in Ethiopia Gemadro Estate decaf?

Yeaaaah.... you know ....

In an early misstep, Starbucks started offering Joe, a literary magazine that appeared in 1999 and lasted all of six months before Mr. Schultz decided, on the basis of slow sales, that the product “didn’t add any value.” But since then Starbucks has successfully promoted a slew of hits, from the Ray Charles CD “Genius Loves Company,” a joint venture with Concord Records that won several Grammy Awards and sold 800,000 copies at Starbucks alone, to a recent CD of Meryl Streep reading “The Velveteen Rabbit.”

Interestingly enough:

The heart of that audience is a group the company refers to as its “core customers” — educated, with an average age of 42 and an average income of $90,000.

And this part, sigh:

A major player in the company’s music business is Timothy Jones, manager of compilations and music programming. Mr. Jones, 58, ran a small independent record shop in Seattle until 1987, when his business folded and he started managing the Starbucks across the street. Customers there asked if they could buy the mixes of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis he was playing, and that’s how it all got started.

Mac

Starbucks: An expression of my hypocracy

sent by Tamika who snatched it from Netscape Home Page in the “What’s New” section

The Dirty Little Secret of Starbucks Coffee

That Starbucks coffee you're sipping on the way to work, as a mid-morning pick-me-up and an afternoon treat could be making you fat. Very fat. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a.k.a. "the food police," has issued this startling pronouncement: A 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream contains 720 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat, while a banana cream crunch bar chalks up a stunning 630 calories and 25 grams of saturated fat. By comparison, a McDonald's Big Mac has 560 calories and 11 grams of saturated fat.

Look out Starbucks! You may be the next target on CSPI's hit list, reports Reuters. This is the group that made a big name for itself several years ago attacking movie theater popcorn. Just recently they made headlines for suing KFC owner Yum Brands for frying the KFC chicken in oils that are high in trans fats, which are solid fats found in partially hydrogenated oils. Trans fats are known to clog arteries and raise the risk of heart disease and obesity. CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson cleverly said, "Regular consumers of Starbucks products could face Venti-sized health problems."

So what does CSPI want Starbucks to do? List the nutrition information on its menu boards. That information is easily available on the Starbucks Web site, but it's not the same thing as seeing 720 calories right next to the price of that 20-ounce Venti banana mocha Frappuccino with whipped cream you're about to order. "Customers can ask for nutrition information, but when you're talking about a transparent business in a busy world, that's not enough," union organizer and Starbucks barista Daniel Gross told Reuters in an interview. He wants Starbucks to use healthier shortenings that do not contain trans fat and to publicize the smallest size drink. It's called "short," and even though it is available in every Starbucks, you'll never see it on the menu. The union says Starbucks baristas gain weight when they work there since they are given unlimited free beverages and leftover pastries during their shifts.

What does Starbucks have to say? A company spokesman issued a statement saying the firm is "actively researching" alternatives to high-fat products. By this fall, it also plans to eliminate trans fat from seasonal baked goods (but not all baked goods). "In our beverage ingredients, we have reformulated any component that contained significant artificial trans fat content," the spokesman said.

I guess that explains what's happened to my middle....

Treasure Islands

Credit where credit is due.

Op-Ed Contributors
By JOSHUA REICHERT and THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV

June 15, 2006

PRESIDENT Bush is expected to declare the northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument today, thereby creating the largest marine reserve on earth. The president's decision caps a century of protection efforts by both Republican and Democratic presidents beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and including Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. But none ever proposed the sweeping level of protection for these islands that is being put in place by the Bush administration.

While we and others in the conservation community have not always agreed with President Bush's environmental policies, we believe it is important to acknowledge a significant policy achievement when it occurs — and one is about to occur.

Beginning 160 miles northwest of Kauai, and extending roughly 1,200 miles into the Pacific Ocean, the uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals and atolls of this archipelago make up one of the most remote and relatively undisturbed coral reef systems in the world. The area marked for protection covers roughly 140,000 square miles of ocean, larger than all of America's national parks combined.

Almost 70 percent of the tropical, shallow-water coral reefs in American waters are in this one place, together with 7,000 species of marine and terrestrial life, a quarter of which aren't found anywhere else. More than 14 million seabirds make these islands their home for at least a part of the year, along with the last population of the endangered Hawaiian monk seal.

The president's plan for the monument designation has the distinction of receiving broad support from the Hawaiian people and from Hawaii's Republican governor, Linda Lingle, who recently closed state waters in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands — everything up to three miles from shore — to commercial activities, including fishing. Many Native Hawaiians, who consider these islands an important part of their cultural and religious heritage, would also like to see commercial fishing ended in federal waters, which stretch three to 50 miles from shore.

In the plan to be announced by the White House, commercial fishing will be phased out over five years. What's more, the president's action will spur efforts to compensate the few remaining fishermen in the area for surrendering their permits to the government, which would then retire them. While it is still too early to know whether these efforts will be successful, such a buyout package would provide for an early end to fishing in the archipelago and offer reasonable compensation to the fishermen who have earned part of their livelihood there.

Just as we have protected spectacular areas on land from destructive activity, we know it is equally important to do so for the sea. The president's announcement is an important step in what we hope will be greater efforts to safeguard the ocean, while also addressing broader problems of overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction.

There are few opportunities for a president to protect such a large swath of ocean or land at little cost to the government, while garnering strong regional support. This is one, and we applaud Mr. Bush for taking the initiative to preserve one of the world's most spectacular marine environments.

Joshua Reichert directs the environment division of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Theodore Roosevelt IV is an investment banker.

Team Jolie

I can't help but respect her, despite all the celebrity ho-ha.

The actress also acknowledges to Cooper that she gives a third of her income to charity and jokes, "Yeah, well, I had a stupid income for what I do."

<

Like the Constant Gardner, no?

and, why this not a major story?

Panel Faults Pfizer in '96 Clinical Trial In Nigeria
Unapproved Drug Tested on Children

By Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 7, 2006; A01

A panel of Nigerian medical experts has concluded that Pfizer Inc. violated international law during a 1996 epidemic by testing an unapproved drug on children with brain infections at a field hospital.

That finding is detailed in a lengthy Nigerian government report that has remained unreleased for five years, despite inquiries from the children's attorneys and from the media. The Washington Post recently obtained a copy of the confidential report, which is attracting congressional interest. It was provided by a source who asked to remain anonymous because of personal safety concerns.

The report concludes that Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug to nearly 100 children and infants. Pfizer selected the patients at a field hospital in the city of Kano, where the children had been taken to be treated for an often deadly strain of meningitis. At the time, Doctors Without Borders was dispensing approved antibiotics at the hospital.

Pfizer's experiment was "an illegal trial of an unregistered drug," the Nigerian panel concluded, and a "clear case of exploitation of the ignorant."

The test came to public attention in December 2000, when The Post published the results of a year-long investigation into overseas pharmaceutical testing. The news was met in Nigeria with street demonstrations, lawsuits and demands for reform.

Pfizer contended that its researchers traveled to Kano with a purely philanthropic motive, to help fight the epidemic, which ultimately killed more than 15,000 Africans. The committee rejected that explanation, pointing out that Pfizer physicians completed their trial and left while "the epidemic was still raging."

The panel said an oral form of Trovan, the Pfizer drug used in the test, had apparently never been given to children with meningitis. There are no records documenting that Pfizer told the children or their parents that they were part of an experiment, it said. An approval letter from a Nigerian ethics committee, which Pfizer used to justify its actions had been concocted and backdated by the company's lead researcher in Kano, the report said.

The panel concluded that the experiment violated Nigerian law, the international Declaration of Helsinki that governs ethical medical research and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Five children died after being treated with the experimental antibiotic and others showed signs of arthritis, although there is no evidence the drug played a part. Six children died while taking a comparison drug.

The panel recommended that Pfizer be "sanctioned appropriately" and directed to issue "an unreserved apology to the government and people of Nigeria." The company should also pay an unspecified amount of restitution, the report said. The panel recommended that Nigeria enact reforms to prevent a recurrence.

Aspects of the affair remain mysterious, such as why the report remains confidential. The head of the investigative panel, Abdulsalami Nasidi, said in a brief telephone conversation from Nigeria, "I don't really know myself" why the report was never released.

"I did my job as a civil servant," said Nasidi, who is quoted in the report as saying he has been the target of unspecified death threats.

A New York City attorney for the families of the children, Elaine Kusel of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, said her firm had spent years looking for the report, of which they believed there were only three copies. They tracked one to a Nigerian government safe, but it was reported stolen, she said. Another copy was reported to have been held by an official who died.

"It sounds like a mystery novel here, like John le Carré," Kusel said.

The current Nigerian health minister, Eyitayo Lambo, did not respond to calls and e-mail messages from a reporter. Dora Akunyili, director of the Nigerian drug control agency, said she did not know why the report remained confidential but added that her agency had independently concluded that "these people did not have authority to conduct the trial."

Executives at Pfizer, the world's biggest drug company, said they had not seen the report. After reviewing a copy, they responded in a two-page statement:

"The Nigerian government has neither contacted Pfizer about any of the committee's findings nor are we aware that the committee has approved a final report. Therefore it would be inappropriate for the company to respond to specific points in the document.

"However, as we have stated repeatedly over the past several years, Pfizer conducted this trial with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government and in a responsible way consistent with Nigerian law and Pfizer's abiding commitment to patient safety."

Pfizer said it had previously tested the drug in thousands of patients and found it effective. Local nurses explained the experiment to Nigerian parents, it added, and obtained their "verbal" consent. The company said that Trovan demonstrated the highest survival rate of any treatment at the hospital.

"Trovan unquestionably saved lives, and Pfizer strongly disagrees with any suggestion that the company conducted its study in an unethical manner," the statement said.

At the time of the Nigerian experiment, Pfizer was developing Trovan for release in the United States, where it was expected to gross up to $1 billion a year.

The FDA never approved Trovan for use in treating American children. After being cleared for adult use in 1997, the drug quickly became one of the most prescribed antibiotics in the United States. But Trovan was later associated with reports of liver damage and deaths, leading the FDA to severely restrict its use in 1999. European regulators banned the drug.

After The Post published its report, Nigeria's health minister at the time, Tim Menakaya, appointed a blue-ribbon panel of medical experts to look into Pfizer's actions, saying, "Let me assure you that my ministry will take all necessary steps to obtain details of this incident and make them known to the general public." The committee collected hundreds of documents and interviewed at least 26 people.

Pfizer had told authorities that a Nigerian doctor directed the experiment. The committee, however, found that researchers from Pfizer's U.S. office controlled the trial, and the inexperienced Kano doctor, Abdulhamid Isa Dutse, was the principal investigator "only by name."

Publications listed Dutse as the lead author of articles on Trovan, but the committee found that depiction "did not sufficiently reflect his role." Dutse indicated he was kept in the dark about the experiment's results and said he did not see at least one publication until the committee showed it to him.

"He was shocked that Pfizer could publish such data without showing him or intimating him with details," the report said, concluding that Dutse was "naive and exploited."

The report quoted Dutse as saying that Pfizer's motive was far from philanthropic.

"I have trusted people and am disappointed," Dutse told the committee. "I regret this whole exercise, I wonder why on earth I did this."

Dutse admitted that he created a letter after the experiment purporting to show that the test had been approved in advance by a Nigerian hospital's ethics committee. He then backdated the letter to March 28, 1996 -- a week before Pfizer's experiment began.

Pfizer used the letter as a key justification for the trial in discussions with reporters and submitted it to the FDA. U.S. regulations require the sponsors of foreign medical research seeking FDA approval to show that the tests have been reviewed in advance by an ethics committee.

The Post previously reported that the hospital had no ethics committee in March 1996 and that the letterhead stationery used was not created until months after the experiment's conclusion.

In a statement last week, Pfizer said that after that article appeared, the company investigated and found that the letter was "incorrect."

"Obviously this should not have occurred and the company very much regrets that it did," the statement said. "It is important to point out, though, that Pfizer thought proper procedure had been followed at the time of the clinical study."

The former director of Nigeria's version of the FDA said the agency had been unaware of the experiment. He told the panel that he "viewed the conduct of the trial by Pfizer as an act of deception and misuse of privilege."

The report said the treatment of two children during the experiment represented unspecified "serious deviations" from the trial's protocol and concluded that those deviations compromised their care. One was a 10-year-old girl identified only as Patient No. 0069, who was given the experimental antibiotic for three days as her condition deteriorated. She died without receiving any other antibiotic.

Last week, Rep. Tom Lantos of California, the senior Democrat on the International Relations Committee, described the report's findings as "absolutely appalling" and called on Pfizer to open its records.

"I think it borders on the criminal that the large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe, are using these poor, illiterate and uninformed people as guinea pigs," Lantos said.

Lantos said he expected to introduce a bill requiring U.S. researchers to give regulators details of tests they plan in developing countries.

"It's the only ethical thing to do," Lantos said. The bill is similar to one his committee approved in 2001 that did not make it out of the House. "There should be a lot of bipartisan support for it. This outrages people."

The report's findings also breathe new life into a lawsuit against Pfizer, according to Kusel, who represents 30 Nigerian families. "It's great news, I'm very excited," she said when told of the committee's conclusions.

The families sued Pfizer in federal court in New York in 2001, alleging that the company had exposed the children to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

A U.S. judge dismissed the suit last summer, saying U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction. Kusel is appealing.

"A report like this does not get suppressed without someone high up being involved," she said.

Disney losing appetite for fast food

( An LATimes tale via the Sun-Sentinel)

Marketing ties with McDonald's hit lean times

By Rachel Abramowitz
Los Angeles Times
Posted May 7 2006

For 10 years Disney and McDonald's appeared to have a beautiful billion-dollar marriage. Happy Meals bore little figurines of Nemo, Mr. Incredible, and Peter Pan.

But no more. This is one relationship that's ending because of the children.

Disney is not renewing its billon-dollar, cross-promotional pact with the fast-food giant, which ends with this summer's release of Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. The reason, in part, say multiple high-ranking sources, is the family-friendly entertainment giant wants to distance itself from fast food -- and its links to the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Disney's not the only studio that thinks french fries loaded with trans fats may be too hot to handle.

DreamWorks is working with McDonald's to promote Shrek 3, due out in 2007. But according to one top-level studio source, there is already internal debate about whether the lovable green ogre should steer clear of chicken nuggets and Big Macs in favor of the healthier fare on McDonald's menu, such as salads. Compounding the issue is the fact that Shrek is, after all, overweight.

The ending of the McDonalds-Disney partnership comes at a time when the processed and fast food industries are under fire on a number of fronts because of growing concerns about childhood obesity. Just last week, former President Bill Clinton succeeded in yanking sugary sodas from elementary school campuses.

But some say the more discreet actions of the movie industry could ultimately have a much greater impact, especially if other corporate giants follow suit.

"I think it would have impact in contributing to the cultural change that is necessary," says Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, the chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that just released a study showing how food marketing affected children's diets. "The committee thought it was important for the use of cartoon characters that appeal to children only to be used in the marketing of healthy products."

One of the industry's most prominent critics, Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, said it will be hugely significant if the Hollywood studios don't want to be associated with Happy Meals. "It will put more pressure on McDonald's to change what they sell in Happy Meals. The obesity issue would be irrelevant if the food in the Happy Meals was healthy."

This month Houghton Mifflin releases a new book by Schlosser and co-author Charles Wilson: Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food, that has already put McDonald's on edge.

Animated ambivalence

Disney declined to comment about the end of its arrangement with McDonald's. The company has not signed any new promotional deals with any fast-food providers even though its recent purchase of Pixar Animation Studios gives it an even bigger slate of potential family-oriented blockbusters to market to youngsters.

In a conference call with analysts last August, Steve Jobs, the chairman of Pixar and now Disney's largest shareholder, was asked about the end of the McDonald's deal, and signaled the company's ambivalence about the fast-food sector: "There is value in [fast food tie-ins]. But there are also some concerns, as our society becomes more conscious of some of the implications of fast food."

Skipping the fast-food sector would certainly impact Disney's promotional strategy, says analyst Lowell Singer, from A.C. Cowen. "Fast food has been a very important promotional partner in promoting films to children. As the animated marketplace gets more competition over the next few years, Disney will need to be much more aggressive and creative in reaching children though other promotional outlets."

Restaurant analysts don't expect the Disney decision to affect McDonald's, which is free to work with other movie studios, as well as toy companies as disparate as Lego and Build-a-bear. In fact, while McDonald's relationship with the entertainment giant boasted hit promotions for such films as 101 Dalmatians, and Lilo and Stitch, some franchisees began to chafe when the studio churned out clunkers like Treasure Planet. The company also had to abide by Disney's strict rules regarding use of their characters, which were not allowed to be seen eating McDonald's food.

While even nutritionists caution that fast food isn't the only culprit when it comes to childhood obesity, it's certainly a factor.

Happy Meals are specifically marketed to children between the ages of 3 and 9. A regular six-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with fries and Hi-C contains 620 calories, 28 grams of total fat, and 5 grams of trans fat. In recent years, McDonald's has also added healthy alternatives such as apples and low-fat milk.

All about the toy

At the end of the day, what often sells a Happy Meal is the toy, not the food. A good toy promotion can double or triple the sales of Happy Meals.

Blame impressionable young minds and "the `nag' factor," said Prof. Jerome Williams, an advertising expert at the University of Texas.

"Kids see a movie, and see it's being promoted with a particular product, they'll nag their parents about it," he said. "Studies have shown that, after a while, parents will give into their children. They're not so much expressing a preference for a Happy Meal but for the character the Happy Meal is associated with."

According to study released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Center for Disease Control, 19 percent of children ages 6-11 are overweight, and 17 percent of teenagers are overweight.

Those figures may be conservative, said Prof. James O. Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado. He says the new governmental data suggests that as many as 40 percent of young children are overweight, and about 20 percent fall into the obese category.

But Disney isn't divorcing itself from McDonald's, either. The fast-food giant will continue to be a staple in the theme parks. They're also leaving open the possibility of McDonald's promotions geared towards adults.

"Our relationship was ongoing before the agreement and will continue after," said Dean Barrett, senior vice-president of global marketing for McDonald's.

Other factors contributed to the unraveling of the McDonald's-Disney alliance.

For its part, Disney grew disgruntled with some of McDonald's more recent advertising efforts, and had problems with the fast food giant's toy production schedule, according to a source. The studio had to lock down release dates at least 18 months ahead of time to accommodate McDonald's needs. If the studio moved the date, it had to pay a steep penalty to McDonald's.

Hollywood and fast food have been closely aligned since the 1980s, with almost every major film targeting children boasting a fast food tie-in of some sort.