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Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender, met with many powerful people in finance and business during his career, but the financier invested with only a few of them. One of those people was Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire. In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was co-founded by Mr. Thiel. Today that investment is worth nearly $170 million. The investment in Valar, which specializes in providing start-up capital to financial services tech companies, is the largest asset still held by Mr. Epstein's estate. There's a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women. Those victims have already received monetary settlements from the estate, which required them to sign broad releases that gave up the right to bring future claims against it or individuals associated with it. The money is more likely to be distributed to one of Mr. Epstein's former girlfriends and two of his long-term advisers, who have been named the beneficiaries of his estate. Just one major federal civil lawsuit remains pending against the executors of the estate, a potential class action filed on behalf victims who haven't yet settled with the estate. In the past, victims have received settlements ranging from $500,000 to $2 million.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year. Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling. But what [scientists Daniel] Janzen and [Winnie] Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. Janzen and Hallwachs join a number of scientists that have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world. They include in Germany, where flying insects across 63 insect reserves dropped 75% in less than 30 years; the US, where beetle numbers dropped 83% in 45 years; and Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence. Scientists in the US, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama have now reported the catastrophic declines of birds in "untouched" regions – including reserves inside millions of hectares of pristine forest. In each case, the worst losses were among insectivorous birds.
Note: Read more about the insect apocalypse. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on environmental destruction.
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America's agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI. The documents ... detail a secretive and long-running collaboration between the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD)–whose scope today includes Palestinian rights activists and the recent wave of arson targeting Teslas–and the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), a nonprofit trade group representing the interests of US farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, and others across America's food supply chain. The AAA has been supplying federal agents with intelligence on the activities of animal rights groups ... with records of emails and meetings reflecting the industry's broader mission to convince authorities that activists are the preeminent "bioterrorism" threat to the United States. Spies working for the AAA during its collaboration with the FBI went undercover at activism meetings, obtaining photographs, audio recordings, and other strategic material. The records further show that state authorities have cited protests as a reason to conceal information about disease outbreaks at factory farms from the public.
Note: Read more about how animal rights activists are being targeted as terrorists. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in factory farming and in the intelligence community.
Palantir has long been connected to government surveillance. It was founded in part with CIA money, it has served as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor since 2011, and it's been used for everything from local law enforcement to COVID-19 efforts. But the prominence of Palantir tools in federal agencies seems to be growing under President Trump. "The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon," reports The New York Times, noting that this figure "does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent." Palantir technology has largely been used by the military, the intelligence agencies, the immigration enforcers, and the police. But its uses could be expanding. Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies–the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Along with the Trump administration's efforts to share more data across federal agencies, this signals that Palantir's huge data analysis capabilities could wind up being wielded against all Americans. Right now, the Trump administration is using Palantir tools for immigration enforcement, but those tools could easily be applied to other ... targets.
Note: Read about Palantir's recent, first-ever AI warfare conference. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and intelligence agency corruption.
As a sales rep for drug manufacturers Questcor, Lisa Pratta always suspected the company's business practices weren't just immoral but illegal, too, as she explains in "False Claims – One Insider's Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption." Pratta began working for Questcor in 2010 as the sales rep in the Northeast region for Acthar, a drug which helped relieve autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. "If prescribed correctly, Acthar could help people walk again. And talk again," writes Pratta. But, she adds, "Questcor made more money when it was prescribed incorrectly." They would do anything to sell Acthar. From paying doctors to prescribe it to using bogus research studies proclaiming its miraculous efficacy, they were so successful that Achtar's price rose from $40 per vial in 2000 to nearly $39,000 in 2019 – an increase of 97,000%. Some sales reps were making up to $4 million a year and, in turn, kept the physicians doing their bidding in a life of luxury. "They took them on scuba diving trips and bought clothes and shoes for their wives. One guy bought his doctor a brand new Armani suit and expensed it to Questcor," she recalls. In March 2019, the Department of Justice served a 100-page lawsuit against Mallinckrodt, alleging illegal marketing of Acthar, bribing doctors to boost sales and defrauding government health care programs. It also mentioned Pratta's role in the case, meaning her long-held anonymity was now public knowledge.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science and Big Pharma profiteering.
I had to pay a student to go island hopping to find basic records in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The territory's opaque laws and corruption makes it a haven for misdeeds. Albert Bryan Jr., the current governor, used his position to curry favor for Jeffrey Epstein for years. He helped bestow tax exemptions on Epstein's shadowy businesses and pushed for waivers allowing the former financier to dodge USVI sex offender laws. Bryan, whose hand-selected Attorney General swiftly ended the J.P. Morgan lawsuit that revealed a gusher of damning documents about Epstein's network, is now tapping Epstein victim settlement funds ... to pay for various earmarks and unrelated government debts. Former Attorney General Denise George led a series of lawsuits against Epstein's estate and former associates. Bryan fired her. In 2024, Bryan named a new Attorney General–none other than Gordon Rhea, a private practice attorney who previously defended Richard Kahn during the Epstein estate lawsuit. Not long ago, Kahn and Indyke were described by the U.S. Virgin Islands as "indispensable captains" of Epstein's alleged criminal human trafficking enterprise. We still have many unanswered questions. Why did U.S. Virgin Islands police and customs agents never act to protect the young girls they saw taken to Epstein's islands? What is clear, however, is that an attorney who worked to protect Epstein's estate is now the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
The first White House report of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission ... was published yesterday. The Commission is chaired by [Robert F.] Kennedy, now Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and features other prominent administration officials including USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. The report outlines the massive increase in youth health problems in the country that spends more per capita on healthcare than any nation in history. Many of these diseases are metabolic: obesity, diabetes, and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease. Others involve the immune system, such as asthma, allergies, and autoimmune disorders. Still others are psychiatric, such as depression and anxiety. Perhaps the most baffling development is the massive spike in autism spectrum disorder. This once-rare condition reportedly affects one in 31 American children. The MAHA Commission focuses on four key drivers of such change: food, exposure to environmental chemicals, the pervasive use of technology and a corresponding decline in physical exercise, and the overuse of medication that sometimes creates more problems than it solves. The Commission's first report ... does not call for a ban on specific pesticides or vaccines. What it does manage, however, is to reframe the debate over public health and set a bold agenda to reform the system.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.
In the spring of 2025, central Illinois was swallowed by a wall of dust so dense it erased the horizon. This was not a natural disaster. It was the consequence of decades of extractive farming practices. The National Weather Service confirmed that the dust came from exposed agricultural fields–land left vulnerable by chemical-dependent, high-till farming practices that destroy soil structure, eliminate ground cover, and kill the living organisms that bind soil together. Similar dust-related incidents have been reported across the Midwest. Scientists and soil experts warn that without major shifts in land management, these events will become more frequent, more deadly, and more widespread. This is not simply about the weather. This is about how we farm. It is about how much living topsoil we lose every year, estimated globally at over 24 billion tons. Nearly a century ago, our nation faced a similar reckoning. During the 1930s, the Dust Bowl decimated the Great Plains. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ... created the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), now the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and established a network of local soil and water conservation districts across every county in America. He planted trees .... across the Midwest, recognizing that roots hold soil. The current Administration's response is the exact opposite. The Trump government has fired at least 1,700 NRCS employees whose very jobs have been to protect the soil.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in government and in the food system.
The U.S. intelligence community is now buying up vast volumes of sensitive information that would have previously required a court order, essentially bypassing the Fourth Amendment. But the surveillance state has encountered a problem: There's simply too much data on sale from too many corporations and brokers. So the government has a plan for a one-stop shop. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and "streamline" the use of commercially available information, or CAI, like location data derived from mobile ads, by American spy agencies, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. The data portal will include information deemed by the ODNI as highly sensitive, that which can be "misused to cause substantial harm, embarrassment, and inconvenience to U.S. persons." The "Intelligence Community Data Consortium" will provide a single convenient web-based storefront for searching and accessing this data, along with a "data marketplace" for purchasing "the best data at the best price," faster than ever before. It will be designed for the 18 different federal agencies and offices that make up the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Security Agency, CIA, FBI Intelligence Branch, and Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis – though one document suggests the portal will also be used by agencies not directly related to intelligence or defense.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy.
When Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James, the teardrop-shaped island southeast of St. Thomas, in the late 1990s ... he told U.S. Virgin Islands officials that he was seeking privacy. He also appears to have purchased impunity. Investigators accuse him of raping and sexually abusing girls as young as eleven at his island compound where he also hosted many A-list politicians, business leaders and celebrities. One 15-year-old, whom Epstein allegedly forced into sex acts, attempted to escape by swimming away from the island. She was caught and her passport was taken away. While Epstein was alive, Virgin Islands officials appear to have shielded him from scrutiny. After his death in 2019, other officials who aided Epstein began profiting from continued secrecy and a string of legal settlements ... that put hundreds of millions of dollars under the government's control. No one appears to have benefited more than Albert Bryan Jr., the governor of the territory. Bryan has tapped the Epstein settlement funds to pay for a variety of his domestic political agenda items. The proceeds were promised to assist victims of sexual assault, human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and child sexual abuse. In late April, Bryan ... announced the allocation of $22 million in retroactive wages to government workers. Bryan [also] applied the Epstein funds for vendor payments and sought to use the money for a variety of other earmarks, such as a $25 million makeover for the Justice Building on St. Croix.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
In Europe, the weedkiller atrazine has been banned for nearly two decades because of its suspected links to reproductive problems like reduced sperm quality and birth defects. In the United States, it remains one of the most widely used pesticides, sprayed on corn, sugar cane and other crops, the result of years of industry lobbying. This week, a "Make America Healthy Again" commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to issue a report on the causes of chronic illnesses in the United States. And Mr. Kennedy, who worked for years as an environmental lawyer fighting chemical companies, wants the report to highlight the harms of pesticides like atrazine. "We're calling for a ban of 85 pesticides that have already been banned in other countries," said Zen Honeycutt, who leads a coalition of mothers opposed to pesticides and genetically modified organisms, at a national conference of Make America Healthy Again supporters. "Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, the pesticide companies, all of these companies are the delivery mechanisms for toxins," said Tony Lyons, co-president of the newly established MAHA Institute, which hosted the MAHA conference. "Our government agencies shouldn't be protecting a handful of the most powerful companies on earth, protecting their profits over the welfare of its own citizens." The E.P.A. is currently updating its mitigation proposals for atrazine.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals.
If there is one thing that Ilya Sutskever knows, it is the opportunities–and risks–that stem from the advent of artificial intelligence. An AI safety researcher and one of the top minds in the field, he served for years as the chief scientist of OpenAI. There he had the explicit goal of creating deep learning neural networks so advanced they would one day be able to think and reason just as well as, if not better than, any human. Artificial general intelligence, or simply AGI, is the official term for that goal. According to excerpts published by The Atlantic ... part of those plans included a doomsday shelter for OpenAI researchers. "We're definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI," Sutskever told his team in 2023. Sutskever reasoned his fellow scientists would require protection at that point, since the technology was too powerful for it not to become an object of intense desire for governments globally. "Of course, it's going to be optional whether you want to get into the bunker," he assured fellow OpenAI scientists. Sutskever knows better than most what the awesome capabilities of AI are. He was part of an elite trio behind the 2012 creation of AlexNet, often dubbed by experts as the Big Bang of AI. Recruited by Elon Musk personally to join OpenAI three years later, he would go on to lead its efforts to develop AGI. But the launch of its ChatGPT bot accidentally derailed his plans by unleashing a funding gold rush the safety-minded Sutskever could no longer control.
Note: Watch a conversation on the big picture of emerging technology with Collective Evolution founder Joe Martino and WTK team members Amber Yang and Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI.
In President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous 1961 speech about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he also cautioned Americans about the growing power of a "scientific, technological elite." "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment project allocations and the power of money is ever present," warned Eisenhower. And he was right. Today, many of the people protesting the Trump administration's cuts to federal funding for scientific research are part of that scientific, technological elite. But there's a good chance that slashing federal spending will liberate science from the corrupting forces that Eisenhower warned us about. Thomas Edison's industrial lab produced huge breakthroughs in telecommunications and electrification. Alexander Graham Bell's lab produced modern telephony and sound recording, all without government money. The Wright Brothers–who ran a bicycle shop before revolutionizing aviation–launched the first successfully manned airplane flight in December 1903, beating out more experienced competitors like Samuel Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who had received a grant from the War Department for his research. Of course, government funding has led to major breakthroughs both during and after World War II. In an influential 2005 paper, Stanford University professor John Ioannidis flatly concluded that "most published research findings are false." He argued that the current peer review model encourages groupthink. "You end up with a monolithic view, and so you crush what's so important in science, which is different ideas competing in a marketplace of ideas."
Note: "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest. For more along these lines, read about how the US government turns a blind eye to the corporations fueling America's health crisis.
Amber Scorah knows only too well that powerful stories can change society–and that powerful organizations will try to undermine those who tell them. While working at a media outlet that connects whistleblowers with journalists, she noticed parallels in the coercive tactics used by groups trying to suppress information. "There is a sort of playbook that powerful entities seem to use over and over again," she says. "You expose something about the powerful, they try to discredit you, people in your community may ostracize you." In September 2024, Scorah cofounded Psst, a nonprofit that helps people in the tech industry or the government share information of public interest with extra protections–with lots of options for specifying how the information gets used and how anonymous a person stays. Psst's main offering is a "digital safe"–which users access through an anonymous end-to-end encrypted text box hosted on Psst.org, where they can enter a description of their concerns. What makes Psst unique is something it calls its "information escrow" system–users have the option to keep their submission private until someone else shares similar concerns about the same company or organization. Combining reports from multiple sources defends against some of the isolating effects of whistleblowing and makes it harder for companies to write off a story as the grievance of a disgruntled employee, says Psst cofounder Jennifer Gibson.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.
Uncle Sam conducted several pointless and destructive experiments on his own people during the Cold War. The most infamous was MKUltra, the CIA's project to develop procedures for mind control using psychedelic drugs and psychological torture. During Operation Sea-Spray, the U.S. Navy secretly sprayed San Francisco with bacteria to simulate a biological attack. San Francisco was also the site of a series of radiation experiments by the U.S. Navy. A 2024 investigation by the San Francisco Public Press and The Guardian revealed that the city's U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory had exposed at least 1,073 people to radiation over 24 experiments between 1946 and 1963. The tests came during a time when the effects of nuclear radiation were a pressing concern, and were conducted without ethical safeguards. Conscripted soldiers and civilian volunteers were sent into radioactive conditions or purposely dosed with radiation without their informed consent. The lab didn't bother following up. The Radiological Defense Laboratory ... closed in 1969. In 2013, whistleblowers brought a lawsuit against a decontamination contractor for cutting corners and faking results; in January 2025, the contractor agreed to pay a $97 million settlement. Scientists [there had] developed "synthetic fallout"–dirt laced with radioactive isotopes to simulate the waste created by a nuclear war. They had test subjects practice cleaning it up, rub it on their skin, or crawl around in it.
Note: Read about the long history of humans being treated like guinea pigs in science experiments. Learn more about the MKUltra Program in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.
According to recent research by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, "nearly 1 in 5 young people believe it's OK to track their partner whenever they want". Many constantly share their location with their partner, or use apps like Life360 or Find My Friends. Some groups of friends all do it together, and talk of it as a kind of digital closeness where physical distance and the busyness of life keeps them apart. Others use apps to keep familial watch over older relatives – especially when their health may be in decline. When government officials or tech industry bigwigs proclaim that you should be OK with being spied on if you're not doing anything wrong, they're asking (well, demanding) that we trust them. But it's not about trust, it's about control and disciplining behaviour. "Nothing to hide; nothing to fear" is a frustratingly persistent fallacy, one in which we ought to be critical of when its underlying (lack of) logic creeps into how we think about interacting with one another. When it comes to interpersonal surveillance, blurring the boundary between care and control can be dangerous. Just as normalising state and corporate surveillance can lead to further erosion of rights and freedoms over time, normalising interpersonal surveillance seems to be changing the landscape of what's considered to be an expression of love – and not necessarily for the better. We ought to be very critical of claims that equate surveillance with safety.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Joan Doyle trusts her doctors. Between her husband's epilepsy and diabetes, her daughter's Down syndrome and her own car accident years ago, the 65-year-old Sharonville resident and her family have relied on a whole host of doctors to guide them through new diagnoses and prescriptions. So when she searched her family's doctors in Open Payments, a public database that shows which doctors have received money from Big Pharma, Doyle was curious about what she'd find. "Certainly none of my doctors are on this list," she remembered thinking before searching the database. She was surprised. "Every single one of them," Doyle said. "Everybody from our dentist to our family doctor to all of our ologists." All 12 of the doctors Doyle searched accepted payments or in-kind forms of compensation from pharma or medical device companies between 2017 and 2023. The total sum varied widely, from less than $300 for her OB-GYN to more than $150,000 for her husband's oncologist. Payments like these are pervasive: A 2024 analysis found that more than half of doctors in the U.S. accepted a payment from a pharmaceutical or medical device company over the past decade. Most don't earn millions of dollars ... but research shows that when a doctor was bought a single meal of less than $20 by a drug company, they were up to twice as likely to prescribe the medication the company was marketing.
Note: 60% of U.S. doctors who shaped the DSM-5-TR–the "bible" of psychiatric diagnosis–received $14.2 million from the drug industry, raising concerns over conflicts of interest in psychiatric guidelines. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.
The inaugural "AI Expo for National Competitiveness" [was] hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the "techno-economic" thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt. The conference's lead sponsor was Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel that's best known for inspiring 2019 protests against its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) at the height of Trump's family separation policy. Currently, Palantir is supplying some of its AI products to the Israel Defense Forces. I ... went to a panel in Palantir's booth titled Civilian Harm Mitigation. It was led by two "privacy and civil liberties engineers" [who] described how Palantir's Gaia map tool lets users "nominate targets of interest" for "the target nomination process". It helps people choose which places get bombed. After [clicking] a few options on an interactive map, a targeted landmass lit up with bright blue blobs. These blobs ... were civilian areas like hospitals and schools. Gaia uses a large language model (something like ChatGPT) to sift through this information and simplify it. Essentially, people choosing bomb targets get a dumbed-down version of information about where children sleep and families get medical treatment. "Let's say you're operating in a place with a lot of civilian areas, like Gaza," I asked the engineers afterward. "Does Palantir prevent you from â€nominating a target' in a civilian location?" Short answer, no.
Note: "Nominating a target" is military jargon that means identifying a person, place, or object to be attacked with bombs, drones, or other weapons. Palantir's Gaia map tool makes life-or-death decisions easier by turning human lives and civilian places into abstract data points on a screen. Read about Palantir's growing influence in law enforcement and the war machine. For more, watch our 9-min video on the militarization of Big Tech.
When Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes went diving in the Cayman Islands in 2015, the experience changed his life. The highly decorated veteran had logged thousands of dives as a Special Ops Force Recon Marine in 18 years of service. But, as Reyes recalls, "As combat divers we operate at night, pushing 200 pounds of equipment, carrying massive weapons. It's very stressful and we focus on the mission – taking on the enemy." In the Caribbean, Reyes dove for the first time during daytime at his own pace, guided by his friend Jim Ritterhoff, who worked with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute. At the time, Reyes was struggling with depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. "I had a really hard drug habit after all these intense combat tours," he admits, but diving in the Caymans, surrounded by vibrant marine life, reignited a sense of wonder. "It brought me back to life. It inspired the same kind of protective spirit and willingness to go fight in the battlefield that I used in the Marine Corps, but now I wanted to use that passion to fight for ocean conservation." In 2016, Reyes, Ritterhoff and Keith Sahm co-founded Force Blue, a nonprofit that recruits veterans – especially Navy SEALs and Special Operations divers with military dive training – to channel their skills into marine conservation. "We're learning to transfer combat diving expertise into protecting and providing refuge for this incredible aquatic environment," Reyes explains.
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories on healing the Earth.
Americans are becoming progressively sicker with chronic diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, immune disorders, and declining fertility. Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more. The increase in incidence of chronic diseases to epidemic levels has occurred over the last 50 years in parallel with the dramatic increase in the production and use of human-made chemicals, most made from petroleum. These chemicals are used in household products, food, and food packaging. There is either no pre-market testing or limited, inappropriate testing for safety of chemicals such as artificial flavorings, dyes, emulsifiers, thickeners, preservatives, and other additives. Exposure is ubiquitous because chemicals that make their way into our food are frequently not identified, and thus cannot realistically be avoided. The result is that unavoidable toxic chemicals are contributing to chronic diseases. Critically, the FDA today does not require corporations to even inform them of many of the chemicals being added to our food, and corporations have been allowed to staff regulatory panels that determine whether the human-made chemicals they add to food and food packaging are safe. The FDA blatantly disregarded this abuse of federal conflict-of-interest standards, which resulted in thousands of untested chemicals being designated as "Generally Recognized As Safe" (GRAS).
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on toxic chemicals and food system corruption.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.