The People Speak, August 25, 2015
The People Speak with Sophia Rae and guest Steven Druker
Guest, Steven Druker
STEVEN DRUCKER is a public interest attorney who founded the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting technologies that foster human and environmental health and addressing the problems of those that do not. As executive director of the Alliance, he organized a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on genetically engineered (GE) foods. This revealed that politically appointed administrators had covered up the extensive warnings of their own scientists about the unusual risks of these foods, lied about the facts, and then ushered these novel products onto the market in violation of explicit mandates of federal food safety law. In organizing the suit, he assembled an unprecedented coalition of eminent scientists and religious leaders to stand with the Alliance as co-plaintiffs – the first time scientists had sued a federal administrative agency on the grounds that one of its policies is scientifically unsound.
He is a prominent commentator on the risks of GE foods, has been featured in numerous articles in newspapers and magazines on five continents, and has appeared on many nationally broadcast television and radio programs (such as NPR’s The Connection and The Cleveland City Club; various BBC interviews; and Australia’s equivalent of The Today Show). He’s been a featured speaker at symposia at the British House of Commons and the National Congress of Brazil and at press conferences sponsored by the Brazilian Medical Association, the Swedish Consumers Association, and concerned members of the European Parliament.
He has served on the food safety panels at conferences conducted by the National Research Council and the FDA; given lectures at numerous universities (including the Biological Laboratories at Harvard, Tel Aviv University, and the University of Copenhagen); and met with government officials world-wide, including the UK’s Environmental Minister and the heads of food safety for France, Ireland, and Australia. He also conferred at the White House Executive Offices with an interagency task force of the President’s Council on Environmental Quality.
On invitation, he published articles about GE food in The Congressional Quarterly Researcher; Pacific World, a leading ecological magazine in New Zealand; and The Parliament Magazine, an influential Brussels-based journal covering EU policy issues. In May 2004, The Financial Times published his comment on GE food and the deceptions of the U.S. government.
He has extensive academic background in the history and philosophy of science and in human development and ethics – and has lectured extensively in these fields at universities and for professional groups, including presentations at the Center for Moral Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an institute of the American Bar Association. He co-authored the introductory and final chapters of Higher Stages of Human Development, published by Oxford University Press, and wrote a chapter on ethical development for Transcendence and Mature Thought in Adulthood, published by Rowman and Littlefield.
He majored in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, received a special award for “Outstanding Accomplishment” in that field, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year, and graduated with “Great Distinction in General Scholarship.” He also received his Juris Doctor from U.C. Berkeley and was elected to both the Law Review and the Order of the Coif (the legal honor society).
ABOUT Altered Genes Twisted Truth by Steven Drucker
This book uncovers the biggest scientific fraud of our age. It tells the fascinating and frequently astounding story of how the massive enterprise to restructure the genetic core of the world's food supply came into being, how it advanced by consistently violating the protocols of science, and how for more than three decades, hundreds of eminent biologists and esteemed institutions have systematically contorted the truth in order to conceal the unique risks of its products–and get them onto our dinner plates.
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth provides a graphic account of how this elaborate fraud was crafted and how it not only deceived the general public, but Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and a host of other astute and influential individuals as well. The book also exposes how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was induced to become a key accomplice--and how it has broken the law and repeatedly lied in order to usher genetically engineered foods onto the market without the safety testing that's required by federal statute. As a result, for fifteen years America's families have been regularly ingesting a group of novel products that the FDA's own scientific staff had previously determined to be unduly hazardous to human health.
By the time this gripping story comes to a close, it will be clear that the degradation of science it documents has not only been unsavory but unprecedented--and that in no other instance have so many scientists so seriously subverted the standards they were trained to uphold, misled so many people, and imposed such magnitude of risk on both human health and the health of the environment.
The People Speak
The People Speak has evolved over the years with many great guests who have been interviewed by some very fine hosts.
We are a 55 minute show airing every other Sunday between 5-6pm Pacific/8-9pm Eastern. The show features a guest interview from any number of realms of interest (entertainment, science, philosophy, healing, spirituality, activism, politics, literature, etc.).
The guests share their stories, lives, strategies, books, philosophy, films, music, or whatever it is they use as a vehicle for making a difference for the better.
The radio show name, The People Speak, is based on the idea of allowing our audience - the People - a chance to interact with the guests during the hour, and we take phone or text questions from them during the interview.
Past guests include such notables as Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the late Howard Zinn, Nobel Laureates Mairead Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Kathryn Najimy, Oliver Stone, Jesse Ventura, Richard Belzer, Cynthia McKinney, Cindy Sheehan, Scott Horton, Joan Jett, Willie Nelson, George Galloway, Roseanne Barr, Ed Asner, Chevy Chase, as well as various reps from Amnesty International, UN World Food Programme, and many others.
