House hearing investigates a UN cancer agency accused of misusing US taxpayer funds
Guest opinion by Paul Driessen
A growing problem for modern industrialized Western societies is the legion of government agencies and unelected bureaucrats and allied nongovernmental organizations that seem impervious to transparency, accountability or reform. Their expansive power often controls public perceptions and public policies.
Prominent among them are those involved in climate change research and energy policy. In recent years, they have adjusted data to fit the dangerous manmade climate chaos narrative, while doling out billions of taxpayer dollars for research that supports this perspective, and basing dire predictions and policy demands primarily on climate models that assume carbon dioxide now drives climate and weather (and the sun, water vapor, ocean currents and other powerful natural forces have been relegated to minor roles).
Reform is essential. Meanwhile, another troubling example underscores the scope of the problem and the difficulties Congress and other government administrators face when they try to rein in rogue agencies.
In November 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) a letter raising questions about scientific bias, secrecy and corruption at the agency. When IARC obfuscated the issues, the committee sent a second letter, seeking answers within a week.
Otherwise, the Committee said, it would consider “whether the values of scientific integrity and transparency are reflected in IARC monographs and if future expenditures of federal taxpayer dollars need to continue.” The United States is the IARC monograph program’s biggest contributor, having given it nearly $50 million to date.
Agency director Dr. Christopher Wild bided his time four weeks before replying (many would say rather testily and condescendingly) and concluding: “IARC would be grateful if the House Science Committee would take all necessary measures to ensure that the immunity of the Organization, its officials and experts, as well as the inviolability of its archives and documents, are fully respected.” [emphasis added]
Refusing to be cowed, on February 6 the committee held a hearing, “In Defense of Scientific Integrity: Examining the IARC Monograph Programme and Glyphosate Review.” Evidence presented revealed that the monograph program is an antiquated approach that simply tries to determine from laboratory studies whether a particular chemical might cause cancer in test animals, even if only at ridiculously high levels that no human would or could ever be exposed to in the real world.
IARC performs no actual risk assessments that examine the potency of a substance to humans or the level of exposure at which the substance might actually have an adverse effect on people. It thus places bacon, sausage, plutonium and sunlight together in Group 1, its highest risk category: “definitely carcinogenic.” This provides no useful information from a public health perspective, but does give ammunition to activists who want to stoke fear and get chemicals they dislike banned.
IARC’s Group 2B carcinogens include caffeic acid, which is found in coffee, tea, and numerous healthy, must-eat fruits and vegetables, including apples, blueberries, broccoli, kale and onions. This group also includes acetaldehyde, which is found in bread, ginkgo balboa and aloe vera, lead Science Committee witness Dr. Timothy Pastoor noted in his testimony.
As Pastor also pointed out during the hearing, countless chemicals could theoretically cause cancer in humans at extremely high doses – but are completely harmless at levels encountered in our daily lives.
But it’s not just IARC’s overall approach that raises questions. As investigative journalists David Zaruk and Kate Kelland discovered, serious allegations have also been raised regarding the integrity of IARC’s review process. These include evidence that IARC deleted or manipulated data – and covered up major conflicts of interest by agency panel members who were employed by environmental activists and mass tort plaintiff attorneys who are targeting the very chemicals the panelists were reviewing and judging.
IARC’s latest quarry is glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. The principal ingredient in the weed killer RoundUp, glyphosate is vital in modern agriculture, especially no-till farming.
The European Food Safety Authority, European Chemicals Agency, German Institute for Risk Assessment, US Environmental Protection Agency and other experts all found that glyphosate is safe and non-carcinogenic. So did the 25-year, multi-agency US Agricultural Health Study (AHS), which analyzed data on more than 89,000 farmers, commercial applicators, other glyphosate users and their spouses.
IARC alone says glyphosate is likely a cancer-causing agent – contradicting every other regulatory and reputable scientific body around the world. How could it possibly reach such a different conclusion?
According to Zaruk, Kelland and committee members, IARC deliberately ignored the AHS analysis. The chairman of the IARC working group on glyphosate later admitted in a sworn deposition that this study would have “altered IARC’s analysis.”
When an animal pathology report clearly said researchers “unanimously” agreed glyphosate had not caused abnormal growths in mice they had studied, IARC deleted the problematical sentence.
In other cases, IARC panelists inserted new statistical analyses that effectively reversed a study’s original finding, or quietly changed critical language exonerating the herbicide.
Meanwhile, Dr. Christopher Portier, the “consulting expert” for the working group that labeled glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing, admitted in his own sworn testimony that – just a few days after IARC announced its guilty verdict – he signed a contract to serve as consultant to a law firm that is suing the chemical’s manufacturer (Monsanto) based on that verdict. Portier collected at least $160,000 just for his initial preparatory work.
Adding to the confusion and collusion, say Committee members, Linda Birnbaum’s $690-million-per-year National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (in the National Institutes of Health) has been collaborating with the same government agencies, pressure groups, trial lawyers and yet another anti-chemical activist organization, the Ramazzini Institute in Italy.
This is not science. It is corruption distortion and fraud – supported by our tax dollars and used to get important chemicals off the market.
The end result, if not the goal, is to undermine public confidence in science-based risk assessments, lend credibility to activist campaigns claiming numerous chemicals contaminate our foods and poison our bodies, and enable predatory tort lawyers to get rich suing manufacturers and driving them into bankruptcy.
Dr. Wild’s letters clearly suggest that IARC views the Science Committee’s concerns about the agency’s lack of scientific integrity and transparency as irrelevant – as a mere irritant, a minor threat to his agency’s unbridled power … and something the US government will ultimately do nothing to correct.
We will soon find out whether IARC is right – or if Congress is finally ready to play hardball with this unethical UN agency.
It’s also an important test for congressional oversight, spine and intestinal fortitude on holding other deep state agencies accountable for how they spend our money, what kind of science or pseudo-science they support and conduct, and how they will affect or even determine the public policies that in so many ways are the foundation of our economy, livelihoods and living standards.
PS: The Science Committee has also discovered that Vladimir Putin’s Internet Research Agency engaged in significant hacking, to inflame social media and instigate discord over US energy development and climate change policies – while Putin cronies laundered millions to fund radical green organizations. That too must be addressed by Congress and administrative agencies, including the Justice Department.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy and environmental policy.
Accuracy is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from an established frame of reference, hence science as a frame-based philosophy in the near space and time (forward and backward).
Also, perhaps we should revisit the theory of spontaneous human conception under the state-established secular church. The rites born from this peculiar religious/moral philosophy are objectively wicked solutions, to albeit hard problems.
Finally, the political/social consensus. The Earth may be flat from certain perspectives, but it is not as a matter of observable, reproducible metrics in the near space and time.
nn said
“Accuracy is inversely proportional to the product of time and space offsets from an established frame of reference, hence science as a frame-based philosophy in the near space and time (forward and backward).”
“The Earth may be flat from certain perspectives, ”
What ridiculous comments? Please speak English.
that is already English. Just not the English I understand!
that is already English
======.
technobabble. artse-fartse device to pretend you know more than you do. popular with ivory tower crowd.
Well I actually thought it made perfect sense.
Truth is relative always to a point of view. A frame of reference.
the social consensus is one such point of views as is Christian orthodox belief.
However reality may clash with consensus and belief within the distance from the beliefs core that would normally be applicable. e.g within the point of view that allows science, some theories can be shown to be not-science.
I don’t know what kind of drugs you are taking, nn… but maybe you should dry out and try commenting later…
Ahhh, them pesky Ruskies, everywhere, even under our research papers…
Vladimir Putin’s Internet Research Agency engaged in significant hacking, to inflame social media and instigate discord over US energy development and climate change policies
What a crock. Until that point I was inclined to take this article seriously.
The morally superior SJWs are as american as apple pie. Don’t blame Pootun for that.
They are as American as apple pie, however they do a lot more damage with Ruskie cash.
“Will Congress finally get tough on junk science?” These are the same people who funded the shrimp on a treadmill, and also ran up a $20 trillion debt. You expect fiscal sanity?
Congress will never get tough on matters like this. It is easy enough for a committee to ask tough questions, but getting everyone on board to cut funding would be impossible. They know that the ‘victims’ of the budget cut would get media types to scream “Anti-Science” so loud, the congress people who dared to cut the funding would have a hard time getting re-elected.
Really, I think it is the justice department who could be effective by laying corruption charges.
You might have something there. Why isn’t there an accountability caveat on funding to ensure proper ethics and neutral procedures? They set this stuff up to be a playground for every idiot with an axe to grind.
Going for Open Science should help that, and have the same results. There is no reason to hide well executed science.
* hide the details of
RE: ““Will Congress finally get tough on junk science?” These are the same people who funded the shrimp on a treadmill, and also ran up a $20 trillion debt. You expect fiscal sanity?”
When I heard Rep. Hank Johnson (D GA) seriously state, on the record in a hearing, that he was afraid sending a few thousand marines and dependants to Guam might overload the island causing it to tip over and capsize, I realized that there is NO lower limit to the intelligence of members of Congress. Fiscal sanity or competent oversight is a lot to expect from somebody like that. Or from the constituency that elected him.
I’m still convinced that someone on the Representative’s staff told him in a prehearing prep meeting that such a large increase in the islands population would cause it to reach a ‘tipping point’ (a popular phrase with enviros these days) and, not knowing any better, he took them literally.
Which is kind of scary, when you think about it. Better not use any puns or sarcasm around Congress Critters. It could really BOMB.
^¿^
junk science? “fake science” more accurately.
climate change is fake science because it allows the same event to be both true and false at the same time. more snow. less snow. more cold. less cold. both sides are evidence of climate change. fake science because it can never be proven true or false no matter what happens.
“acetaldehyde” also is produced by the human body. It’s what makes your mouth taste funny when you wake up in the morning.
EGAD!!! We’re poisoning ourselves.
Yes, some reform or oversight is needed.
But it needs to come bottom up not top down.
Elected officials are good at getting elections done.
If they appoint fools and liars to key posts… that is a different conflict
Just follow the scientific method.
I have had to eat my words many times over the decades.. and not unhappy about that.
Someone showed me a better thing and told me why I am wrong.
Glorious
If by “some reform” you mean “totally cut off from public money” then I agree with you.
No more money for climate models, period. That would be a good start.
I’d amend your view to state: “No more money for pseudoscientific climate models.” Needed for policy making purposes is the one model that conveys the maximum possible predictive information to the makers of the public policy. After expending hundreds of billions of dollars on pseudoscientific research we don’t have this model.
Telling criminals to ‘stop being criminals or we won’t pay you anymore’ is beyond stupid.
Cut off the funding now.
File charges for overt conflict of interest, waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer monies.
Throw some of their sorry asses into prison.
Actually it would be much easier to redirect the funding to other cancer research units. Not anti-science that way. Corruption and waste would be found in every UN agency. Cut them all- starting with UNEP.
Do not forget that any officer of any UN agency has immunity from prosecution in any and all jurisdictions.
Thus creating an institution which cannot work in any other interest but that of the most crooked individuals.
Not exactly.
https://www.un.org/en/ethics/pdf/convention.pdf
section 18. You can still sue them for all sort of crimes just like anyone.
Now, obviously, if a country is not happy of the work officials, well, this is not a matter between them and the country, this is a matter between the country and UN itself.
Said otherwise: no UN angency feels any obligation toward US congress. The normal route would be from congress to secretary of state, from secretary of state to UN, and from UN to the agency, and back for any answer.
This is a common flaw with all forms of bureaucracy, both public and private.
The difference is that when a company becomes top heavy, there are competitors ready and able to steal market share and drive the company out of business.
Government on the other hand, when it runs short of cash, just passes a law requiring those without political muscle to give it more.
It’s enough to just turn the valve of the money pipe.
We don’t need no stinking Russians to create fake news and mess up our public opinions, we can do it ourselves!
Jim. Your comment reminded me of a line in the movie Animal House: “they can’t do that to our pledges, only we can do that to our pledges “.
it is not congress, but the Justice department that needs to deal with the collusion between Portier and the trial lawyers. Congress could defund the IARC, but I don’t think that would have the effect of a RICO prosecution.
Sure. Right after the courts do that.
No….unless someone is willing to throw enough money at it
One man’s junk is anouther man’s treasure….first someone has to decide what’s junk
And only the buyer and seller can do that.
And when one figured out they decided wrong… well tough
But when one party tries to force the other to buy or sell… that is not good.
Government should therefore stay out of science and everything else.
It is not competent to do anything except get and retain power.
We grant it the ability to perform certain functions which are best done as a group, reluctantly
Good science is a fairly expensive thing in many fields these days, but why does that mean government should fund and control it?
Why not consider the issue scientifically?
When our Constitution was written, it was understood by the signers to be written so to restrict the federal government to a limited set of powers. Only the powers specifically listed for it were to be permitted. But, somewhere along the way the federal government decided to redefine the “general welfare” clause so that the federal government wold be given the power to do virtually anything unless it was specifically prohibited. This is the exact opposite of what was intended.
The Constitution does not permit the federal government to do anything about health care, offer any social aid, send aid to other countries, create national parks, establish a FDA or EPA agency, or any of a zillion things it spends its unlimited funds.
Our representatives have abandoned our constitution. And most people don’t realize it. So, our citizens have permitted the government to vastly expand its powers, and the money that it demands. We need to vote the bums out, and elect only true originalists.
Sort of. The Commerce Clause was expanded during the FDR administration with the Wickard v. Filburn.decision.
Tom, you are proving our point.
FDR desired a slew of social programs under his New Deal, that were clearly un-Constitutional and were in fact struck down by SCOTUS.
In Feb 1937 he then announced his plan to “pack the Court” with additional judges that would override the decisions of the existing court. The threat was sufficient for Congress to pass much of his Progressive New Deal legislation, including Soc. Security. (No matter how beneficial you think that program is, where in the enumerated powers is it authorized?)
(As an aside, can you imagine what the Progressives would say today if the current administration announced they were going to pack the court?)
IMO, the Wickard v. Filburn. decision (1942) overturned almost a century and a half of case law that held that the commerce clause limited the Federal government to commerce issues that a single state could not alone decide (e.g. deciding a fee or license for a ferry between two states). In the early years of the nation, the framers themselves defended the original interpretation in Congress, which was also reiterated in the Federalist Papers.
I’ll paraphrase a founder (Madison I think) who said of the “new” interpretations of the “Commerce Clause” and the “General Welfare Clause” that some wanted to use to expand the powers of the Federal government – “if that was what we intended, why did we bother writing Article I Section 8?!?” (specifically enumerating Federal powers). The Commerce Clause became the “Santa Claus” for the Federal government’s involvement into individual and state issues.
BTW, IANAL, but I can read and understand both the US Constitution (only a few pages) and the Federalist Papers, both of which were intentionally written to be understood by the average citizen of the time. For anyone who hasn’t done so recently, I’d advise you to read (or reread) those and make up your own mind in light of current issues.
” where in the enumerated powers is it authorized?”
..
Article 1. Section 7
George, you post: “and were in fact struck down by SCOTUS.”
…
Why don’t you tell all of us where in the Constitution is the SCOTUS given the power to declare laws unconstitutional and strike them down?
It was the claim made in Marbury v. Madison by the Supreme Court to be able to declare laws unconstitutional. As no one of consequence challenged that claim of authority, it became established precedent. Jackson, notably, stated that all persons in the US government had the same right to conclude that some action violated the Constitution, and respond accordingly. That is, he, as President, could veto a bill as violating the Constitution, and members of Congress could not vote for a bill as not consistent with the Constitution.
Yes Tom, so any of the three branches of government can self-declare they have a “power” as long as no other branch challenges it’s action. This one action (Marb v Mad) by the SCOTUS makes the “enumeration of powers” pointless in the Constitution.
You missed my point. The Constitution was an agreement that all parties had an interest in enforcing. Where it has gone wrong was when it was deliberately ignored.
Are you telling us that the SCOTUS self-declaring it had the power to declare something “unconstitutional” is itself unconstitutional because the constitution did not give the SCOTUS that power?
No, I was stating that i agreed with Andrew Jackson that everyone has the right to argue that some law violates the Constitution, and is therefore not proper. Societies are an agreement to follow certain rules, and in a constitutional democracy everyone has equal rights to try to set their version of what they think the rules mean.
FIne, so an individual goes to court, argues that a law is not proper, and the court agrees with the petitioner. Winning that argument does not invalidate the law…….why? Because there is no place in the Constitution that allows for the law to be invalidated.
…
You see, the problem is that the SCOTUS assumed a power that was not given to it by the constitution. Now if you argue that it has that power due to precedent, then the POTUS can grant himself any power he/she wants as long as nobody objects.
Betty, have you actually read Marbury v. Madison?
Tom, the Constitution does not grant the SCOTUS the power to declare a law/action “unconstitutional.”
send aid to other countries,
There is historical precedent for bribes.
“The Constitution does not permit the federal government to do …, establish a FDA or EPA agency”
Or the CDC.
Making a law preventing the CDC (or researchers in any other agencies) from doing gun control advocacy is idiotic. If they cannot be trusted to analyse and discuss “gun violence” without injecting anti 2A advocacy, why are these people trusted to analyse anything without introducing subtle or non so subtle advocacy?
Gingko balboa- that would be gingko from Spain?
Panama?
I thought it was Rocky’s brother. 🙂
Rocky’s little brother, you know the one with the thick eyeglasses who did all the bookkeeping.
ahhhhh yes, Ginky Balboa, I recall now. I hear he did very well- got in on the ground floor of the data adjustment industry.
Adrieeeeennnnn!
Funding any part of the U.N. has become a waste of money. Stopping the cash is the only thing that will induce reform.
“IARC would be grateful if the House Science Committee would take all necessary
measures to ensure that the immunity of the Organization, its officials and experts,
as well as the inviolability of its archives and documents, are fully respected.”
[emphasis added]
Don’t yer jest love it? ‘Immunity,’ the ‘inviolability’ of its archives, and I guess access
to their data and methodology, so like Cli-sci aka Mann, Jones et al, those emails.
He is just reminding them that any officer of any UN agency has immunity from prosecution in any and all jurisdictions.
With that being their attitude, the only reasonable course of action is total and immediate cessation of funding.
The UN and the IMF have become irrelevant and only a way to waste money.
Yes, absolutely!
“any officer of any UN agency has immunity from prosecution in any and all jurisdictions”
Even if they are at war with the US? (which they are)
I’ll bet Russia and China are funding alot of the corruption part of this. It is in their interest to destroy our societies from within using our freedom against us. For the life of me, I do not understand why we cannot police out their influence. They have been doing it at least going as far back as the 1950s with influence in hollywood.
Didn’t you get the memo? The Soviet Union fell apart quite some time ago. The “commies” are not longer in power in Russia.
BTW McCarthy is not longer with us either.
The commies may or may not be gone. Regardless, the same criminals still run Russia and they have the same goals.
This is only one element of a much larger picture. One should reread The Monkey Wrench Gang by Ed. Abbey. Now, taking that idea, writ large, it moved to letting animals out of their cages and burning down lumber mills and ski resorts. Fast forward a decade or two, after a few of these people realized they could go to jail for that stuff, you have a very sophisticated cancerous interstitial “monkey wrench” fouling everything that could benefit or advance American and Western success. Of course the list is much longer than this and includes policy in almost every arena but fore examples:
Admin: If my table didn’t translate and creates a mess, I apologize. I hope the idea still comes across.
[The mods recommend you use the html code “pre” and “/pre” (within its usual angled brackets) for plain-text, uniformly spaced columns of text data tables. Definitely not fancy text, but readable. .mod]
Thank you. I will.
When I read this :-
-“Meanwhile, Dr. Christopher Portier, the “consulting expert” for the working group that labeled glyphosate as “probably” cancer-causing, admitted in his own sworn testimony that – just a few days after IARC announced its guilty verdict – he signed a contract to serve as consultant to a law firm that is suing the chemical’s manufacturer (Monsanto) based on that verdict. Portier collected at least $160,000 just for his initial preparatory work.”-
I thought, how is such behaviour permitted in a nation that was one of the first in the world to introduce a rational and civilised Constitution for the better government of the people , for the people, by the people?
The people got stupider over time because things got too easy.
Alexis de Tocqueville (circa 1840)
I can’ resist adding more of Alexis’ precience about US democracy in light of today’s headlines and issues:
“The majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it, not that he stands in fear of an inquisition, but he must face all kinds of unpleasantness in every day persecution.”
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”
“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
“There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.”
Remember this was written a century and a half ago. I wish I had
his crystal ball.
Some people make decent money selling junk. I grew up around a man who dismantled all sorts of old machines, just to get the copper wire, brass fittings, and other metals to sell at the junk yard for cash. Think about those guys who go around collecting aluminum cans to make money. Selling junk is just another business. Alas, the practice has migrated to the intellectual realm, as well. The difference, though, is that the scrap-metal guy is recycling once useful material, whereas the sellers of intellectual junk are just making shit up to sell.
>>
It thus places bacon, sausage, plutonium and sunlight together in Group 1, its highest risk category: “definitely carcinogenic.”
<<
That’s good to know–bacon and sausage are as bad as plutonium and sunlight. Don’t you just love these food nazis?
Jim
Science is in a bad way, most printed research findings are false. When tried, most papers can’t be reproduced, about half the time the original researchers can’t even repeat their own experiments.
The one field where reproduction and replication are routinely tried is drug research. Drug companies look at papers trying to find something that can be turned into profitable products. The first step is to make sure the printed results are valid by reproducing the experiment. The vast majority of time, that fails. link
If Congress wants ammunition, there’s plenty.
When I first saw the endangerment finding placed Glyphosate in the same category as working the late/overnight shift, I really had to wonder what else would fit in that category. Near as I could tell, it wasn’t much different than breathing…
Congress won’t get tough on junk science for the same reason it won’t get tough on any of the million or so money wasters that it currently funds.
Those who benefit from government programs, care a lot and lobby a lot.
Those who have to pay for them, it only costs them a few pennies to a few dollars a year. It just isn’t worth their time to lobby their congressmen to kill each and everyone of these programs.
The AGW conjecture depends upon the existance of a radaint greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. The fact is that such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed anywhere in the solar system means that the radiant greenhouse effect is sceince fiction. Hence the AGW conjecture is sceince fiction. We have better things to be spending our money on then science fiction. On the other hand if the sceince is truely settled then we do not need to be spending any more money on it. For example the IPCC in their first report published a wide range of values for their guess as to the climate sensicity of CO2. More than two decades later, in their last report, the IPCC published the exact same values. So after more than two decades of effort the IPCC has learned nothing that would help them to narrow the range of their guesses one IOTA. The funding for the IPCC must stop because thay have not been doing anything of value.
The congressional hearing defangs the plaintiff lawyers in any court proceeding. But thatbis anninsudficient consequence. The UN exposed ‘nonscience’ should cause the US to defund this agency. Feel good exposes are no longer enough. Bad actions need to have real (bad for perps) consequences. Including but not limited to UN.
Junk politics policing junk science? Now that’s a novel way of solving a problem.
Gingko biloba, not balboa.
Big Pharma is not the problem, but it’s an easy target for the leftists. They are “capitalist”.
The unelected medical doctors, board and the drug agencies are the problem.
The people are the source of the problem. As long as the fear of disease makes us behave like children in face of the medical academic industrial conglomerate (often helped by the clueless justice system), we have no chance even in face with preposterous lies.
In Italia, the Five Star Movement is rising and they are (extremely very slightly) vaccine doubters, and they are ridiculed by the “centrist” (read: sold out) medias for that reason. This is not a coincidence.
It seems the scientific community wont get tough on junk science, then I guess someone else has to eventually.
One of the authors of a study “showing” that vaccines and autism are not linked is on the run. How many pro vaccines people can even cite his name?
But we are told by the resident mother/vaxxer of Forbes that any attempt to link a study and its author is guilt by association.
There is no relationship between vaccines and smallpox.
AmIrite?
We will soon find out whether IARC is right – or if Congress is finally ready to play hardball with this unethical UN agency.
Congress has declared cannabis has no medical value. It must be true.
“With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.”
Sen. Inhofe – Chairman, US Senate Environment Committee
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JDX0OWNDL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg