Patrick Moore is now shilling for Big Pharma

[bananas]

http://www.prwatch.org/node/8276

Lots of Opinion, Not Much Disclosure
Submitted by Bob Burton on March 31, 2009 - 11:34pm.

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have more in common than being major industry lobby groups. Both have hired former Greenpeace activist turned PR consultant Patrick Moore to deflect environmental and public health criticisms.

That's their right, of course, and Moore is free to share his opinions on topics relevant to his paying clients. However, the media outlets that run Moore's columns are failing to inform their readers of his financial interests. Rather than guarding the public interest and ensuring appropriate disclosure of real or potential conflicts of interest, these outlets are allowing their op-ed pages to be used to further greenwash campaigns.

One of Moore's recent columns, published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, defended Georgia Power's controversial proposal to finance new nuclear reactors. Another column, published in the Seattle Times and later picked up by the Washington Times, criticized proposals to require the drug industry to safely dispose of unwanted pharmaceuticals. None of the newspapers disclosed that Moore consults for industries directly impacted by the topics he was addressing.

Newspaper editorial pages have long been a vital space for civic discourse. The op-ed pages (physical or online) are among media outlets' most popular features. People want to read and respond to others' thoughts on hot-button issues. But the PR industry sees these columns as a prime vehicle to advance its clients' interests, often through supposedly-independent figures who are really part of the PR team. Masking the paying client from public view denies readers the information they need to evaluate the argument being presented.

<snip>

edit to add: It's about pissing drugs into the environment, in case anyone doesn't read the full article and doesn't know why it belongs in E/E.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. try reading The Constant Gardener by le Carre

then look at Livitra, Viagra, and other lovelies.

[hatrack]

8. Odd - I just read that last Sunday . . . and you hit it on the head . . .

I wonder about Moore - does he have six kids from 18-23 all in college & grad school at the same time?

I mean, really, what a ho.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. People don't realize just how much of a monster Big Pharma is.

LeCarre did a nice job fictionally speaking. But we have US companies running illegal drug experiments in Africa, and one just paid $75,000,000 for the deaths of several hundred kids. We do sell them out oudated meds that may not be effective. And I am sure that along with 100s of political lives that were lost, Big Pharma may have caused the deaths of their worst enemies.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

11. by the by, how did you like the story?

Le carre's usually solid. This was subtle, deft, and sprinkled with truly believable situations that would and should scare people. The ending? how else could it end?

[hatrack]

13. I thought it was brilliant, and I'm a big fan

Probably the best I've read since Tinker Tailor.

[Deep13]

2. So this is not Patrick Moore, the English astronomer. nt

[bananas]

3. No, it's a different Patrick Moore.

He's a former environmentalist who long ago became a corporate shill.
He runs his own PR firm called "GreenSpirit".
He says humans aren't causing climate change,
and even if they are the extra CO2 is good for plants,
and we need to build nuclear power plants to stop climate change.
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7740
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Moore

[bananas]

4. "Greenpeace co-founder praises global warming"

A news article from 2006:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jan/13/bz/FP601130327.html

Posted on: Friday, January 13, 2006

Greenpeace co-founder praises global warming
By Sean Hao

Genetically engineered sugarcane grows in a culture at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center in 'Aiea. Hawai'i is one of the top U.S. sites for genetically modified crop research, attracting much debate.

Global warming and nuclear energy are good and the way to save forests is to use more wood.

That was the message delivered to a biotechnology industry gathering yesterday in Waikiki. However, it wasn't the message that was unconventional, but the messenger — Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. Moore said he broke with Greenpeace in the 1980s over the rise of what he called "environmental extremism," or stands by environmental groups against issues such as genetic crop research, genetically modified foods and nuclear energy that aren't supported by science or logic.

Hawai'i, which is one of the top locations nationwide for genetically modified crop research, has become a focal point in the debate about the risks and value of such work. Friction between environmentalists and other concerned groups and the biotech industry surfaced most recently in relation to the use of local crops to grow industrial and pharmaceutical compounds. Last year that opposition halted a Big Island project planning to use algae for trial production of pharmaceutical drugs.

<snip>

[Deep13]

6. Okay, I don't know a lot about P.M. the astronomer...

...except that he is a popular astronomer like Carl Sagan. So I don't know what else he may have done. Likewise, I don't know all that much about Greenpeace except for what I saw on TV in the 1980s.

[bananas]

7. controversy over whether Moore was a co-founder, or merely an early member, of Greenpeace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_(environmentalist)

<snip>

The Greenpeace International web site used to include Moore in their list of founders, although this has since been removed.<15> Patrick Moore himself is the biggest proponent of him being a co-founder, so there is some controversy over whether Moore was a co-founder, or merely an early member, of Greenpeace. His claim of being a founding member, but not co-founder, is seemingly supported by a single edited statement from an op-ed by Paul Watson<16>, although nowhere else does Paul Watson make any statements supportive of a co-founding status and does state that he does not know Patrick Moore to be a co-founder except in Patrick Moore's own autobiographical statements. The status of co-founder is emphatically disputed by other founders including Dorothy Stowe, Bob Hunter (deceased), Ben Metcalf (deceased), Dorothy Metcalf, and Jim and Marie Bohlen,<17> and is at odds with his original Greenpeace membership application.<18>

<snip>

[bananas]

5. "Moore Spin: Or, How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups"

A previous discussion about this guy:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x88094

[jpak]

9. Patrick Mo' is a Ho'

and anyone that believes a word he says is a fucking fool...

[NNadir]

12. How come you never complain about Amory Lovins shilling for big oil?

Oh, I forgot, he's a colleague.

Lovins has briefed 19 heads of state, provided expert testimony in eight countries and more than 20 states, and published 29 books and several hundred papers. His clients have included Bank of America, Borg-Warner, BP, Chevron, CIBA-Geigy, Coca-Cola, Dow, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Texas Instruments, Wal-Mart, Westinghouse, Xerox, major real-estate developers, and over 100 utilities. Public-sector clients have included the OECD, UN, Resources for the Future, the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments, 13 US states, Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amory_Lovins

It reads like a laundry list of right wing companies.

I really, really, really, really, really, like the "major real estate developers" part too.

Given the penchant that the anti-nukes here have for the car CULTure, it's really no surprise, though. There is NOT ONE anti-nuke who is NOT an apologist for car CULTs or dangerous fossil fuel companies.