Get Malik Out of Ad-Seg Keith "Malik" Washington is an incarcerated activist who has spoken out on conditions of confinement in Texas prison and beyond:  from issues of toxic water and extreme heat, to physical and sexual abuse of imprisoned people, to religious discrimination and more.  Malik has also been a tireless leader in the movement to #EndPrisonSlavery which gained visibility during nationwide prison strikes in 2016 and 2018.  View his work at comrademalik.com or write him at: Keith H. Washington TDC# 1487958 McConnell Unit 3001 S. Emily Drive Beeville, TX 78102 Friends, it's time to get Malik out of solitary confinement. Malik has experienced intense, targeted harassment ever since he dared to start speaking against brutal conditions faced by incarcerated people in Texas and nationwide--but over the past few months, prison officials have stepped up their retaliation even more. In Administrative Segregation (solitary confinement) at McConnell Unit, Malik has experienced frequent humiliating strip searches, medical neglect, mail tampering and censorship, confinement 23 hours a day to a cell that often reached 100+ degrees in the summer, and other daily abuses too numerous to name.  It could not be more clear that they are trying to make an example of him because he is a committed freedom fighter.  So we have to step up. Who to contact: TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier Phone: (936)295-6371 Email:  exec.director@tdcj.texas.gov Senior Warden Philip Sinfuentes (McConnell Unit) Phone: (361) 362-2300

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Major George Tillery

MAJOR TILLERY FILES NEW LEGAL PETITION SEX FOR LIES AND MANUFACTURED TESTIMONY

April 25, 2018-- The arrest of two young men in Starbucks for the crime of "sitting while black," and the four years prison sentence to rapper Meek Mill for a minor parole violation are racist outrages in Philadelphia, PA that made national news in the past weeks. Yesterday Meek Mills was released on bail after a high profile defense campaign and a Pa Supreme Court decision citing evidence his conviction was based solely on a cop's false testimony. These events underscore the racism, frame-up, corruption and brutality at the core of the criminal injustice system. Pennsylvania "lifer" Major Tillery's fight for freedom puts a spotlight on the conviction of innocent men with no evidence except the lying testimony of jailhouse snitches who have been coerced and given favors by cops and prosecutors. Sex for Lies and Manufactured Testimony For thirty-five years Major Tillery has fought against his 1983 arrest, then conviction and sentence of life imprisonment without parole for an unsolved 1976 pool hall murder and assault. Major Tillery's defense has always been his innocence. The police and prosecution knew Tillery did not commit these crimes. Jailhouse informant Emanuel Claitt gave lying testimony that Tillery was one of the shooters. In May and June 2016, Emanuel Claitt gave sworn statements that his testimony was a total lie, and that the homicide cops and the prosecutors told him what to say and coached him before trial. Not only was he coerced to lie that Major Tillery was a shooter, but to lie and claim there were no plea deals made in exchange for his testimony. He provided the information about the specific homicide detectives and prosecutors involved in manufacturing his testimony and details about being allowed "sex for lies". In August 2016, Claitt reaffirmed his sworn statements in a videotape, posted on YouTube and on JusticeforMajorTillery.org. Major Tillery has Fought his Conviction and Advocated for Other Prisoners for over 30 Years Major Tillery Needs Your Help: Major Tillery and family HOW YOU CAN HELP Financial Support—Tillery's investigation is ongoing. He badly needs funds to fight for his freedom. Go to JPay.com; code: Major Tillery AM9786 PADOC Tell Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner: The Conviction Review Unit should investigate Major Tillery's case. He is innocent. The only evidence at trial was from lying jail house informants who now admit it was false. Call: 215-686-8000 or Email: justice@phila.gov Write to: Security Processing Center Major Tillery AM 9786 268 Bricker Road Bellefonte, PA 16823 For More Information, Go To: JusticeForMajorTillery.org Call/Write: Kamilah Iddeen (717) 379-9009, Kamilah29@yahoo.com Rachel Wolkenstein (917) 689-4009, RachelWolkenstein@gmail.com Obtain Updates: www.justice4majortillery.info *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* On Monday March 4th, 2019 Leonard Peltier was advised that his request for a transfer had been unceremoniously denied by the United States Bureau of Prisons. The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee appreciates and thanks the large number of his supporters who took the time to write, call, email, or fax the BOP in support of Leonard's request for a transfer. Those of us who have been supporting Leonard's freedom for a number of years are disappointed but resolute to continue pushing for his freedom and until that day, to continue to push for his transfer to be closer to his relatives and the Indigenous Nations who support him. 44 years is too damn long for an innocent man to be locked up. How can his co-defendants be innocent on the grounds of self-defense but Leonard remains in prison? The time is now for all of us to dig deep and do what we can and what we must to secure freedom for Leonard Peltier before it's too late. We need the support of all of you now, more than ever. The ILPDC plans to appeal this denial of his transfer to be closer to his family. We plan to demand he receive appropriate medical care, and to continue to uncover and utilize every legal mechanism to secure his release. To do these things we need money to support the legal work. Please call the ILPDC National office or email us for a copy of the postcard you can send to the White House. We need your help to ask President Trump for Leonard's freedom. DONATE  ©2019 ILPDC | 116 W Osborne Avenue Tampa, FL 33603  Web Version  Preferences  Forward  Unsubscribe   Powered by GoDaddy Email Marketing ® Free Leonard Peltier!

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Stacks of inventory at Pridgeon and Clay, an auto parts maker based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Parts destined for General Motors have been piling up at the company’s distribution center.CreditCreditBrittany Greeson for The New York Times

The truck drivers at Phoenix Transit and Logistics in Dearborn, Mich., are long gone. Around three dozen of the trailers they once ferried between auto plants — packed with dashboards, engine components, lights and other parts for General Motors — are sitting in a lot with nowhere to go.

It’s an increasingly familiar scene as the strike against G.M. by the United Auto Workers enters its fourth week. From suppliers to shippers to restaurants, the impact of the work stoppage is spreading through the web of businesses whose fates are tied to the biggest American automaker.

Wael Tlaib, the owner of Phoenix Transit & Logistics, said he had laid off nearly his entire staff, including 80 drivers, and had dipped into his personal savings to keep his company afloat. “I might lose the business next week,” Mr. Tlaib said.

The most intense economic pain is being felt in the industrial Midwest, where G.M.’s network of plants and suppliers is thickest. It is a difficult time for the region’s manufacturing industry, which even before the strike was contending with slowing auto sales, a weakening global economy and the trade war.

An economic blow to the Midwest would have broad consequences in part because the region is an important political battleground that will help determine who wins the 2020 presidential election. In 2016, President Trump’s narrow victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin put him over the top in the Electoral College tally.

The state of the auto industry “usually has political ramifications that are beyond its direct economic influence,” said Matt Grossmann, a political-science professor at Michigan State University. “A lot of Democrats here are running on the promise to help the factory workers and the working class, and saying Trump hasn’t done it.”

Nearly 50,000 U.A.W. members walked off the job on Sept. 16, the largest stoppage since G.M. workers went on strike in 2007. The union is pressing for more job security as well as the reopening of plants in the United States that the company has recently idled. For its part, G.M. wants workers to pick up more of their health care costs and agree to give managers greater flexibility in factory operations.

After signs of progress over the last week, the two sides hit a roadblock this weekend on how production might be moved to the United States from Mexico. Terry Dittes, the U.A.W.’s lead negotiator, said on Sunday that the talks had taken a “turn for the worse.”

The impact of the strike stretches from Mexico to Canada, where G.M. plants that depend on American factories have been shuttered, putting thousands out of work. Analysts estimate that G.M. has lost $600 million as a result of the strike.

In the United States, 34 G.M. plants have gone dark. And striking workers are making do with a $250-a-week subsidy from the union.

In the first three weeks of the strike, $412 million in wages were lost, according to Patrick Anderson, chief executive of Anderson Economic Group. “Each week the damage grows geometrically,” Mr. Anderson said. “First you lose your U.A.W. workers, then the immediate suppliers, then the next tiers.”

Michigan has the most exposure to the auto sector, with roughly 8 percent of the state’s economy linked to the industry. Even after factory closures decimated employment in the car industry in recent decades, the state remains dotted with auto plants and suppliers.

Gabriel Ehrlich, director of the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Qualitative Economics, estimates that the Michigan economy is growing at an annual rate of 1.4 percent. Without the strike, he said, that number could be 0.1 to 0.2 points higher.

Even before the strike, manufacturing employment in Michigan fell by 1,300 jobs in the first eight months of the year. By comparison, manufacturers added 43,000 jobs nationally in the same period.

“There’s been real damage to the economy,” said Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State. “It hasn’t been huge yet but the ripple effects will get bigger the longer this goes on.”

In Flint, at least 1,200 truckers and production workers from suppliers have lost their jobs because of the strike. That includes hundreds from a supplier of seats to G.M., Lear Corporation, according to Duane Ballard, the financial secretary for U.A.W. Local 659, which represents employees at that factory.

A Lear spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Many of those workers are new hires who have not worked at the Lear plant long enough to qualify for state unemployment insurance, Mr. Ballard said.

On a rainy night last week, more than two dozen people affected by the strike showed up at the Martus Luna Food Pantry in Flint, said Art Luna, who runs the pantry.

They “are the ones that are really hurting,” he said. “They’re anxious to go back to work.”

The fallout has extended beyond the auto industry, disrupting local businesses that serve autoworkers.

On a typical Saturday night, Luigi’s Restaurant, an Italian eatery a short drive from the Lear factory, sees around 350 customers. But in recent weeks, that number has fallen by as many as 60 people, according to Tom Beaubien, who runs the restaurant.

“After one week without pay, everybody starts to suffer, from McDonald’s all the way to Luigi’s Restaurant,” Mr. Beaubien said.

It’s unclear just how many workers have been laid off by G.M.’s suppliers. Magna International, one of the world’s largest auto suppliers, has idled “a few” plants, according to a spokeswoman, Tracy Fuerst. “We attempted to keep our employees at these impacted plants working as long as possible through training, maintenance and inventory,” she said.

Some G.M. suppliers are finding creative ways to keep workers occupied, whether repairing machines or building an inventory of auto components to ship later.

“Your smarter suppliers are being very careful about how they lay people off,” said Michael Robinet, an expert on the auto industry at IHS Markit. “They don’t want to lose their better employees to a competitor or to another occupation.”

Of course, Michigan’s economy is not as dependent on the auto sector as it was even two decades ago. Lansing has two G.M. plants but their economic weight is counterbalanced by the state government and the city’s hospital system, said Andy Schor, the city’s mayor. Another large employer, Michigan State University, is nearby.

“The sooner they resolve this the better but I wouldn’t say everything has shut down in Lansing,” Mr. Schor said. Over all, G.M. and its suppliers account for 6,600 jobs with $250 million in annual wages in the city, which has roughly 118,000 residents.

Mr. Schor said autoworkers had been asking the city-owned utility for more time to pay their electric and water bills.

Yet even at companies that are not highly dependent on G.M., the effect of the strike was immediate. Pridgeon & Clay, a component maker that sells to G.M.’s suppliers, froze hiring right away.

“We heard from our customers within hours,” said R. Kevin Clay, the company’s president. Business had already been a little soft at Pridgeon and Clay, which is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., when the strike began.

G.M. suppliers account for about $13 million of the company’s $300 million in annual revenue. Now parts destined for the automaker are piled up in corners of the company’s distribution center.

Mr. Clay said he was determined to avoid layoffs. “It’s certainly eating into profitability but rather than cut people, you pinch every penny,” he said.

Other manufacturers, like Stripmatic in Cleveland, say manpower has been tight recently, and the strike has freed workers for other tasks.

But Bill Adler, the company’s president, said business could suffer if G.M.’s plants don’t resume production soon. “If the strike goes on much longer, what started out as a very good year could turn into a mediocre year,” he said.

Around the country, G.M. dealers said inventories had grown somewhat tighter.

“We had a pretty deep shelf when the strike started and are at about average inventory right now,” said Mark Scarpelli, president of Raymond Chevrolet in Antioch, Ill.

G.M. said last week that its American dealers had 760,000 vehicles at the end of September, down 5 percent from a year ago. That’s enough to last several weeks, but dealers are nearing the time when they place orders for the brisk sales they usually see around the end of the year.

Back in Dearborn, Mr. Tlaib of Phoenix Transit & Logistics is doing what he can to get trucks back on the road. He emptied five of his trailers into a warehouse, freeing them to carry parts for other companies. But that has made barely a dent in the G.M. inventory in his yard.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen next,” he said. “We just sit down and smoke and watch the news.”

Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting.

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2) Slain Witness in Amber Guyger Trial Testified Reluctantly. He’d Already Been Shot Once.

Joshua Brown, who testified for prosecutors at Amber Guyger’s murder trial in Dallas, was himself shot to death two days after the trial ended.

By Marina Trahan Martinez, Sarah Mervosh and Manny Fernandez, October 8, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/joshua-brown-amber-guyger-witness.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Joshua Brown, left, answering questions from LaQuita Long, an assistant district attorney, in the murder trial of the former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger.CreditCreditPool photo by Tom Fox

DALLAS — Joshua Brown and Botham Shem Jean knew each other not by sight, but by sound — as muffled voices through their apartment walls.

From the hallway outside his fourth-floor apartment, Mr. Brown could hear Mr. Jean, his neighbor across the way, sing gospel music and Drake lyrics. The two men, both in their mid-20s, had met but once. But just as their lives had fleetingly intertwined, so, too, have their sudden and violent deaths.

Mr. Jean, 26, was murdered in his apartment at the South Side Flats complex last year by an off-duty Dallas police officer who claimed she had mistakenly entered the wrong unit and believed he was an intruder. Mr. Brown, 28, was gunned down last week, 10 days after he testified against the former officer. And the city of Dallas, still reeling with racial tensions in a case that stoked longstanding mistrust of the police, is once again full of questions.

Mr. Brown was shot twice late Friday night outside a new apartment he had moved to in another part of the city. Witnesses saw a silver sedan speeding away from the scene, but the authorities have not identified a suspect or a motive, and they have declined to talk about whether Mr. Brown’s death was in any way connected to the trial. Many African-American community members and activists are renewing their call for someone outside the Dallas Police Department to conduct an independent investigation.

The former officer, Amber R. Guyger, who is white, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing Mr. Jean, who was black and unarmed. Mr. Brown, who was also black, was killed two days after the jury trial came to a close.

The timing of Mr. Brown’s death immediately led to public speculation about whether he was killed in retaliation for his testimony, or whether the trial, streamed live on the internet, had drawn potentially dangerous attention to him. 

“The testimony of Joshua Brown showed us a very good man — and one willing to testify in a controversial trial against the police,” said John Fullinwider, a founder of the Dallas activist group Mothers Against Police Brutality. “So the timing of his death and the multiple shots shook the city.” 

The latest shooting drew the attention of several Democratic presidential candidates, including Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, who called for transparency in the investigation. A Houston businessman and high-stakes poker player, Bill Perkins, is offering a $100,000 reward in the case. Mayor Eric Johnson of Dallas said he believed that the city’s Police Department would conduct a thorough investigation and asked for people to “refrain from speculation.”

The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund called for an independent state or federal investigation into Mr. Brown’s killing, calling it a “deeply alarming and highly suspicious murder.”

“It is critical to public confidence in the administration of justice that witnesses who speak out against police violence are fully protected,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The suspicious circumstances of Mr. Brown’s killing should cause great alarm and demand an immediate and piercing inquiry.”

A witness to two murders

Mr. Brown was a witness in not one but two murders last year in Dallas. 

In November 2018, more than two months after the shooting of Mr. Jean, Mr. Brown was shot in the foot during a shooting outside a strip club that left another man dead. 

In that encounter, Mr. Brown and his friends were leaving the club when he ran into another man who had a “personal issue” with him and wanted to fight, according to court documents. Gunshots erupted, killing Nicholas Diggs. 

Mr. Brown viewed a police photo lineup and identified the gunman and an accomplice. A suspect, Kendall Morris, was charged with murder and aggravated assault; he posted bond and was released pending trial. 

Mr. Brown believed he had been the intended target in that shooting, so he kept a low profile in the months that followed. He only reluctantly agreed to testify for the prosecution at Ms. Guyger’s trial, according to a civil rights lawyer who represented Mr. Jean’s family and who is now working with Mr. Brown’s relatives.

“He didn’t want any part of this trial,” said the lawyer, Lee Merritt. “He was intimidated by the idea of being out there in the public. And unfortunately, in the black community, cooperating with the state — even in the prosecution of a white police officer — is frowned upon.”

When Mr. Brown took the witness stand on Sept. 24, the second day of the trial, he was worried about being in the public eye, Mr. Merritt said. Perhaps in a sign of his reluctance to testify, Mr. Brown was not exactly dressed for court: He wore blue athletic shorts and a mint-green graphic T-shirt, which he used to wipe his eyes occasionally as he spoke about his former neighbor.

‘Two voices mixing together’

Mr. Brown and Mr. Jean were in some ways living parallel but separate lives across the hall from each other at the South Side Flats. 

Mr. Brown was from Florida and managed Airbnb locations; Mr. Jean was from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia and worked for a major accounting firm. The night Mr. Jean was killed, they had separately made plans to spend the evening the same way — watching the first N.F.L. game of the season, when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Atlanta Falcons. 

Mr. Brown told the jury he had met Mr. Jean for the first time earlier on the day of the shooting, when officials from the leasing office came by to knock on their doors about a noise complaint. 

Later that night, after going to a bar to watch the first half of the football game, Mr. Brown said, he came home to a commotion in the hallway. He heard something “like two voices mixing together at the same time,” he told the jury during the trial, followed by gunshots.

Crucially, he said he did not hear loud verbal commands before the gunshots, which was contrary to Ms. Guyger’s testimony that she had ordered Mr. Jean to show his hands before she pulled the trigger.

Later, from his balcony, Mr. Brown said, he could see Ms. Guyger pacing while crying on the phone. 

“She was crying, explaining what happened, what she thought happened, saying she went into the wrong apartment,” he said.

Mr. Brown was raised in a military family who moved from city to city, including stints in Jacksonville, Fla., and Lancaster, Texas, outside of Dallas, according to Mr. Merritt. He played football at the University of South Florida, where former colleagues remembered him as a competitive and outspoken player with a love of video games, according to The Tampa Bay Times. 

After college, he worked as a roofing contractor for a few years before starting a business renting out residences for Airbnb. He acknowledged during his testimony that he had previously had run-ins with the police, including a 2011 misdemeanor theft conviction and a 2016 drug conviction.

Members of the public had already expressed concern about the Police Department’s handling of the case after it was revealed that Ms. Guyger’s police partner, Martin Rivera, with whom she was having a relationship, had deleted text messages following the shooting. It also emerged that Mike Mata, the president of the Dallas Police Association, instructed an officer to turn off a squad car camera on the night of Mr. Jean’s death so he could talk to Ms. Guyger privately, which officers said was standard procedure in officer-involved shootings. 

After the trial, Chief U. Reneé Hall of the Dallas Police Department announced that she planned to open an internal affairs investigation.

Mr. Merritt said evidence revealed during the trial had “eroded the trust of the community.” 

“This investigation into the murder of Joshua Brown is going to be a critical point,” he said. “The city of Dallas can begin to either regain that trust, or create further division in the community.”

Marina Trahan Martinez reported from Dallas, Sarah Mervosh from New York and Manny Fernandez from Houston.

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3) Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn't Report Past Food Industry Ties

The lead researcher, Bradley C. Johnston, said he was not required to report his past relationship with a powerful industry trade group.

By Tara Parker-Pope and Anahad O’Conno, October 4, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/well/eat/scientist-who-discredited-meat-guidelines-didnt-report-past-food-industry-ties.html?fallback=0&recId=1RvXIi4jlFAIh02cCnmtrDJrEpH&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=CA&recAlloc=control&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-discovery-vi-prg&imp_id=644484168&action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

A surprising new study challenged decades of nutrition advice and gave consumers the green light to eat more red and processed meat. But what the study didn’t say is that its lead author has past research ties to the meat and food industry.

The new report, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, stunned scientists and public health officials because it contradicted longstanding nutrition guidelines about limiting consumption of red and processed meats. The analysis, led by Bradley C. Johnston, an epidemiologist at Dalhousie University in Canada, and more than a dozen researchers concluded that warnings linking meat consumption to heart disease and cancer are not backed by strong scientific evidence.

Several prominent nutrition scientists and health organizations criticized the study’s methods and findings. But Dr. Johnston and his colleagues defended the work, saying it relied on the highest standards of scientific evidence, and noted that the large team of investigators reported no conflicts of interest and conducted the review without outside funding.

Dr. Johnston also indicated on a disclosure form that he did not have any conflicts of interest to report during the past three years. But as recently as December 2016 he was the senior author on a similar study that tried to discredit international health guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. That study, which also appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine, was paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, or ILSI, an industry trade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and pharmaceutical companies and whose members have included McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill, one of the largest beef processors in North America. The industry group, founded by a top Coca-Cola executive four decades ago, has long been accused by the World Health Organization and others of trying to undermine public health recommendations to advance the interests of its corporate members.

In an interview, Dr. Johnston said his past relationship with ILSI had no influence on the current research on meat recommendations. He said he did not report his past relationship with ILSI because the disclosure form asked only about potential conflicts within the past three years. Although the ILSI-funded study publication falls within the three-year window, he said the money from ILSI arrived in 2015, and he was not required to report it for the meat study disclosure.

“That money was from 2015 so it was outside of the three year period for disclosing competing interests,” said Dr. Johnston. “I have no relationship with them whatsoever.”

Critics of the meat study say that while Dr. Johnston may have technically complied with the letter of the disclosure rules, he did not comply with the spirit of financial disclosure.

“Journals require disclosure, and it is always better to disclose fully, if for no other reason than to stay out of trouble when the undisclosed conflicts are exposed,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who studies conflicts of interest in nutrition research. “Behind the scenes, ILSI works diligently on behalf of the food industry; it is a classic front group. Even if ILSI had nothing to do with the meat papers — and there is no evidence of which I am aware that it did — the previous paper suggests that Johnston is making a career of tearing down conventional nutrition wisdom.”

Notably, Dr. Johnston and colleagues thought it was important to fully disclose their personal eating habits. The meat paper includes an appendix titled “Summary of Panelists’ Potential Conflicts of Interest,” that discloses whether each author eats red or processed meat and how often. Johnston reported no financial conflicts of interest but disclosed that he eats one to two servings of red or processed meat per week.

“We think that’s a potential bias that is worth disclosing,” said Dr. Johnston about the researchers’ personal eating habits.

Dr. Johnston’s ties to the 2016 ILSI-funded sugar study show how ILSI has methodically cultivated allies in academia around the world, and how it recruits influential scientists to help shape global nutrition advice and counter what it perceives to be anti-food industry guidelines by health organizations.

When Dr. Johnston and his colleagues first published the sugar study, they said that ILSI had no direct role in conducting the research other than providing funding, but later amended their disclosure statement in the Annals after The Associated Press obtained emails showing that ILSI had “reviewed” and “approved” the study’s protocol.

Dr. Johnston said that when he published the sugar study in 2016, he put his connection with the food industry group “front and center.” He said in hindsight he was “naïve” when he agreed to work on the ILSI-funded study about sugar guidelines. It was during a conference call on the sugar study that he realized the extent that industry figures were involved with that organization. He declined to say who was on the conference call.

“It wasn’t until I was on a conference call with them and people were introducing themselves where I realized this is not what I expected,” he said. “Then I saw the reaction from the paper we did publish, which I think was a very good paper. People didn’t get that message. They got stuck on the funding part. That was a big lesson to separate oneself. It’s not worth working with industry at all.”

Dr. Christine Laine, editor in chief of the Annals of Internal Medicine, said the medical journal asks people to disclose their financial interests but relies on the integrity of the researcher and does not attempt to verify the forms. “We are really leaving it to the authors to disclose,” said Dr. Laine. “We advise authors if they wonder ‘Should I disclose this or not,’ they should err on the side of disclosure.”

Dr. Laine noted that people on both sides of the meat issue have conflicts of interest. “Many of the people who are criticizing these articles have lots of conflicts of interest they aren’t talking about,” she said. “They do workshops on plant-based diets, do retreats on wellness and write books on plant-based diets. There are conflicts on both sides.”

Dr. Laine said if Dr. Johnston had chosen to disclose a financial relationship with the food industry group, it would not have changed the journal’s decision to publish the research. What matters to the journal editors and peer-review team, she said, is the fact that the group had clear protocols for examining the data and was transparent about its methods.

“I don’t think we would have made a different decision about publishing the manuscript if he had that on his conflicts disclosure,” said Dr. Laine. “We certainly know that in the past he did nutrition research that was funded by industry. It’s a judgment call if that should be disclosed. I think at some level that’s a little bit of noise around this. The methods of what these researchers did and their conclusions are out there, and people can disagree with that.”

Dr. Gordon Guyatt, chair of the 14-member panel that reviewed the analysis, said he is confident that the work was not in any way influenced by industry.

"Perhaps Brad was a little naïve, and both I and perhaps Christine Laine were a little negligent in it not occurring to us that he should probably declare the previous money he got from the previous project,” said Dr. Guyatt, an internal medicine physician and a distinguished professor at McMaster University. “All of that being said, I feel personally extremely comfortable that it had no effect on what we did.”

Dr. Guyatt noted that for 20 years he has been a pescatarian who eats only fish and no other meat. “Before I was involved in these systematic reviews and looking carefully at evidence, I had three reasons for not eating meat — animal welfare, the environment and health. Now I only have two reasons for not eating meat.”

Critics of the meat study say that it has similarities to the industry-funded sugar study and uses the same standard to evaluate evidence. Dr. Frank Hu, the chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said he was stunned when he realized that Dr. Johnston was both the leader of the meat study and the same researcher who led the industry-funded review that attacked guidelines advising people to eat less sugar. He said that in both cases Dr. Johnston undercut sugar and meat recommendations by using a tool called GRADE that was mainly designed to rate clinical drug trials, not dietary studies.

“You can’t do a double-blinded placebo-controlled trial of red meat and other foods on heart attacks or cancer,” Dr. Hu said. “For dietary and lifestyle factors, it’s impossible to use the same standards for drug trials.”

Drug trials are primarily designed to look at efficacy and safety, Dr. Hu said, while the main goal of diet studies is to identify risk factors that influence obesity and chronic diseases. That is why scientists use data from large observational studies and randomized trials to look at the health effects of different eating patterns and other behaviors that cannot be studied like pharmaceutical therapies.

Dr. Johnston said the real problem is that people don’t want to accept findings that contradict long-held views. “People have very strong opinions,” he said. “Scientists should have intellectual curiosity and be open to challenges to their data. Science is about debate, not about digging your heels in.”

But Dr. Hu said Dr. Johnston’s methods were not very objective or rigorous and the tool he employed in his meat and sugar studies could be misused to discredit all sorts of well-established public health warnings, like the link between secondhand smoke and heart disease, air pollution and health problems, physical inactivity and chronic disease, and trans fats and heart disease.

“Some people may be wondering what his next target will be,” Dr. Hu said. “But I’m concerned about the damage that has already been done to public health recommendations.”

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*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* *---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------* Working people are helping to feed the poor hungry corporations!  Charity for the Wealthy!