CA Prop 37: Tobacco/DDT Advocate Henry Miller and the Dubious Scientific Credibility of Opponents

From Daily Kos

A campaign bankrolled by financially motivated pesticide and junk food companies is expected to lie – a lot. It’s what they always do when confronted by inconvenient facts and consumers seeking to protect their rights – like the Right to Know what’s in the food we eat and feed our families.

Prop 37 opponents have run one of the most deceptive misinformation campaigns in recent history – a $35 million deluge of one demonstrable lie after another to try and defeat a common sense measure that most Californians support.  

Today, the No on 37 campaign’s already tattered credibility was dealt yet another big blow with news that its “top scientist” is nothing more than a corporate shill willing to misrepresent himself and the University for which he works.

Meet Henry Miller – a spokesperson the No on 37 campaign has been all too eager to promote as an arbiter of good science and someone we can trust with our families health. Miller has been featured in No on 37 television ads, written outrageously deceptive opinion editorials, and has presented himself as an “unbiased” scientific expert.

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But this isn’t the most disturbing aspect of Miller’s sordid career. Before we trust anything he has to say about something as fundamental as our health, we’d do well to consider his two decades of work dedicated to undermining it:

•    Miller shilled for Big Tobacco, where he helped Phillip Morris discredit the links between tobacco products, and cancer and heart disease.

•    Miller advocates for the reintroduction of the toxic pesticide DDT which was banned in the United States and has been linked to pre-term birth and fertility impairment in women.

•    Miller aided Exxon’s  efforts to undercut the reality of climate change.

•    Miller attacked the US Food and Drug Administration’s  efforts to ensure proper vetting and testing of new drugs safety while urging it outsource more of its functions to private industries.

•    And Miller claimed Japanese exposed to radiation from Fukushima “could actually have benefited” from it.

Miller isn’t the only dubious character the No On 37 stable.