So much for the whole truth
To the editor:
As a geologist working with Virginia Uranium, I had heard about the “educational seminars” sponsored by a group dedicated to attacking the proposed study on whether mining can be done safely. To see for myself, I attended the “seminar” held last week in Danville, my hometown.
What I observed was pitifully light on science and education and woefully heavy on exaggerated and unfounded claims aimed at terrifying the few people who seemed to have come to learn.
The one really clear message from the two-hour harangue was the urgent need for a state-sanctioned scientific study that will cut through the clouds of nonsense and get to the issues that should concern us all.
In his virulent attacks on Virginia Uranium, the man in charge of the Danville meeting spent 30 minutes trying to show that the company is a Canadian company — as if that would reflect some sort of evil. The company is incorporated in both the United States and Canada. However, Virginia Uranium is about 90-percent Virginia owned and is absolutely 100-percent Virginia managed.
But what’s wrong with Canadian companies? Our region has been nourished by the presence of Canadian companies, as well as companies from Poland, Sweden, India and on and on. Intertape, a long-time mainstay of the local economy, is a Canadian company. The current issue of Images, a magazine published by the Danville Pittsylvania Chamber of Commerce, has an article highlighting the positive impact that many new international companies have recently made to the local economy.
Some of the meeting’s most reckless allegations came from a woman who took to the floor and, in keeping with what I’ve read she’s said in the past, told the group that she is not a communist. After clearing that up, she stated (among many similar allegations) that cancer rates among children living near nuclear facilities was skyrocketing, but she offered no documentation for this inflammatory claim.
This claim is in stark contrast to the National Cancer Institute report entitled “Cancer in Populations Living Near Nuclear Facilities,” which concluded that, “There was no evidence whatever of any excess cancers among populations living near nuclear facilities” (http://www.cancer.gov).
It is hard to imagine why anyone would make such a blatantly false statement except to inflame passionate fear in those who don’t know better.
The unsubstantiated spectacle went on and on, plucking any old subject from the sky and proclaiming authority over it and then using it to try to scare the daylights out of people. As I watched this, I kept wondering why this group is so opposed to the study that most reasonable people favor. I think the real reason is that a study would contain in it something beyond their reach: Documented, carefully studied, scientific facts.
PATRICK M. WALES
Danville
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2 comments:
Perhaps Wales' his first sentence should have read, "As a geologist working FOR Virginia Uranium..." At least Wales, unlike Stewart East in his editorial, acknowledged a working relationship with VUI. Isn't it strange how they choose to distance themselves from VUI...trying to appear to be just an ordinary John Q. Public, instead of VUI employees.
Yes, it is curious to see the VUI employees who write and speak in favor of the mines fail to mention, at least in much detail, their connection to VUI and what they stand to gain should Coles Hill be mined.
They remind me a lot of the local investors who fail to mention that they're salivating at the thought of the money they hope to make while hiding behind their claims of being such good friends and neighbors to the many non-investors that they wouldn't do anything to bring them harm.
John Q. Public and Good Neighbor Bubba want us to believe that they have no special interest in the mine other than all of the "good things" it will bring to Southside. But when their relationships with and to VUI are exposed, it appears that they will be the only ones reaping "good things". And I bet they dream of the day when they can count their stacks of "good things" in their new homes far away from the shadow of the mine and all the nice folks they used to know.
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