By Kirstin Beatty (with Patricia Burke)
Kirstin’s Story; My Daughter, My Advocate
The best part of my life is my daughter — from her birth to who she is. No one is perfect, but spending time with her is often perfect.
When I realized wireless was making me sick, I knew that this would be a terrible battle. I did not realize then my daughter would fight for me or be my champion. Remembering to avoid wireless is tiresome for me and my family. Yet still today, my daughter will have a sharp word for anyone in our home considering anything wireless. Sometimes my family blames me for my circumstances, but not my daughter. I don’t have to reiterate, or say I’m tired, or that I’m hoping the WiFi will be turned off as soon as possible.
I know other mothers who confess sensitivity are being blamed by family members including their own children, and that this is a bitter situation. I can’t imagine how painful it would be to have your own child angry with you for ruining everything.
When I realized wireless was making me sick, I thought I would soon die of a brain tumor because of the pain and flares from wireless radiation. I’m a single mom with nothing in the bank. If I died, my daughter would receive nothing and I think would feel or be in some ways alone. I know that I’m the one that cares about my daughter nonstop, all the time. I may not have money to give my daughter, but I give her what few do: attention, honesty, understanding, and first place.
When I realized wireless was dangerous, I took her out of schools as soon as could be arranged. I hate TV babysitters, but we ended up watching TV on days I was too ill for anything at all, if she hadn’t a book. I couldn’t do it forever. The positive was my daughter’s reading and math skills improved enormously. The negative was being reported to the state for homeschooling due to sensitivity or craziness, and enduring regular nerve-wracking visits. The negative was my daughter returning to public school wireless exposures, which I knew to be extreme. I’m happy now she’s at home learning on a hard-wired computer remotely, because the exposures in public schools are dangerous. All wireless concerns me, especially higher power density in schools.
Legislative Advocacy
I’ve been working on legislation a few years, trying to improve bills to meet my desires for real change and to fit the reality of what is possible. This year I’ve several good bills posted at LastTreeLaws.com, some of which could move forward due to finally being a just right-sized request for a state legislature being lobbied for change and, I hope, ramifications of future favorable judicial decisions.
I wrote two bills to spur colleges to hard wire, not only for preK-12 schools. I’m concerned about what is next, after high school, for my daughter. The University of Massachusetts Amherst nearby has a cell tower on campus. All colleges use WiFi and have numerous transmitting digital devices. Even without wireless, sitting all day before a computer is harmful to health. Our use of technology seems to breed technology job requirements. I prepared a bill inviting police and other emergency personnel to engage in a study of how to reduce detrimental health impacts, because I think we need to start making those baby steps to change.
Injured at Work, Taking Wireless to Court
I was one of the many teachers injured by wireless exposures at work. I did go to court. I spent time and money on a public school workman’s compensation case caring mostly about removing wireless from schools. The judge was in a difficult position, and so the case dragged on as we argued about testing, experts, and proving exposures were unsafe — but nothing happened since we finally realized the statute of limitations had passed so the case was dropped.
EMF “Medical Expert” Peter Valberg
It is worth noting that Dr. Peter Valberg submitted testimony against my case, as he has against many others, and that there were many faults in his report.
Most glaringly his citations often lacked authorship, correct formatting, and clarity as to source, and further he mischaracterized Dr. Dominique Belpomme’s work and views.
His reliance on subjective, psychological studies rather than plentiful hard science was most cruel. Psychological studies remind me of our long history of characterizing women as crazy for subjugation, property theft, domestic abuse, and dismissal – to turn humans against compassion to avoid any association with women painted as depressed, hysterical, and “tinfoil” crazy.
This reminds me of political reliance on psychiatry to detain and lock up dissidents, bypassing legal procedures for a public hearing. The media, even the NY Times, echoes notions of crazy, lumping together opposition to vaccines, GMOs, and 5G as all crazy. This makes mention of my reality that much harder, and much easier to dismiss. No one wants to be weak and listen, or be associated with, or be too nice to women or lunatics who need to have a “firm hand” and whose notions must be “nipped in the bud.”
Valberg failed to admit many of his own positions – on tobacco, carbon black, chemical leaks – are far outside the mainstream, while mis-characterizing mainstream science as settled on wireless effects and decidedly against my case. He neglected to mention his conflicts of interest as principal of a product defense company. He omitted that the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, where he contributed to a 1990s cellphone review, is largely funded by polluters, controversial, and critiqued by many community groups.
In name-dropping, he neglects to clarify that he served only as Harvard adjunct professor of physiology, or that his public health studies were only in physiology and inhalation toxicology.
To challenge my medical diagnosis of electromagnetic harm, which had nothing to do with my lungs, using an expert in physiology and inhalation toxicology is ridiculous.
As Valberg was also the MA expert who attested to the safety of wireless utility meters, I submitted a critique of Valberg’s expertise to the MA Dept. of Public Utilities in a docket pertaining to modernizing the electric grid.
Our Children and Our Children’s Children
Like many her age, my daughter is less healthy than I was at her age. I can’t recall being routinely nauseous as a child or teenager, or having lower energy levels. She says her energy levels are normal, but then she is comparing to her own generation and not mine. I know from experience wireless causes me exhaustion and nausea, and from research that exposures trigger early or rapid onset of cancer, infertility, heart and other disease. I can remind, but people forget. I spent years in front of the computer working and hurting to neatly compile concrete evidence, only to see so much denial in the same vein that the Holocaust could never happen, that no one could ever be so stupid and cruel as to undermine the health of so many.
I think memories and moods are shot for most, due to cellphone and other antennas, and I worry about my daughter growing up in a WiFried world with everyone very sick or dead far too soon, as well as more irritable and less intelligent. Who wants a sick world? A sick environment?
I’ve got another year before she attends college, unless delayed. My mind and body has been in and out of service with sickness, yet my parents want me to work and earn money. I steadfastly ignore them because it doesn’t take much WiFi to devastate me. I know I’ve got to make money somehow, to relieve another kind of burden on my family. Yet, I’m going to keep chugging along using the hard-wired computer to work on lobbying, legislation, and anything that makes a better world for my daughter and everyone else. The alternative, doing nothing, is scary.
For this Mother’s Day I would like families to actively support less and safer tech at home, in town, in the city, and in state and federal politics, and recycle any existing cellphones.
Kirstin Beatty Director, Last Tree Laws Co-Chair, Last Tree Laws Ballot Measure Co-Chair, LastTreeLaws.com, MA State Legislation Educational Blog & Resume, Beatty.fyi @BeattyKirstin (Twitter)
More Information about Peter Valberg and Product Defense, by Patricia Burke
His current biography neglects to mention his decades long,( and continuing) tobacco science work for Philip Morris Cigarettes, but notes that Dr. Valberg’s risk assessment expertise covers air pollutants, chemical exposures, biologicals, radionuclides, and EMF (including power lines, radio waves, and cellular telephones.) “Recent projects” [all in defense of injurious industries – ranging from climate denier to electromagnetic expert] “have included evaluating health impacts of airborne particulate matter, diesel exhaust, metals, asbestos, sulfuric acid, and TCE. Also, Hexavalent Chromium, Toxicity of Arsenic in Soils, Environmental Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMFs), Radioactive Risks, Assessment of Carbon Black (CB), Airborne Sulfur Dioxide and Sulfuric Acid.”
FC: What exactly do product-defense companies do?
They combine science with public relations to help clients avoid regulation and litigation. I have yet to see a study published by a product-defense firm that conflicts with the needs of the study’s sponsors. The intent is to cast doubt on real science. The industry has deep roots in the fight over tobacco. If a mercenary scientist claims that an independent scientist is wrong, the media will give both sides equal weight, often without pointing out that one side has been paid for by industry. The most obvious example of this is the handful of climate-change deniers paid for by the fossil-fuel industry who have been quoted in innumerable articles. – David Michaels, Doubt is Their Product
How long will the corporate, political, economic, and health care dismissal, dominance and bullying of women, and of Nature continue?
The wireless debacle can be distilled down to one essential inquiry.
Do we seek integrity in scientific research? Do we listen to “the canaries,” who are accurately identifying what is occurring in their physiology as the result of inadequately regulated radiofrequency exposures?
Or do we keep sustaining a paradigm that handsomely pays mercenary tobacco scientists, and supports yet another wave of economic expansion fueled by destruction of human health and the environment?
These people are not scientists.
(The 5G/Mother’s Day theme continues this week at Natural Blaze.)
Patricia Burke works with activists across the country and internationally calling for new biologically-based microwave radio frequency exposure limits.She is based in Massachusetts and can be reached at stopsmartmetersMASS@gmail.com.