Merely sunsetting the ACOEM Mold Position Statement does not rectify the diminished quality of life that is still occurring for many, and is resultant from the years of fraud in medical policy and courts over the mold issue.

by Sharon Noonan Kramer

About a week ago, I posted a blog on Katy’s Exposure entitled “ACOEM Mold Statement ~ Ding, Dong! The Witch is DEAD!”.  The blog was regarding the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) finally removing the scientifically void “Adverse Human Health Effects of Mold in the Indoor Environment” as a position statement on the public affairs page. The gist of the blog was of the positive impact that sunsetting this horrid position paper should have on public health policies and toxic tort litigations nationwide.

ACOEM no longer portraying this paper as an “Evidence based statement” and as the medical understanding of thousands of learned physicians, should aid to cause America’s physicians to be better informed to the reality of disabling and sometimes deadly Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome from exposure to biocontaminants found in Water Damaged Buildings (CIRS WDB). (that one is always a mouthful to write. read it again if you don’t get it!)

Commonly referred to as the “ACOEM Mold Statement”, it was always known to be controversial. It was penned by prolific expert defense witnesses in mold litigation and crammed through ACOEM’s peer review process while being referred to as a “litigation defense argument”.  (See multiple ACOEM emails from the 2002 peer review process in the 2007 Wall Street Journal article linked below).

Again, the primary problem lays with the fact that two PhDs, Bruce Kelman and Bryan Hardin of Veritox, Inc., have repeatedly professed in court that they proved mycotoxins in an indoor environment could never reach a level to harm — as they used the ACOEM Mold Statement that they wrote –to legitimize their scientific fraud upon U.S. courts.  The false concept was mass marketed into policy by many affiliated with ACOEM and by medical schools around the country, that the Veritox associates’ bogus findings meant no amount of biocontaminants indoors (not just mycotoxins) could ever reach a level to cause CIRS-WDB.

In other words, based on scientific fraud, many sick and injured people were deemed to be liars about what caused their injuries, in many U.S. courts for now well over a decade.  In the accurate words of Dr. Harriet Ammann when quoted by the Wall Street Journal in January of 2007,

“They [Kelman and Hardin] took hypothetical exposure and hypothetical toxicity and jumped to the conclusion there is nothing there.” 

Equally accurate and in the words of Dr. James Craner in the same article that was written over eight years ago,

“a lot people with legitimate environmental health problems are losing their homes and their jobs because of legal decisions based on this so-called ‘evidence-based’ statement.”

So…last week after I blogged about the ACOEM Mold Position Statement finally being sunsetted — which is basically the same thing as retracting it as purported current scientific understanding of thousands of ACOEM physicians — I received an email from a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Heather Plude.

Heather wrote,

“It is gone off their website, and that’s a good first step. I don’t think them taking this down without putting a new policy up does what you state here: “it marks the end to fraudulent public health policy via false proof of lack of causation of illness from exposure to biocontaminants in water damaged buildings.” I did a search for “Adverse Human Health Effects Associated with Molds in the Indoor Environment” — and came up with this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12762072  Which is still damaging to people who are sick because it states: Current scientific evidence does not support the proposition that human health has been adversely affected by inhaled mycotoxins in home, school, or office environments. We need a public admission of the causation of illness from exposure. Not merely the sudden disappearance of a document that has been denying causation for more than a decade. Again. It’s a good first step… but a lot of damage has been done. Thank you for all you do, Sharon!”

Heather Plude is a smart and staunch advocate for those who have been injured by biocontaminants in water damaged buildings. She has helped many people find their way toward better health through natural remedies.  Upon reading her comment, it occurred to me that if Heather doesn’t understand why the sunsetting of the ACOEM Mold Statement will aid science to advance more freely, then there is a good chance that 99.9% of people do not understand either.

As Heather writes, its true that one can still find the medical journal 2003 version (not the 2002 position statement version) “Adverse Human Health Effects Associated with Molds in the Indoor Environment” Hardin BD, Kelman BJ, Saxon A.” on the National Institute of Health website. But the 2003 version is not now, nor was it ever published in ACOEM’s medical journal, the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, as the Position Statement of the medical association.  It’s just a paper by three guys who went to college somewhere — now known to NOT BE current accepted science by any medical org.

With the sunsetting of the 2002 position statement version, the 2003 medical journal version carries no more weight when shaping policy and in court than any other medical journal publication.  In fact, this 2003 paper is now subject to even greater scrutiny in the courts because its concept of promoting that its proven indoor mycotoxins can’t harm, has been deemed by ACOEM as not to be the current accepted science of the occupational physician community.  THAT is why sunsetting their scientific nonsense as a position statement is so important to the future of many people.

 

Or how about the U.S. Department of Justice, who continued to hire Veritox as expert defense witnesses in federal mold cases, long after the USDOJ attorneys were aware of the all the fraud over the matter?  Will they be paying anyone for the damages — Or better yet, will they be prosecuting anyone for this massive public fleecing by collusive criminal means?

What about any ACOEM Board of Directors who are also consultants for Veritox? What liability do they have for allowing this public fleecing to continue for so long before sunsetting the known problematic position statement?

Or how about the deceptive idiots at Global Indoor Health Network (GIHN)?  In 2012, while trying to fight fraud with fraud, they put out a Position Statement saying that it was proven half the world’s illnesses were caused by poor indoor air quality. This gem was based solely on their quoting the flawed title of a short news article out of Africa.  When caught in the act of promoting scientific fraud, they attempted to tell their members that the primary theme of their position paper was because of a mere typo. Doh! People injured by poor indoor air quality started quoting the outrageously false statistic while discrediting themselves before any defense witness or naysaying physician had to say a word!

And last but certainly not least in my mind, will California court officers who committed criminal acts under the color of law while knowing their courts had no subject matter jurisdiction; be made to pay me, personally, for harassing me via abuse of their courts, for over 10 years? The direct evidence proves several of them, including appellate justices, committed multiple criminal acts of mailing fraudulent legal documents, coram non judice, to aid Veritox, et.al. to continue to harm thousands via fraud upon the court in Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP).