Editorials
Monday, July 26, 1999China ban on exercise
group could backfireIN banning a group dedicated to a traditional form of exercise, China's leaders have displayed their insecurity and willingness to revert to repression.The issue: China has banned Falun Gong, a group dedicated to a traditional form of exercise, with millions of members.
The subject of the government's concern, the Falun Gong sect, bears no resemblance to the young advocates of democracy who choked Beijing's Tiananmen Square a decade ago until they were attacked by the regime's army.
Many of the sect's millions of adherents are middle-aged. It's a huge group, with an estimated 70 million members. They include members of the Communist Party, government officials, even soldiers.
Falun Gong's activities are innocuous. Its followers often met in parks to meditate and practice yoga-like exercises. Despite its huge membership and its ability to orchestrate mass protests, the sect claimed no political agenda.
But the government of President Jiang Zemin became alarmed last April when the sect besieged the compound in Beijing where the highest ranking leaders live to protest restrictions on its activities. The police were unprepared for the size of that demonstration and the speed with which it was organized.
Last week there were more protests by thousands of devotees in dozens of cities, showing again that Falun Gong is capable of rallying its followers against government pressure. The ban followed, a demonstration that the leadership is determined to crush any organization that can rally people against the government.
It won't be easy to enforce the ban. Even China's pervasive police apparatus will be hard pressed to stop devotees from practicing Falun Gong's exercises in the privacy of their homes or alone in parks.
But any effort by the group to organize, practice in groups, or distribute its materials is now outlawed.
This is a period of mounting discontent over unemployment, stagnating incomes and official corruption, which probably contributed to the decision to take action against Falun Gong. The leadership appears to be nervous, even more intolerant of dissent than usual. But this ban, like the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, could backfire and cause more unrest.
The crackdown came in the midst of a furor over the declaration by President Lee Teng-hui that Taiwan must be treated by China as a separate state. The statement enraged Beijing and jolted the Clinton administration but was cheered by many Taiwan residents.
The treatment of Falun Gong could spur Taiwan to stronger resistance in its battle against submission to Beijing's demands.
Report on faking may
allay fear of cancerTHE possibility that magnetic fields around electric power lines cause cancer has raised fears among people, including some in Hawaii, living near high-tension power lines and other sources of radiation.
But now it turns out that scientific data supporting a link between electromagnetic radiation and cancer was faked by a researcher in an influential study. The researcher, Richard P. Liburdy, was forced to resign from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
While the possibility of such a link had been raised previously, Liburdy's study, reported in scientific journals in 1992, provided the first plausible biological mechanism linking electromagnetic fields exposure to disease.
A federal investigation found that Liburdy was guilty of scientific misconduct by discarding data that didn't support his conclusions.
The Office of Research Integrity in the Department of Health and Human Services determined that Liburdy's misconduct consisted of "intentionally falsifying and fabricating" his data to support assertions of cellular effects from electric and magnetic fields.
The Berkeley laboratory investigated Liburdy after a whistleblower challenged his results. In July 1995, the laboratory concluded that Liburdy had falsified data. It then alerted the Office of Research Integrity.
Liburdy, who lives in Tiburon north of San Francisco, resigned his 15-year position in March after the lab canceled his $3.3 million in federal research grants. In May, he agreed with the government to retract three graphs supporting his conclusions, but denied doing anything wrong. He said he agreed to a three-year ban on receiving federal funds only because he couldn't afford to fight them in court.
A National Institutes of Health panel concluded recently that in the years since Liburdy's research appeared in journals in 1992 studies have failed to show that the magnetic fields around electric power lines cause cancer. The report covered more than 20 studies.
However, the report, made to Congress in June by a division of NIH, said the electromagnetic-cancer link could not definitively be ruled out. While the link is tenuous, it said, exposure to the radiation "cannot be recognized as entirely safe."
Still, the finding that the data in an important study supporting the electromagnetic-cancer link were falsified appears to diminish the likelihood that a danger exists.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
