Maine Smart Meter Court Decision
As many of you already know, the Maine Law Court found against us. Thanks to all of you for your tremendous support over the years in our effort. While this probably marks the end of the Maine legal battle on the health question, our resistance is far from over. Stay tuned!
Today’s Supreme Court decision in our smart meter case is not unexpected but of course a great disappointment to any who care about this issue-the health and safety of all citizens and to any who still have some lingering faith in the law.
“It’s one thing to make a finding that evidence is credible regarding potential harm and quite another to find there is a legally credible threat of harm-that a credible threat of harm is in fact credible: likely and probable to result in harm.” Huh???
This doublespeak and flagrant disregard for the health and welfare of citizens is why justice will rarely be found within the law and ultimately why laws will collapse. That and perhaps societal greed reflected in the courts.
It’s a long and convoluted road from “shall ensure safe, reasonable and adequate service”, what state statutes requires, to the PUC’s marginalized version accounting for “magnitude of risk, the probability of harm, availability of alternatives and mitigation techniques…”, essentially a risk assessment evaluation of acceptable harm, one that by their decision the Court endorses. Explain this to the many thousands injured by smart meters and to all those who refuse to pay what amounts to extortion fees to avoid the actual or credible threat of harm from RF exposure.
The Court has miserably failed the people of Maine, instead relying on CMP supplied evidence from the FCC [FCC exposure standards admitted by even the PUC to be obsolete and irrelevant], Trilliant [vendor for the smart meter project], Exponent [a well-known product defense firm], and the Maine CDC finding from 2010 [a 2-week rush job about which the CDC admittedly knew nothing and that predated both this investigation and the WHO classification of RF as a possible human carcinogen]. The Court ignored when they needn’t, independent testimony from international experts on the credible threat of harm RF exposures at smart meter levels poses and instead chose to believe the “Marlboro Man” that smoking is good for us.
Appropriately enough an excellent UNESCO presentation on the growing EHS/Bioethics problem has just been released and is attached. Unfortunately ethics remains a subject far distant from the law. We would do well to leaven our rule by the latter with a strong dose of the former. Relevant material is also below thanks to Richard Conrad.
Ed
Smart meter deployments are equivalent to experimenting on humans without their consent, and if an application for such an experiment were to be submitted to an Institutional Review Board (which is the requirement prior to experimenting on humans) it would be rejected outright. Smart meter deployment is in violation of all ten points of the Nuremberg Code, a set of ethical research principles to be fulfilled in any human experimentation, laid down at the end of World War II. (See the end of this letter for the ten points of the Nuremberg Code).
The Nuremberg Code (From the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services website http://www.hhs.gov/
1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved, as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that, before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject, there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person, which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study, that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5. No experiment should be conducted, where there is an apriori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9. During the course of the experiment, the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end, if he has reached the physical or mental state, where continuation of the experiment seemed to him to be impossible.
10. During the course of the experiment, the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgement required of him, that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.
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