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How Famous Doctor Was Targeted For Tar Sands Cancer Whistleblowing

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Dr. John O’Connor’s story of tar sands linked cancer patients is unforgettable, for him and any American daring to look at what’s in store for fellow Americans due to tar sands and corporate-government’s dirty persecution campaign, targeting innocent individuals working in the best interest of humanity.

 

The quiet school bus driver who tried to hide his jaundice from his wife; the traditional elderly man “yellow, almost green” in the clinic who died the day after his operation; the Lebanese immigrant, deeply in love with his partner, who’d lost her uncle nine years ago to the same disease, given less than a year to live — are only a few patients haunting Dr. O’Connor.

 

As physician for a beautiful, remote First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, O’Connor wanted answers to the suffering of his patients.

 

“Why should I see such illness in such a stunning, out of the way community? It makes absolutely no sense,” he’d said. “The rate of smoking is lower there. People walk everywhere. There’s no processed foods in their diets. It just doesn’t make sense.”

 

In 2006, O’Connor went public with his claims of unprecedented cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan (“Fort Chip”). Eight long years of being a targeted individual followed.

 

Dr. O’Connor was questioned, threatened, falsely accused, and forced to move, as most targeted individuals experience. Why did this happen to the doctor? Because he publicly voiced his suspicions that those rates might be caused by pollution from large tar sands reserves extracted just 150 miles upstream – and because the oil and gas industry control the government, not the people, and the people continue supporting their own oppression.

 

More: How Corporate With Military Is Targeting Individuals

 

“It is nauseatingly disgusting, what’s going on… This community has been totally brushed aside,” he has said, still wondering why the government hasn’t yet studied the cause for the high cancer rates, why they recommended the oil industry participate in the health study process, and, perhaps most importantly, why it took so long to provide updated information regarding cancer rates to the ailing community.

 

Dr. O’cconor’s story became worse, far worse, a nightmare only targeted individuals seem to get, while bystanders say, “impossible” story, “delusional,” and even “a threat to society.”

 

In March 2006, CBC News published an article about Dr. O’Connor and Fort Chip.

 

“Dr. John O’Connor, a physician and medical examiner for the remote northern community, says the population of 1,200 has been disproportionately affected by a high number of both rare and common cancers,” CBS reported. “Elders in the community say they didn’t see these kinds of diseases until the oil industry started production near their homes on the southwestern tip of Lake Athabasca. O’Connor said he suspects oil and gas activity may play a role.”

 

The public and media began pressuring the government to study Fort Chip’s cancer. If pollution from tar sands production was causing high cancer rates, people wanted and deserved to know.

 

Fort Chip is only 150 miles downstream from Canada’s largest tar sands reserve. If cancer was rising there, the same could be true for other communities there — and further afield, in the United States.

 

Typical of many targeted individuals once outspoken on behalf of a suffering and oppressed community, the corporate-government, that is, industry supported by the government, turned against the good doctor, turning his life upside down. 

 

Canada’s lead public health agency filed four complaints of misconduct against O’Connor, including causing ‘undue alarm’ and ‘engendering a sense of mistrust’ in the Canadian government, Climate Progress reported.

 

O’Connor was put through an official investigation, as if he was a threat to society, a criminal, a terrorist. In the United States, as a targeted individual, he could have been placed in indefinite detention, according to the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) that Congress just approved – again.

 

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta was asked to investigate Dr. O’Cconor. He risked losing his medical licence.

 

“From what I’ve heard off the record, from members of the medical community, this [was] totally unprecedented,” Andrew Nikiforuk, a Canadian journalist writing about the oil and gas industry for nearly 20 years, said during a parliamentary hearing on O’Connor’s now-famous situation.

 

It might have been unprecedented there in Canada, but the same has happened in south Louisiana when one physician was imprisoned for his honest reporting of patients sick and dying due to Big Oil. BP and government threatened doctors across the Gulf Coast region if they dared speak truthfully about the 2010 BP oil spill illnesses still plaguing the region. (Vampire of Macondo, Medical Mistreatment Chapter, D. Dupré, 2012)

 

Media attention swirled around O’Connor in Alberta while charges were processed.

 

He fled to Nova Scotia, “to escape all the craziness.” He established his own practice there. 

 

Two years, eight months of life he’d not want to repeat

 

Public pressure over O’Connor’s casem however, did not end. The Alberta Cancer Board finally conducted a study on O’Connor’s claims in 2009. confirming there were, indeed, high cancer rates in Fort Chip.

 

The Alberta Cancer Board’s study findings were staggering: 

 

“Cancer rates in Fort Chip were 30 percent higher than expected. There were elevated rates of blood cancer, lymphatic cancer, and soft tissue cancers. The high rates were primarily seen in the last six years of the 12-year study, a finding the Board said should warrant ‘closer monitoring of cancer occurrences in Fort Chipewyan in the coming years’.”

 

 

O’Connor was absolved of the charges and moved back to Alberta, “but not without scars from the experience,” Climate Progress says.

 

“The feeling, it’s hard to describe,” O’Connor said.

 

“That was two years and eight months of my life that I would not want to repeat.”

 

Surveillance expert Paul Baird says millions of people are being targeted as Dr. O’Connor has been. Few of those are fortunate to only experience the targeting a couple of years, as Dr. Oconnor did. For many, the persecution is for life.

 

Source: Climate Progress



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    • 4DollyMadison

      Thank you, Dr. John O’Connor. The MSM in Canada continues to tiptoe around the issue, but this article spells it out – mainly because Dr. O’Connor testified in Washington, D.C., a few months ago, and pulled no punches.

      http://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/alberta-doctor-tells-us-canada-‘lying’-about-tar-sands’-health-effects

      A northern Alberta doctor warned U.S. Senators on what he says have been the devastating health impacts of the tar sands on families – effects, he says, that have been willfully “ignored” by the Canadian and Alberta governments.

      “I appeal to you to keep up the pressure – this is an ongoing tragedy. A total disgrace,” said Dr. John O’Connor, Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

      He sighted statistics for rare cancers – of the bile duct for example – that have shot up 400 times for what is considered normal for a tiny community, such as Fort Chipewyan – which is downstream, to the north of the oil sands.

      “These are published, peer-reviewed studies that indicate that the government of Alberta and Canada have been lying, misrepresenting the impact of industry on the environment,” said O’Connor.

      The Alberta government has long denied cancer links with the province’s multi-billion-dollar crown energy jewel. It states on its website that there is “insufficient evidence to link the incidence of cancer in Fort Chipewyan to oil sands operations” and rates of cancer are “within the expected range.”

      O’Connor finds that hard to believe.

      “All of the scientific studies that have accumulated, it’s almost like they don’t exist,” he said.

      A new study for example, shows Leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have spiked in the last 10 years — especially among men who live downwind of pollution plumes from the oil, gas and tar sands facilities east of Edmonton.

      The family physician was invited to brief two U.S. Senators who are against the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, that if approved, would carry bitumen from Alberta to Texas.

      California Senator Barbara Boxer said the Alberta doctor is an important “witness” as to why the Keystone pipeline should be turned down, based on health concerns alone.

      O’Connor said he came “with absolutely no political agenda” and simply as an “advocate for patients” because he feels his repeated calls for Canadian authorities to take precautionary health actions have been ignored.

      “In my experience, when pressure is exerted outside Canada, the government reacts,” he said.

    • ElOregonian

      Great article Deborah, this is what happens, and is happening when big corporations climb in bed with willing governments, fascisim rears it’s ugly head, and a great many innocent lives are ruined, or destroyed.

      Thank you for making us aware of these criminal atrocities.

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