Responding to Harvey Wasserman

Harvey Wasserman's HuffPo post, Cracking the Corporate Media's Iron Curtain Around Death at Three Mile Island, shows that he knows no bounds in his determination to scare and mislead the public. It is grossly irresponsible for him to claim that the accident at TMI killed people without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim. And by implying there has been a cover up, he also has severely insulted the good people of Pennsylvania.

Wasserman claims that the "Soviet-style Iron Curtain" formed between corporate media and the "alternatives" is hiding deaths caused by the accident. This not only denigrates media outlets that won't embrace his unfounded allegations, it maligns Pennsylvanians.

Would the people of the Middletown Press & Journal, the Harrisburg Patriot-News and numerous other local and regional newspapers, radio and TV organizations hide the truth from their friends and neighbors? Would local doctors, the Harrisburg Hospital, Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Holy Spirit Hospital and many other local and regional hospitals, medical facilities, and medical professionals hide the truth from their patients and communities? Would the mayor of Middletown, local leaders, elected officials, and the Governors of Pennsylvania, including current Governor Edward Rendell, hide the truth from the people they swore to protect? Would the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Columbia University, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and the American Public Health Association all conspire to hide the truth from the many thousands of Pennsylvanians whose health they studied? Have the people who live around TMI who say no harm was done agreed to lie? Does any serious person, no matter what his or her view of nuclear energy, believe corporate media has the power to corrupt them all as Wasserman implies?

It has been 30 years since the accident. After all this time, with every opportunity to do studies and to gather data regarding the health of the people living around TMI, Wasserman, Wing, Gunderson, Sternglass, Gould, Epstein and others have failed to make their case and convince the public. Their "tidal wave of proof" has been stopped by one thing - the truth. Science, and the reality on the ground in Pennsylvania, have proven their claims are hollow.