Musings: Another Lie Bites the Dust

Now that a westside ob/gyn, Dr. Graham Chelius, has come right out and said, in a letter to the editor in The Garden Island today:

There is not an increased rate of cardiac defects of any kind on the Westside of Kauai.

do you suppose Councilmen Gary Hooser and Tim Bynum, nurse practitioner Marghee Maupin, mayoral candidate Dustin Barca, Babes Against Biotech, Hawaii Seed, Vandana Shiva, KKCR disc jockeys, Earthjustice, Center for Food Safety, Moms Against Monsanto, SHAKA, anti-GMO propagandists and the “red-shirt” supporters of Bill 2491/Ordinance 960 will finally stop repeating this lie?

It was a lie from the very start, as proven when I printed the actual concerns and comments of westside Dr. Jim Raelson in Saturday's post. His entirely reasonable and circumspect words were cravenly and intentionally twisted by Gary and his supporters into something inflammatory, heartbreaking and utterly false.

And now, with the letter from Dr. Chelius, the "westsiders with birth defects 10 times the national average" claim is confirmed as rural myth. Dr. Chelius wrote, emphasis added:

There is not an increased rate of cardiac defects of any kind on the Westside of Kauai. In Mr. Hooser’s recent opinion piece he referenced an unnamed doctor who felt that there was an increased rate. This issue was evaluated recently and compared to the state birth defect report (which Mr. Hooser also mentioned) we have not seen more cases than expected on the Westside. Cardiac defects are common, and Kauai is expected to have about 14 children born each year with any cardiac defect and three to four will need surgery within the first year of life. A portion of these children will be born on the Westside.

Please encourage your loved ones who are pregnant to get adequate prenatal care.

Graham Chelius, M.D.

Kekaha

So now that we know, how will the damage and fear promulgated by this lie be rectified?

Will “Babe” Nomi Carmona, who slandered Mayor Bernard Carvalho with her ugly Facebook memes depicting him as the “birth defects mayor,” issue an equally public apology?

Will KKCR disc jockeys Jimmy Trujillo, Jonathan Jay, Gordon LaBedz, Felicia Cowden (now a Council candidate) and all the others who hyped this unsubstantiated crap during the 2491 frenzy take to the airwaves to set their listeners straight?

Will nurse practitioner Marghee Maupin pen another guest editorial to correct her Sept. 8 guest editorial "Was it worth it?" The one where she made the totally false claim: 

Let’s ask the mother whose child is going on his sixth heart surgery and will forever be on blood thinners and will not ever be able to be involved in vigorous play as most boys are (the birth defect he is plagued with has been calculated by local doctors at 10 times the national average).

What about Gary and Tim? Will they finally and publicly admit, “Yeah, even though we knew it wasn't confirmed, we deliberately hyped it to the max to frighten people and build support for our Bill 2491?”

Equally important, now that this key bit of propaganda has been exposed, will Gary, Tim and the others stop telling the rest of their lies? Like how none of the seed companies ship any product off island,  use 18 tons of pesticides annually and refuse to comply with buffer zones and disclosures — all oft-repeated statements I have revealed as false.

Will they all finally be discredited in the eyes of a gullible, tragically misled populace?

And now that we know Gary and Tim will stretch the truth, distort facts, pander, deliberately foment fear and anxiety among their constituents and flat out lie, can any thinking voter possibly still believe these two men are "public servants" who deserve another term in office?