FCC’s Ajit Pai: The Sacredness of Safety?

Op-Ed by Patricia Burke

FCC Chair Ajit Pai could not attend the Annual Consumer Electronics Show in Nevada this week due to concerns about his safety.

Following his unpopular decision to gut net neutrality, he has reportedly received death threats, and his family has faced harassment.

According to the Post article linked above, opponents of his net neutrality decision posted signs outside his home, some featuring his children’s names.

Pai is quoted as stating,

I understand that people are passionate about policy but the one thing in America that should remain sacred is that families, wives and kids, should remain out of it. And stop harassing us at our homes.

The irony of the Pai family’s circumstances regarding lack of recognition of the “sacred” is that families, wives, and children have not been protected by the FCC in their own neighborhoods and homes since passage of the Telecom Act of 1996.

Men and boys, the elderly, the medically vulnerable, honeybee pollinators, or any other aspect of human health and the environment has not been protected either.

As the direct result of FCC inaction, many Americans are facing physical assault in their own homes from exposure to radio frequencies. RF makes them sick and causes acute physical pain and suffering, in violation of international anti-torture prohibitions against sleep deprivation.

The FCC’s “guidelines” are the moral and ethical equivalent of going to the medicine cabinet and taking out every single medication, all at the same time, and giving an adult dose that has been tested on a military male only for short-term effects to every pregnant woman, infant, and child.  After countless historical medical mishaps concerning drug interactions, cumulative effects, side effects, inappropriate dosing, and drug allergies, medicine has made some strides in approaching a necessary course correction, in particular recognizing that men and women metabolize medications differently.

While the economy and military remain drunk on wireless, the body count is mounting. Although microwave illness may be mischaracterized as mental illness, leaky gut, MAST cell activation, the 4 A’s in children – asthma, ADD/ADHD, allergies, and autism –  and while digital addiction makes its way into its own disease category, the American consumer culture remains unaware that wireless poses significant risks.  Radiofrequency exposure is linked to reproductive issues, cancer, neurological illness and disease.

While I extend my sympathy to the Pai family, the FCC and its industry partners bear the distinction of being perhaps the most irresponsible and immoral of industries in terms of the extent of deceptive damage being inflicted on the populace.

In her TED Talk entitled: “What Happens When You Have a Disease that Doctors Can’t Diagnose” Jennifer Brea speaks eloquently of the need for a new medicine paradigm that does not portray women’s health issues as psychological.

Here is why this worries me. Since the 1950s, rates of many autoimmune diseases have doubled to tripled.  45% of patients who are eventually diagnosed with a recognized autoimmune disease are initially told that they are hypochondriacs. Like the hysteria of old, this this has everything to do with gender and with whose stories we believe.  75% of autoimmune disease patients are women, and in some cases it’s as high as 90%.

How many lives could we have saved, decades ago, if we had only asked the right questions?  How many lives could we save today, if we decide to make a real start?

Our immune systems are just as much a battleground for equality as the rest of our bodies.

The impending rollout of the 5G network and its required density of infrastructure promises only to deliver more collateral damage.

It we continue to replace the attitude of entitlement of manifest destiny that fueled the destructive fossil fuel model with greed for faster and more ubiquitous use of frequency for increased connectivity, we will destroy life on this planet. Our egos are writing checks that the ecosystem cannot cash.

What is sacred is that we are Beings of Frequency, as depicted in the documentary film by James Russell. If we begin to turn back towards this knowledge, we might pull ourselves back from the edge.

While my sympathies are with the Pai family, the FCCs actions are unforgivable, not in reference to net neutrality, but to the gas-lighting of a generation whose nerves, bellies, and brains are on fire.  I’m sorry that Pai couldn’t be with his cronies in Nevada. I know people who can’t live in their homes, who can’t leave their homes, who have lost the value of their homes, who can’t access medical care, who are living without electricity, who are in unrelenting pain, and who are being robbed of their love of life, or of life itself.

As the late eco-feminist Marti Kheel stated at a meeting with the California Public Utilities Committee in 2011, after many CA residents were harmed by wireless utility infrastructure, “When you are standing at the edge of a cliff, progress is walking backward.”

Patricia Burke works with activists across the country and internationally calling for new biologically-based microwave radio frequency exposure limits. She is based in Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected].

Image credit: Waking Times