In a radically untransparent move, the NIH recently released 2,500 pages of fully redacted, pure nothingness in response to an April 2024 FOIA request by health advocacy group Children’s Health Defense for documents pertaining to the agency’s odd decision to discontinue its research into the potential cancer-inducing effects of cell phone radiation.
Here are the over 2,000 entirely redacted pages of NIH records requested by Children’s Health Defense.
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By way of explanation, the NIH bureaucrat in charge of FOIA compliance wrote a letter dated Jan. 24 of this year explaining the 2,500 blank pages.
From the letter (emphasis added):
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) searched their files for records and located 2,498 pages responsive to your request. Portions of these records were withheld pursuant to Exemptions 4, 5, and 6 of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4), (b)(5), and (b)(6), and sections 5.31(d), (e) and (f) of the HHS FOIA Regulations, 45 CFR Part 5. Exemption 4 protects trade secrets and commercial or financial information that is privileged and confidential from disclosure. Exemption 5 allows for the withholding of internal government records that are pre-decisional and contain staff advice, opinions, and recommendations. Exemption 6 exempts from disclosure any records whose release would result in a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
One would be hard-pressed to offer a good-faith argument that anything the NIH — a public health body doing public health research, funded by public money, that is used to craft public health policy — does should be shrouded in secrecy.
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The only compelling exemption that even theoretically makes sense of those cited above is protection of trade secrets — but even those must have some workaround. No sane person reading this nonsense would believe the NIH had to redact 2,500 pages of documents in their totality on account of protecting trade secrets. The argument falls apart further when considering that the “trade secrets” that would be revealed via disclosure in this case could show how cell phone manufacturers may give their customers cancer yet make no attempt to duly warn them of the danger.
The decision made in January of last year to jettison the research gets odder when considering that the NIH had already dumped $10 million into the project and had found, by its own admission, “clear evidence” that cell phone radiation causes DNA damage and cancer.
Via The Defender (emphasis added):
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) refuses to reveal nearly 2,500 pages of records related to the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) decision to shut down its research on how wireless radiation affects human health, according to an investigation by The Defender.
In January 2024, the NTP announced it had no plans to further study the effects of cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) on human health — even though the program’s own 10-year, $30 million study, completed in 2018, found “clear evidence” of cancer and DNA damage.
In April 2024, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) filed requests to the NIH under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain records related to why the government shut down the research.
One can only hope RFK Jr. is on this. The administration promised “radical transparency,” and now they’re on the hook to deliver the goods.
