A month ago, the UK Telegraph reported that "The remains of more than 15,000 babies were incinerated as 'clinical waste' by hospitals in Britain with some used in 'waste to energy' plants."
Prolife news sites and blogs as well as many other center-right outlets covered the story. The establishment press almost completely ignored it. Matt Balan of NewsBusters noted on March 26 that the story "got picked up by newspapers across much of the Anglosphere – including The Vancouver Sun and The Ottawa Citizen in Canada," but that it did not "receive wide coverage in the United States." More like barely any, with the only TV broadcast exception at the time being a segment on Fox News's The Five. Perhaps the non-coverage excuse was "Well, that's the UK. It could never happen here." That excuse was lame anyway, and now it's no longer operative (go to Page 3 at the B.C. Catholic link; story by Steve Weatherbe):
According to Life News (bolds are mine throughout the rest of this post):
... Local officials say they will stop the practice while they look into the situation.
Following the LifeNews story below that received national attention, the Marion County Board of Commissioners issued the following statement:
Today the Marion County Board of Commissioners learned that the Covanta Waste-to-Energy Facility located in Marion County may be accepting medical waste containing human tissue from outside sources. In response to an April 21 article in The B.C Catholic, the board took immediate action to temporarily halt the acceptance of boxed medical waste at the facility.
Commissioner Sam Brentano, chair, said, “We provide an important service to the people of this state and it would be a travesty if this program is jeopardized due to this finding. We thought our ordinance excluded this type of material at the waste-to-energy facility. We will take immediate action to ensure a process is developed to prohibit human tissue from future deliveries.”
“We are outraged and disgusted that this material could be included in medical waste received at the facility,” said Commissioner Janet Carlson. “We did not know this practice was occurring until today. We are taking immediate action and initiating discussions with Covanta Marion to make certain that this type of medical waste is not accepted in the future.”
What PJTV's Bill Whittle said about UK's National Health Service in a video shortly after the UK story broke would seem to apply here:
Now of course ... (officials will claim that) "This is an outrage, and a few isolated incidents only, and a sternly worded letter has been issued, and nothing like this will ever, ever happen again" — until it does.
Indeed.
The story is only several hours old in the U.S., so perhaps it's understandable that only prolife and center-right blogs and outlets have picked up the story, and that the slow-moving establishment press hasn't yet caught on yet.
That excuse won't fly 24 hours from now.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
