By Jill Jennings-McElheney – SUNDAY, 9 July 2017 – On learning of last month’s criminal charges against state public health officials involved in Flint’s catastrophic water poisoning, I am raising disturbing questions about top officials at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) in Washington, DC.  I met with the federal agency in 2014 at the time in which Flint, Michigan, was already five months into their nearly two year catastrophic water poisoning exposure and cover up.

Being water poisoned myself by federal government data manipulation that allowed my perpetrators to go free after committing an egregious environmental crime, I became an advocate for  envirovictims’ rights and those violated by green crimes.  I organized a team of distinguished experts who presented compelling information to HHS in the Fall of 2014.

Unbeknownst at the time of my meeting, Flint’s water poisoning was already underway, and a spike in deadly Legionella was known by public health officials.  The HHS umbrella, which includes the CDC, knew about the Flint Legionella disease cluster in FEB 2015 but would not intervene.

The proof of harm my team first presented to high ranking HHS officials in FALL of 2014 was solid.  I continued to appeal to HHS, and organized another top level meeting urging action by Congressional advising scientists in April 2015.

Our evidence presentation indicated children across the nation, including Flint, were at risk of neurological injury from exposure to their finished drinking water being deliberately infused with an unapproved drug.

As a mother of a water poisoned child who nearly died and suffered an adverse neurological event,  I was astonished when HHS chose not to take immediate action in 2014 by following a well laid out, viable, and legal plan we provided to remove children from harm’s way of this neurological endangerment.  I asked HHS to reconsider several times throughout 2015 because they were choosing unethically and illegally to sustain whole body dosing of young developing brains with a known dangerous neurotoxin.

Upon my learning recently that state public health officials in Flint’s devastating water poisoning were being criminally charged for the Legionella cluster outbreak and cover up, I was appalled this dereliction of duty resulted in the death of an elderly man, Mr. Robert Skidmore, in DEC 2015.  I now have some harsh words for the federal Department of Health & Human Services.

The HHS high ranking public health officials on Capitol Hill learned in 2014 that neurological injury to children was occurring from their drinking water.   Yet, not only did HHS turn their backs claiming they were not the responsible authority to remove children from this harm, they were double crossing American families at the time by spearheading an interagency federal panel to further EXPAND this unethical neurological harm into ALL municipal water supplies.  FOIA records show that the very same HHS officials I met with were accepting unduly influence from third party profiteers.  These profiteers are perpetrators using drinking water supplies for uncontrolled dosing of this neurological insult on unassuming families throughout the U.S.

I didn’t know the victim from Flint, Mr. Robert Skidmore, who passed away from the condescension and callousness of state public health officials being criminally charged now.  My sympathy goes to his family.  I can say with a shock to my conscience that the federal HHS (whose subsidiaries include NIH, CDC, and FDA) shares in this state and local blame for being silent.  Their failure to notify and remove Flint families from deadly Legionella-laced water when they knew of this scandal in FEB 2015 is beyond reprehensible.  The tragic realization here and now in 2017, is the federal agencies were also aware by then they were double dosing Flint with poisonous water by not switching off their neurotoxic exposure to fluoride.

Fluoride, in addition to being a neurotoxin, is an endocrine disruptor, and has been linked to cancer in pre-pubescent boys.  It has been scientifically proven, at levels falsely claimed by government to be safe, to disrupt collagen biosynthesis leading to the breakdown of “body glue” in bone, tendon, muscle, skin, cartilage, lungs, kidney and trachea. 

How does an agency like HHS nonchalantly shirk its duty from their high perch in DC as citizens, including Mr. Skidmore, were suffering and dying in real time?  Why didn’t the agency just do its job to act upon what it learned in FALL 2014 from our initial meeting, and simply notify families across America they were dutifully removing pregnant women and children from an unapproved drug known to be neurotoxic?

You have 8,000 children being intentionally lead poisoned by their municipal water in Flint in 2014.  Top that off with another forced neurological toxin, fluoride, deliberately infused into their tainted finished water.  The neurological development of Flint’s children was already under assault by lead.  HHS was adding insult to injury with fluoride.

HHS is as guilty as the state and local public health officials because this monstrosity agency had every opportunity and abundant resources to take away this harm targeting the brains of Flint children in 2014.  Had they done that to improve water quality by removal of fluoride, their focus of intervention nationwide could have eliminated the continuing Legionella and lead exposure cover up in Flint.   HHS chose to ignore the evidence we presented, and not to act upon what they knew in Flint.  They perpetuated a state created danger that went on to irreversibly poison an entire town.

The lead water crisis America is currently facing, triggered by Flint, has been exacerbated by fluoride.  Now tell me:  if state public health officials of Flint are being charged with crimes, shouldn’t officials at the federal level who stood by silently likewise be arrested?  There should be no loopholes and no immunity for local, state, or federal government employees to punt an environmental public health hazard between themselves as victims’ lives hang in the balance.

Alarmingly this remains an ongoing public health hazard; yet, HHS keeps denying jurisdiction while it continues funneling money and dispensing propaganda to promote this archaic practice.  Will these loopholes be fixed by the recent criminal charges of state public health officials in Flint?   We will see.

The autogenocide agenda of the new administration is unprecedented.  The current HHS Secretary, Tom Price, hasn’t shown any interest.

No one in public health, including the behemoth HHS, has the right to rob human potential and destroy someone else’s life.  Removing the victims immediately from harm’s way should have been the collective priority in Flint.  The entire public health infrastructure of America failed Flint.  They are still failing now.