This article by Walt Brasch appeared in Dissident Voice, March 18th, 2018.

A brief commentary by Community Rights US organizer and educator Paul Cienfuegos: This article doesn’t say so explicitly, but fracking corporations are allowed to keep these outrageous secrets from doctors and their patients because the Supreme Court has granted them so-called Privacy “Rights” as corporate persons. This privacy right, though not explicitly stated in our second (and current) US Constitution, or in any of the amendments of the Bill of Rights, is said to exist based on the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment and the Self-Incrimination clause of the 5th Amendment. Thus, fracking corporations may poison people and planet with full constitutional protection, and they don’t even have to tell us what chemicals they were using to do it.

A new Pennsylvania law endangers public health by forbidding health care professionals from sharing information they learn about certain chemicals and procedures used in high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. The procedure is commonly known as fracking.

Fracking is the controversial method of forcing water, gases, and chemicals at tremendous pressure of up to 15,000 pounds per square inch into a rock formation as much as 10,000 feet below the earth’s surface to open channels and force out natural gas and fossil fuels.

Advocates of fracking argue not only is natural gas “greener” than coal and oil energy, with significantly fewer carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur emissions, the mining of natural gas generates significant jobs in a depressed economy, and will help the U.S. reduce its oil dependence upon foreign nations. Geologists estimate there may be as much as 2,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas throughout the United States. If all of it is successfully mined, it could not only replace coal and oil but serve as a transition to wind, solar, and water as primary energy sources, releasing the United States from dependency upon fossil fuel energy and allowing it to be more self-sufficient. MORE…