Connect a couple of dots here.

Hepatitis C is a liver disease.

Many pharmaceuticals are contraindicated for those with liver disease.

People with undiagnosed (and diagnosed) liver disease drink in this water over years.

We wonder why their liver disease advances.

Teresa Hanbey
Hepatitis C Outreach Project, since 1992
Portland, OR

www.hcop.org

These comments by the epidemiologist are in need of revisiting.

I offer the services of our unbiased, non pharmaceutical industry funded charitable organization to get to the heart of this matter.

I absolutely know my team can untangle this knot. We are the first organization dedicated to hepatitis C in the world and we have refused huge amounts of money from the industry to cover up, misinform or sell products under the guise of advocacy.

We are real, honest to goodness grassroots (comprised of professionals) not astro turf organizations funded by industry to train and schmooze government dignitaries to talk of treatment but never prevention. For that, we have no funding. We do it anyway because it just has to be done.

We tell the truth. You cannot save lives or prevent further infections any other way. Even the CDC's educational programs are a "partnership" with the pharmaceutical industry.

No governmental epidemiologist, department, or licensing board has taken on the risks in spas and tattoo establishments. This is not about beauty and art, this is bout science and preventing disease.

If invited, I will, as I have done in other parts of the country, offer presentations and help establish priorities with those the citizens of Las Vegas decide to put feet to fire. Do not let them tell you there are no answers. It blatantly is not so. Revoking a license should be the beginning of protecting you, not a bone thrown so you feel better. You shouldn't feel better. You should feel that more answers need to be revealed to protect you and your families. Recinding a license is a political solution, not a preventative one.

I have the science to back up every statement I make. (www.whyfiles.com tattooing) Our medical director spoke to the NIH Consensus management conference on Hepatitis C.

I have personally presented to Women's Health National Organizations, American Public Health Association (in 2000)and have been invited to convene a panel in 2008. I am invited to speak all over the world, yet have no funds to get there. (Google: thanbey, hepatitis C Outreach Project)

There is NO EXCUSE to remain ignorant any more and let this continue. You have not yet scratched the surface, Las Vegas! And if any city can rise up with one voice, it's you.

Step up to the plate and DEMAND the truth, backed up with science and consumer protection in your mind. And know that greed and the greasing of palms happens every day across this country. It's cloaked in "privately funded" Foundations that suddenly spring out of no where and have access to very important people.

I'm here for you, Las Vegas. All you have to do is ask. I am not a doctor, yet that may very well be my highest qualification.

Teresa Hanbey
Hepatitis C Outreach Project, since 1992
Portland, OR

www.hcop.org blog

It's your children who are greatest risk.