George Soros Joins The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund To Provide Medical Treatment For 9/11 Workers

  For Immediate Release: Monday, February 26, 2007
  Contact: Amy Weil, OSI
  Aweil@sorosny.org/212-548-0381

NEW YORK- George Soros, chairman and founder of the Open Society Institute, along with five other philanthropies joined forces today to help The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund create a 9/11 Neediest Medical campaign. Contributions to the campaign, which begins with more than $4 million, will provide treatment for uninsured workers and residents who have developed life-threatening diseases since the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

  This special campaign is being launched by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund with a $1 million grant from its endowment to a clinical consortium headed by the Mount Sinai Medical Center. The funds will be used to treat uninsured responders who performed Sept. 11 rescue, recovery, and cleanup work. The New York Community Trust, in a parallel effort, plans to contribute $1 million for screening and treatment to Bellevue Hospital Center, principally for uninsured clean-up workers and Lower Manhattan residents.

  Soros announced today OSI's gift of $1 million to support the Sept. 11 work at the two hospitals. Both hospitals will also benefit from donations of $1 million from the Ford Foundation, $250,000 from the Altman Foundation, $75,000 from the United Way of New York City, and $25,000 from Trinity Church, which will also accept contributions from the public at its St. Paul's Chapel near Ground Zero.

  "As a New Yorker, I wanted to support the people who risked their well-being to help others in the aftermath of the Sept. 11th attacks," said Soros. "As a result of their heroic efforts, many of them today are in poor health and are especially vulnerable because they lack medical insurance. Now it is important to come to their aid."

  In a report last week, Mayor Bloomberg's World Trade Center Health Panel estimated that the cost of screening and treatment for all those affected by Sept. 11 could exceed $392 million a year, not including late-emerging conditions or pension and disability costs. The 9/11 Neediest Medical Campaign is a vital step to address this gap in medical services and will bolster the efforts of doctors to save lives and alleviate suffering of 9/11 workers with life-threatening diseases.

###

And here is the reason that Soros and others are having to do this is for all those who do not believe that our government is capable of participating in the destruction and misery of the 9/11 attacks--

Documentation from the EPA's own internal watchdog detailed the risks of breathing air laced with micro-particles of asbestos, lead, and mercury--air with the alkalinity of Drano. Yet that documentation was "edited" by the White House, and workers were told the air was safe, Wall Street should reopen, and reconstruction should begin.

Result?

Today nearly 70% of 9/11 first responders suffer from debilitating respiratory illnesses  Most will have the illnesses the rest of their abbreviated lives.

  "I am relieved to be able to reassure New York and New Jersey residents that a host of potential contaminants are either not detectable or are below the Agency's concern levels."
  ~ EPA Head Christine Tood Whitman, Sept. 21, 2001

  "The air quality is safe and acceptable."
  ~ New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sept. 28, 2001

  "No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws. The allegations in this case of Whitman's reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are without question conscience-shocking."
  ~ Federal Judge Deborah Batts, Feb. 6, 2006, decision allowing class-action suit to move forward and refusing to grant immunity to government officials

Cross posted at myleftwing.com