Ralph Nader told some of the brightest students in America Tuesday that they needed to pay more attention.

The health, safety and environmental advocate urged a crowd of Emory University students to get involved in civic issues and take action to right the wrongs that they find. He suggested students begin by going to a City Council meeting, which only a couple of students acknowledged ever attending. He also suggested they use one of the university labs to test Atlanta's drinking water.

Once they find some wrongdoing, they might want to consider filing a lawsuit to stop it. And they might want to demand their masters at Emory add some courses on creating civic organizations — such as Public Citizen, which he founded — to seek justice and ensure ordinary Americans have a strong voice in how the country is run.

Nader called that "growing up civic." Today's students he noted, have "grown up corporate."

Corporations, Nader said, control politics, laws and the national culture because people let them by not getting involved. For that, people have paid a high price.

"Every three weeks more people die of workplace disease and trauma than died in 9-11; and it's every three weeks," he said.

He commended CBS news show 60 Minutes for its recent report on Trasylol - a drug used to control bleeding during heart surgery. Its maker, Bayer AG, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowed the drug to stay on the market for nearly two years after a study found it may be responsible for thousands of patient deaths. A researcher credited the drug with killing 22,000 people between the study results and when the FDA ordered it off the market in November.

"Killing 1,000 people a month," Nader said. "And it was finally mentioned on national television."

He said Americans had rallied since the American Revolution for causes they believed in, changing the country for the better. All accomplished with far few protections than advocates enjoy today. The Abolitionists fought against slavery; the suffragists fought for the woman's right to vote; labor organizers fought against dangerous workplaces and for a living wage; and civil-rights organizers fought to end segregation and to ensure blacks could vote.

Nader added that some of the last meaningful changes in government from civic actions - laws requiring job safety and to protect the air and water - came in the 1970s. Many were laws he helped enact.

Now, he said, the country politicians are controlled by corporations and environmental and consumer protections are eroding.

Nader, who turns 74 next week, told the students to think ahead to when they would turn 60.

"How are you going to look back on what you did?" he asked.

The students, who had sat quietly, answered with a standing ovation