Americans love to sue people.
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| Credit: Public Domain/Wikipedia |
Each year, we file about 5,800 lawsuits per 100,000 people. To put that figure into context, America's lawsuit rate is higher than Canada (by 4 times), Australia (3.8x), Japan (3.3x), France (2.4x), and the UK (1.6x). We're a lawsuit-happy nation.
What do we sue over? Well, anything really. A former judge sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants. Although he lost the lawsuit, the financial hardship and stress of being sued caused the dry cleaners to close the store. Simply put, when in the wrong hands, the legal system is a terrifying weapon that one citizen can use against another. The mere threat of a lawsuit can cost a defendant thousands of dollars in legal fees.
The stakes are much higher when large businesses are involved. The sums can reach into the millions and even billions of dollars.
Law Firm Matthews & Associates Pushes Junk Science
One law firm that has made a name for itself pushing junk science and suing chemical and pharmaceutical companies is Matthews & Associates. Its Twitter page gives an insight into how the law firm thinks. For example, this tweet is standard anti-vaxxer propaganda:
There's no such thing as nagalese. A PubMed search for "nagalese" yields precisely zero results... because it's not real. Assuming that this is a typo and the lawyers actually meant to write "nagalase," a PubMed search reveals nothing relevant to their claim that nagalase in vaccines causes disease. There is, however, an article on PolitiFact debunking a fake news story that said doctors who discovered "cancer enzymes" (i.e., nagalase) in vaccines were found murdered.
So, Matthews & Associates is peddling a completely fabricated story along with anti-vaxxer memes. It gets worse.
The law firm's website states bluntly, "The Merck shingles vaccine Zostovax can cause shingles." That's false. The CDC reassures us, "Like all vaccines, shingles vaccine is being closely monitored for unusual or severe problems by CDC and FDA." So far, there is no reason to believe that the shingles vaccine causes any severe health problems.
Chasing people away from getting vaccines is bad enough, but Matthews & Associates doesn't stop there. They also see an opportunity to make money from glyphosate and baby powder.
In regard to the former, they state unequivocally that "glyphosate is a probable carcinogen," and in case you didn't get the message, the article is accompanied by a skull with the word Monsanto written below it. But as we have explained before, no reputable regulatory agency agrees. The U.S. EPA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the World Health Organization reject the claim that glyphosate causes cancer. The only body that disagrees is IARC, a group within the WHO that is facing accusations of scientific fraud.
Matthews & Associates is also pursuing baby powder litigation, claiming that talc causes ovarian cancer. The only problem is that there is no convincing scientific evidence to support that assertion. If there is any link to hygiene and ovarian cancer, the link may involve douching, not the application of baby powder. Likewise, the American Cancer Society is skeptical of a link between baby powder and cancer.
It seems as if Matthews & Associates is willing to promote any junk science propaganda to make a buck. Another page on their website promotes Gasland, the "documentary" that claimed to show that fracking caused a person's tap water to catch on fire. But that was thoroughly debunked. The tap water caught on fire due to natural seepage of methane into the water supply, not from fracking.
The law firm Matthews & Associates shows no concern for the truth. They fit comfortably and profitably into our postmodern world, in which truth and lies are no longer distinguishable. Unscrupulous people can make a lot of money by exploiting the public's confusion over vaccines, chemicals, and pharmaceutical products.
What do we sue over? Well, anything really. A former judge sued a dry cleaner for $54 million over a missing pair of pants. Although he lost the lawsuit, the financial hardship and stress of being sued caused the dry cleaners to close the store. Simply put, when in the wrong hands, the legal system is a terrifying weapon that one citizen can use against another. The mere threat of a lawsuit can cost a defendant thousands of dollars in legal fees.
The stakes are much higher when large businesses are involved. The sums can reach into the millions and even billions of dollars.
Law Firm Matthews & Associates Pushes Junk Science
One law firm that has made a name for itself pushing junk science and suing chemical and pharmaceutical companies is Matthews & Associates. Its Twitter page gives an insight into how the law firm thinks. For example, this tweet is standard anti-vaxxer propaganda:
So, Matthews & Associates is peddling a completely fabricated story along with anti-vaxxer memes. It gets worse.
The law firm's website states bluntly, "The Merck shingles vaccine Zostovax can cause shingles." That's false. The CDC reassures us, "Like all vaccines, shingles vaccine is being closely monitored for unusual or severe problems by CDC and FDA." So far, there is no reason to believe that the shingles vaccine causes any severe health problems.
Chasing people away from getting vaccines is bad enough, but Matthews & Associates doesn't stop there. They also see an opportunity to make money from glyphosate and baby powder.
In regard to the former, they state unequivocally that "glyphosate is a probable carcinogen," and in case you didn't get the message, the article is accompanied by a skull with the word Monsanto written below it. But as we have explained before, no reputable regulatory agency agrees. The U.S. EPA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the World Health Organization reject the claim that glyphosate causes cancer. The only body that disagrees is IARC, a group within the WHO that is facing accusations of scientific fraud.
Matthews & Associates is also pursuing baby powder litigation, claiming that talc causes ovarian cancer. The only problem is that there is no convincing scientific evidence to support that assertion. If there is any link to hygiene and ovarian cancer, the link may involve douching, not the application of baby powder. Likewise, the American Cancer Society is skeptical of a link between baby powder and cancer.
It seems as if Matthews & Associates is willing to promote any junk science propaganda to make a buck. Another page on their website promotes Gasland, the "documentary" that claimed to show that fracking caused a person's tap water to catch on fire. But that was thoroughly debunked. The tap water caught on fire due to natural seepage of methane into the water supply, not from fracking.
The law firm Matthews & Associates shows no concern for the truth. They fit comfortably and profitably into our postmodern world, in which truth and lies are no longer distinguishable. Unscrupulous people can make a lot of money by exploiting the public's confusion over vaccines, chemicals, and pharmaceutical products.
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