99.99% of Pesticides We Eat Are Produced by Plants Themselves

By Alex Berezow, PhD — June 13, 2017 @ American Council on Science and Health

The word pesticide is misunderstood, nearly to the same extent as the word chemical. People have been led to believe, largely by the organic food industry and environmental activists, that pesticides are unnatural, dangerous, and do not belong in the food supply. But this defies a basic understanding of biology.

A pesticide is any chemical, natural or human-made, that is designed to kill another organism.

Using that broad definition, there are probably hundreds of thousands of pesticides in the natural environment. As it turns out, biological warfare was invented and perfected by Mother Nature.

For example, some bacteria and fungi produce antibiotics to kill other microbes. We don’t call these antibiotics “pesticides,” but that’s exactly what they are. To a bacterial cell, a microbe of a different species is often nothing more than a competitive pest that should die. So, it produces chemicals with the intention of killing it. That’s a pesticide.

Plants do the same thing. From a plant’s point of view, many insects are nothing more than dangerous, leaf-eating parasites that should die. So plants produce insecticides, like caffeine and nicotine, to keep those obnoxious, six-legged vegetarians away. (They also produce pesticides to keep the furry, four-legged vegetarians away, too.)

And guess what? When we eat plants, we’re eating those pesticides, too. A paper co-authored in 1990 by the venerable Bruce Ames found that 99.99% of the pesticides we consume in our diet are produced by the plants themselves. Given the popularity of organic food and the unscientific mythology underlying it, his findings are more relevant now than ever.

The Natural Pesticides in Your Food

According to Dr. Ames’s team, every plant produces roughly a few dozen toxins, some of which (at a high enough dose) would be toxic to humans. Cabbage produces at least 49 known pesticides. Given the ubiquity of natural pesticides, Dr. Ames estimates that “Americans eat about 1.5 g of natural pesticides per person per day, which is about 10,000 times more than they eat of synthetic pesticide residues.”

Furthermore, Dr. Ames estimates that we consume 5,000 to 10,000 different natural pesticides every day, many of which cause cancer when tested in lab animals. Dr. Ames then pens quite possibly the best paragraph ever written in the scientific literature:

"[R]odent carcinogens are present in the following foods: anise, apple, apricot, banana, basil, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cantaloupe, caraway, carrot, cauliflower, celery, cherries, cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, coffee, collard greens, comfrey herb tea, currants, dill, eggplant, endive, fennel, grapefruit juice, grapes, guava, honey, honeydew melon, horseradish, kale, lentils, lettuce, mango, mushrooms, mustard, nutmeg, orange juice, parsley, parsnip, peach, pear, peas, black pepper, pineapple, plum, potato, radish, raspberries, rosemary, sesame seeds, tarragon, tea, tomato, and turnip. Thus, it is probable that almost every fruit and vegetable in the supermarket contains natural plant pesticides that are rodent carcinogens. The levels of these... rodent carcinogens in the above plants are commonly thousands of times higher than the levels of synthetic pesticides." [Emphasis added]

Do you cook your food? That produces cancer-causing toxins, too. Do you like coffee? That’s a boiling hot cup of rodent carcinogens. It must be kept in mind that for every scary synthetic pesticide man has created, Mother Nature has created something worse. And you probably eat it regularly.

However, if you still insist on eliminating all pesticides from your diet, there is one thing you can do: Stop eating.

Source: Bruce Ames, Margie Profet, Lois Gold. “Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural).” PNAS 87: 7777-81. Published: October 1990.

Tags: carcinogens, cancer, Pesticides, toxins, animal testing, animal research

 

No, Fluoride Doesn't Lower IQ. It Fails to Satisfy Hill's Criteria of Causality

By Alex Berezow — August 19, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

Because Americans have a conspiracy theory about everything, of course there's a conspiracy involving drinking water. Didn't you know that fluoride, which is added to our drinking water to keep our teeth healthy (and is considered one of the greatest public health triumphs of all time), is actually a nefarious mind control scheme?

Well, the media just handed these conspiracy theorists a gift on a giant silver platter: Multiple outlets are reporting that pregnant women who consume too much fluoride produce children with lower IQs. The reports are based on an extremely controversial study just published in JAMA Pediatrics. Are the study's conclusions true? It's doubtful.

To illustrate why, let's examine the authors' findings in the context of Hill's Criteria of Causality, a series of benchmarks devised by epidemiologist Austin Bradford Hill meant to tease apart correlation from causation. There are nine criteria:

(1) Strength of association;
(2) Consistency;
(3) Specificity;
(4) Temporality;
(5) Biological gradient (dose-response);
(6) Plausibility;
(7) Coherence;
 (8) Experiment;
 (9) Analogy.

(See this article for explanations of each criterion.)

While it is rarely possible for any claim to meet every single criterion, there shouldn't be any blatant violations. How does the "fluoride causes lower IQ" claim stack up? It violates several of Hill's Criteria:

Strength of association. The link between fluoride and IQ is not particularly strong. As Dr. John Ioannidis (a professional junk debunker who shook the world of biomedical science by showing why most published papers are wrong) told the Washington Post, "The results are very borderline in terms of statistical significance." Indeed, the reported drop in IQ for boys was about 4.5 points, but the confidence interval (-8.38 to -0.60) almost included zero. (In statistics, if a confidence interval includes zero, it means "nothing to see here.")

Consistency. The paper is not consistent with other data on the topic. While it is true that extremely high doses of fluoride harm the brain, people are not exposed to those levels by drinking water. Also, the American Academy of Pediatrics explains that as water fluoridation has become more widespread over the past several decades, Americans' IQ has increased. (This IQ increase is known as the Flynn effect, which is perhaps due to better nutrition, public health, and education.)

Coherence. While the authors conclude that a 1-mg increase in fluoride detected in the mother's urine is linked to an IQ drop of about 4.5 points in boys, there is no statistically significant IQ difference among girls. (Actually, it's worse than that. The point estimate shows an IQ increase of 2.4 points for girls.) Obviously, that is incoherent. There is no sensible biochemical reason for why fluoride would harm the brains of boys but not those of girls.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the 4.5-point lower IQ score among boys is for every 1 mg increase in the mother's urine fluoride levels. But women didn't really have that much of a difference in fluoride levels. The expected difference between the "high fluoride" and "low fluoride" groups was 0.29 mg, which would translate into an IQ drop of 1.3 points. (That is, 4.5 x 0.29.)

So, are the authors wrong? Probably. To be certain, it wouldn't be a bad idea to do a larger study examining the issue, just in case.

Thankfully, the authors didn't make any grand, sweeping conclusions. They simply advise, "These findings indicate the possible need to reduce fluoride intake during pregnancy." Unfortunately, this sort of nuance will be lost on conspiracy theorists and much of the media.

I recommend reading The Fluoride Wars: How a Modest Public Health Measure Became America's Longest-Running Political Melodrama 1st Edition by R. Allan Freeze (Author), Jay H. Lehr (Author

Viewpoint: Produce is sugary, GMO ‘poison’? Scientific American embraces long-debunked food safety tropes

Alex Berezow | August 22, 2019

The headline is not exaggeration or hyperbole. Scientific American just ran an article claiming that vegetables are becoming like sugary snacks and are toxic. And that’s not even the worst part.
The article was given the ridiculous headline “Broccoli Is Dying. Corn Is Toxic. Long Live Microbiomes!” It was co-authored by a marine biologist and a retired English teacher. As one might expect from the headline, the article makes one outrageous, unscientific claim after another.



The lies, distortions, and laugh-out-loud whoppers start early and often. Let’s dissect them:

As food writer Mark Bittman recently remarked, since food is defined as “a substance that provides nutrition and promotes growth” and poison is “a substance that promotes illness,” then “much of what is produced by industrial agriculture is, quite literally, not food but poison.”

This is the first sentence. Yes, that’s how this screed actually begins. Everything you eat is poison. How do we know? Because an organic food activist with no relevant scientific training or expertise says so..............To Read More.....

Related article:  How European-Based NGOs Block Crop Biotechnology Adoption In Africa, Margaret Karembu, Director of International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, Africa regional office (ISAAA) AfriCenter based in Nairobi | February 23, 2017

Chemistry Papers Are Retracted Mostly Due to Plagiarism, Data Manipulation

By Alex Berezow — May 28, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

Retractions in science are a fact of life. Sometimes, the published literature is wrong, and when it is discovered, the paper is often stricken from the scientific record.

We would like to believe that most retractions are due to honest errors, for example, accidentally mixing up control and experimental groups. We don't want to believe that most retractions are for nefarious reasons, like fraud.

Unfortunately, new research by François-Xavier Coudert published in the journal Chemistry of Materials does not reveal happy data. Dr. Coudert found 331 papers in the fields of chemistry, materials science, and chemical engineering that were retracted in 2017 and 2018. The overall retraction rate (about 3 per 10,000) is low, which is good news, but the reasons for the retractions were disheartening.

Dr. Coudert learned that 229 of the 331 papers (69%) were retracted for plagiarism and "data manipulation," which, more often than not, is a nice way of saying "fraud." (See chart.) Only 54 of the papers (16%) were retracted due to "honest errors."

Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater

Obviously, this is not good news, but there could be another explanation for the data: Systematic bias in which papers are retracted.

Plagiarism is relatively easy to catch. If somebody copies and pastes entire tracts of text, often somebody will notice. (Besides, we now have software that screens for plagiarism.) Fabricated data is much harder to catch, but an eagle-eyed scientist might notice irregularities with digital images that may indicate manipulation or data that looks "too good to be true." If detected, plagiarism and data manipulation are slam-dunk reasons to retract a paper.

That isn't necessarily the case for "honest errors" for two reasons. First, honest errors are exceedingly difficult to catch. Second, if scientists believe that the authors of another paper committed an error, they often address it by performing a better experiment and/or publishing a response. In this way, the scientific record is self-correcting, and there isn't as compelling a reason to retract a paper just because something in it is wrong. In this way, a systematic bias in retractions may be responsible for Dr. Coudert's findings.

If this analysis is correct, the good news is that fraud is still likely a minor problem. The bad news, however, is that there are a lot of honest errors out there in the published record which have yet to be detected.

Source: François-Xavier Coudert. "Correcting the Scientific Record: Retraction Practices in Chemistry and Materials." Chem. Mater. 31(10): 3593-3598. Publication Date: May 28, 2019 DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.9b00897
 

Tags: 

scientific journals

Retraction

chemistry

 

Bill Nye Is a Terrible Spokesman for Science

By Alex Berezow — May 13, 2019

 When I was a kid, Bill Nye the Science Guy was a thing. I never watched his show (as I was too busy keeping up with Ren & Stimpy), but he seemed fun enough. If I could go back in time, I'd probably watch.

Some years later, Bill Nye experienced a resurgence in popularity. But instead of the old, nerdy-but-lovable Bill Nye, we got Bill Nye 2.0, a somewhat cantankerous scold who clearly knows less about science than he leads on.

It was clear that something was amiss a few years ago when, amid Nye's renewed celebrity status, it came to light that he aired an episode of Eyes of Nye that perpetuated anti-GMO propaganda. Nye was subsequently criticized by the scientific and (especially) science writing communities. Not long thereafter, Nye had a change of heart.

Good! Better late than never. But was this "conversion" based on a new understanding of biotechnology or simply a calculated marketing move? Evidence points toward the latter. As late as 2015, Nye was still pushing anti-GMO nonsense. That year, he published a book called Undeniable, which promoted evolution over creationism. The book entirely lacked references (quite bizarre for a science book), and despite GMO technology itself being "undeniable," Nye wrote this:

"But there is something weird and unnatural about putting fish genes in fruit, in tomatoes. Nobody wanted it, so that research was abandoned. 

I'll grant you, this could be a visceral reaction from ignorant consumers. Emotional responses do not necessarily reflect scientific reality, as is evident in everything from creationism to the anti-vaccine movement. In this case, though, I think science and emotion are on the same side. There are very valid scientific reasons to approach GMOs with caution, and those turn out to dovetail with economic reasons. So far, it's not clear that investment in GMOs pays off. It is certainly not clear that GMO research should be funded with tax dollars.

By 2016, however, he was singing a different tune. Call me jaded and curmudgeonly, but his newfound faith in GMOs doesn't seem authentic.

Bill Nye, Prophet of Doom

In his latest appearance, Bill Nye had a cameo on John Oliver's show, in which he lit a globe on fire and dropped a few F-bombs. (I guess that passes as comedy.) He also said that Earth's temperature could rise by 4 to 8 degrees, presumably Fahrenheit, since Nye didn't indicate which scale he was using. His projection is within the range predicted by the IPCC, so at least he got that right.

But is setting a globe on fire an appropriate analogy to get the message across? Earth's temperature has gone up 1.4 degrees F since 1880. Undoubtedly, another 4 to 8 degrees is quite a lot in a short period of time. It doesn't take a master prognosticator to conclude that might cause some problems. But Earth is not -- nor will it ever be -- a flaming ball of fire. Earth isn't Venus.

Bill Nye 2.0

Ultimately, it seems that Bill Nye just panders to whatever he thinks the audience wants to hear. He thought (incorrectly) that they wanted to hear why GMOs were bad, so he altered his message when he got pushback. He won't get pushback for exaggerating climate change, so it's likely he'll keep this up for a while.

I don't think Nye actually believes the climate hysteria. Because if he did, Nye would support whatever means necessary to stop it, like nuclear power. After all, he's a mechanical engineer. But lo and behold, Nye is opposed to nuclear power. Big surprise. Audiences don't like nuclear power.

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne once wrote of Bill Nye, "I'm not a fan of the new Science Guy, and see him as a self-aggrandizing person trying to capture his lost limelight more eagerly than he wants to promulgate science."

Unfortunately, I think that assessment is accurate. Bring back the old Bill Nye. Version 1.0 was better.

NRDC Never Stops Lying About Glyphosate, or Science in General

By Alex Berezow — May 3, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

 

Pop quiz: What do the New York Times, Jeffrey "the yogic flying instructor" Smith, and the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have in common?

Answer: They all shamelessly lie about glyphosate to make money. (You get full credit if you answered, "They are all bad sources of science information.")

Danny Hakim, a journalist (I'm using that word rather loosely) who writes for the New York Times, promotes conspiracy theories about American agriculture. He once wrote an article comparing pesticides to "Nazi-made sarin gas." And he followed that up with another article accusing the U.S. government of knowing that glyphosate was killing people but covering it up. I eagerly await his next exposé on the aliens the government is hiding at Area 51.

The same sort of hysteria is repeated by Jeffrey Smith, a yogic flying instructor (yes, it's as weird as it sounds) who operates the deceptively named Institute for Responsible Technology. Like the New York Times, Smith perpetuates one lie after another about biotechnology. Now, he's spreading lies about medical treatments for cancer which are so egregious that, if cancer patients actually followed the advice, they would die. So much for responsible technology.

In our experience, birds of a feather flock together. It's an easy jump from being anti-GMO to being anti-vaccine or anti-technology in general.

NRDC: Cranks, Crackpots, and Conspiracy Theorists

Thus, joining this motley crew is the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a group of cranks, crackpots, and conspiracy theorists who knowingly spread misinformation about nuclear power, GMOs, and scary "chemicals."

While the NRDC is fond of calling everybody who disagrees with them a "shill" for industry, the reality is quite different. The NRDC rakes in a whopping $130 million every year telling people that the latest technological developments in energy and biotechnology are just too scary for Americans. It's good business. The President, Rhea Suh, made $541,000 in 2016. Not bad. That's more than half of ACSH's entire budget.

Well, NRDC is back, trying to cash in on the delirium surrounding glyphosate. What better time to cash in than when trial lawyers are duping juries into awarding multi-million-dollar verdicts to sympathetic cancer patients? It is within this milieu that NRDC's Jennifer Sass said:

"EPA's Pesticide office is out on a limb here—with Monsanto and Bayer and virtually nobody else. Health agencies and credible non-industry experts who've reviewed this question have all found a link between glyphosate and cancer."

That's not just a lie. That's a pants-on-fire, nose-is-longer-than-a-telephone-wire sort of whopper.  The truth is literally the exact opposite.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) claim that there is no link between glyphosate and cancer. That is also the conclusion of regulatory agencies in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. (See this excellent infographic from the Genetic Literacy Project for more.)

To insist that glyphosate causes cancer, you would have to reject the scientific consensus established by regulators around the entire world. (Or, you'd have to believe that Monsanto has secretly bought off every major nation on the planet.) The only groups who reject the consensus are IARC and the environmental activists and their lawyers who rake in millions of dollars telling juries that biotechnology is killing them.

We can predict that the New York Times will cheer them on and uncritically parrot whatever the NRDC says, because needlessly scaring people is good business for them, too. And for the yogic flying instructor.

It's utterly infuriating to watch as modern medicine and science are mocked and exploited for personal profit by environmental activists and lawyers. What a stupid time to be alive.

On April 15, 'Extinction Rebellion' Broke Windows to Save Earth

By Alex Berezow — April 15, 2019

 

Credit: David Holt/Wikipedia

For Americans, April 15 is Tax Day. For some others around the world, April 15 is a day to block traffic and commit crimes. It’s for the environment, you see.

Extinction Rebellion, which formed in the United Kingdom in 2018, is a group dedicated to fighting against (what they incorrectly perceive to be) humanity's imminent risk of extinction. And, according to CNN, they believe the best way to accomplish that is through "non-violent" acts of civil disobedience, such as by preventing people from going to work, spraying graffiti, smashing glass doors, protesting naked, and gluing themselves to street furniture. If that doesn't save the world, what will?

The group's Facebook page declares the "bonds of the social contract to be null and void," and therefore they stand in righteous rebellion against the government. Lucky for them, they made this bold declaration in 2019 when the Queen isn't inclined to chop off their heads.

The Rebellion has a website, too, complete with vague demands:

It's worth discussing these demands in more detail.

1) We demand governments tell the truth about the ecological crisis. It's extremely easy to find information about the environment. (Whether that information is reliable is another question entirely.) But assuming that Extinction Rebellion only wants to read data that is aligned with their hysterical, hair-on-fire approach to policy, they can find it just about anywhere -- scientific journals, think tanks, government websites. Nobody is hiding anything.

Besides, the fact that just about every country on Earth signed the Paris Agreement undermines their claim that governments are guilty of "criminal inaction." It's also worth noting that Germany already tried to implement a major green overhaul of its energy infrastructure called Energiewende. Spoiler it: It failed spectacularly, and Germany is nowhere close to meeting its carbon emissions target.

2) We demand zero emissions and drawdown by 2025. Good luck with that. The only realistic way to put a major dent in carbon emissions is to embrace nuclear power, but environmentalists (like those in Germany) are almost unanimously opposed to it. Apparently, the best idea they have to offer is the Green New Deal, the brainchild of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which reads like a 4th grader's wish-list to Santa Claus. And though Ocasio-Cortez tried to deny it, an accompanying memo from her office really did propose to ban airplanes and cows:

"We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast..."

3) We demand participatory democracy. It's interesting how environmental activists of all stripes seem to share this feature in common: They demand democracy, by which they mean, "Vote for our policies, or we'll break your stuff." That's not democracy; that's tyrannical mob rule.

As is so often the case, Extinction Rebellion consists of anarchists and other rebels-without-a-cause incapable of expressing a coherent thought, let alone sensible policy proposals. Like the Occupy movement that preceded it, Extinction Rebellion will make some noise then rightly fade into irrelevance.

1 in 4 Statisticians Say They Were Asked to Commit Scientific Fraud

By Alex Berezow — October 30, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

As the saying goes, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." We know that's true because statisticians themselves just said so.

A stunning report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine concludes that researchers often ask statisticians to make "inappropriate requests." And by "inappropriate," the authors aren't referring to accidental requests for incorrect statistical analyses; instead, they're referring to requests for unscrupulous data manipulation or even fraud.

The authors surveyed 522 consulting biostatisticians and received sufficient responses from 390.

Then, they constructed a table (shown below) that ranks requests by level of inappropriateness. For instance, at the very top is "falsify the statistical significance to support a desired result," which is outright fraud. At the bottom is "do not show plot because it did not show as strong an effect as you had hoped," which is only slightly naughty.

On the right, the authors report how often the biostatisticians estimated that they received such a request over the past five years. The results are jaw-dropping.

The absolute worst offense (i.e., being asked to fake statistical significance) occurred to 3% of the survey respondents. Another 7% reported being asked to change data, and a whopping 24% -- nearly 1 in 4 -- said they were asked to remove or alter data. Unequivocally, that is a request to commit scientific fraud.

Of the less serious offenses, 55% of biostatisticians said that they received requests to underreport non-significant results.

Liar, Liar

It's quite remarkable that a scientist would have the audacity to ask another professional to fudge data. While there is simply no excuse for the egregious offenses (e.g., falsifying statistical significance), some of the other lesser offenses may not reflect maleficence but ignorance. Scientists often aren't very good at statistics, and they may make inappropriate requests simply because they don't know any better. The study didn't tease that out.

Still, this study should serve as a reminder that the ongoing reproducibility crisis may have, at least in part, a more sinister explanation.

Source: Min Qi Wang, Alice F. Yan, Ralph V. Katz. "Researcher Requests for Inappropriate Analysis and Reporting: A U.S. Survey of Consulting Biostatisticians." Ann Intern Med 169(8): 554-558. Published: 16-Oct-2018. DOI: 10.7326/M18-1230

In Alaska, Getting Mumps Is Preferable to Getting Vaccinated

By Alex Berezow — August 23, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The MMR vaccine protects against three viral diseases: measles, mumps, and rubella, hence it's name.

We have already seen the devastating consequences of people choosing to forgo vaccination. Measles cases are occurring all over the country. Most infamously, a measles outbreak occurred in 2014-15 at Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth. Currently, Europe is experiencing a massive measles outbreak, which has infected more than 41,000 people and killed 37. Amazingly, Italy has made it even easier for parents to skip out on vaccines.

A new report from the CDC indicates just how incomprehensibly stubborn and stupid our society has become.

In May 2017, somebody from out-of-state visited Anchorage, Alaska. This person brought along a little friend, known as the mumps virus. Soon after, seven more people had mumps, so the Alaska Section of Epidemiology reminded all Alaskans to be sure to be up-to-date on their MMR vaccinations.

Did they listen? Of course not. By mid-November, there were 56 cases of mumps. Once again, Alaska's public health officials told people to get vaccinated, especially if they hang around large groups of people. Specifically, they suggested the MMR3 vaccine. (MMR3 is the third dose of the MMR vaccine; typically, children receive two doses, assuming their parents aren't anti-vaxxers.)
Did their warning work? No. By the end of December, the number of cases had grown to 138, and all of Anchorage was then recommended to get the MMR3 shot. Surely, surely, people paid attention to that... right?

Wrong. By the end of February, there were 247 cases of mumps. Exasperated, Alaska recommended that all citizens receive the MMR3 jab. You can probably guess what happened next. As of July 31, nearly 400 people have been infected.

For the FOMO crowd, fret not. Almost certainly, mumps will be coming to a community near you.

Source: Tiffany A, Shannon D, Mamtchueng W, Castrodale L, McLaughlin J. "Notes from the Field: Mumps Outbreak — Alaska, May 2017-July 2018." MMWR 67 (33): 940-941. Published: 24-Aug-2018. DOI: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6733a6
 

When an English Major Becomes a Health Editor

By Alex Berezow — July 28, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

One of the biggest problems with journalism -- particularly science journalism -- is the fact that many people who practice it aren't qualified to do so. Believe it or not, being a good journalist involves more than knowing how to turn on a computer and pound away aimlessly on a keyboard.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the only requirement for some journalists. A few years ago, I was told by an editor at The Economist that they do not hire journalism majors. Instead, they hire people who studied "something real" and then are taught how to do journalism after they are hired. It's a good rule, and media outlets everywhere would be better off if they all adopted the practice.

The Guardian Blows It... Again

Recently, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article scaremongering about JUUL, a company that sells e-cigarettes that are marketed as a safer alternative to regular cigarettes. What's the problem? Apparently, some teenagers think they're cool. Therefore, JUUL is evil.

The article, written by The Guardian's health editor Sarah Boseley -- whose English degree has given her a commanding grasp of biomedical science -- declared Juul's device to be "ultra-discreet" and might "lead [non-smokers] to start smoking cigarettes." The headline blares that the UK has been told to stop e-cigarettes from taking off among kids.

Told by whom? Anti-vaping activists. The "ultra-discreet" device actually looks like a USB drive that somebody sticks in their mouth. (Yeah, that's totally discreet... because people usually suck on the end of USB drives.) And the "gateway drug" argument Ms. Boseley makes is just as bogus for e-cigarettes as it is for marijuana.

True, teenagers and non-smokers shouldn't begin vaping for the fun of it. Both JUUL and the FDA acknowledge that the devices should not be marketed to underaged people. And let's be honest: Of all the different things that teenagers could try -- from hard drugs to unprotected sex -- nicotine is rather harmless by comparison. It's not all that different from caffeine. If I had a teenager and the most rebellious act he or she did was vaping, I'd be a happy parent. Context and perspective matter.

So, what's the story here? There is no story. Ms. Boseley just gave free advertising to a bunch of activists who are religiously opposed to nicotine. In any sane world, a company that invented a device that is 95% safer than cigarettes (a figure that comes from the UK's NHS) would be hailed as a godsend.

When an English Major Becomes a Health Editor

It's troubling enough that a person who knows nothing about public health is allowed to write about it. It's far more troubling that a person who knows nothing about public health is in charge of the topic at a major international publication. So, I decided to take a look at some of the other articles this English major has published. What I found was predictable.

For instance, this: How disgraced anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield was embraced by Trump's America. The truth is that the anti-vaxxer movement began with members of the progressive left, such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Bill Maher. The demographics of the anti-vaccine movement have changed over time, but this rather inconvenient historical fact is missing from Ms. Boseley's article.

In another article, Ms. Boseley claims that the government can fix obesity, but the plan could be foiled by evil corporations. Just how evil are those corporations? Evil enough to hijack your brain with Cheetos, according to her. And she appears supportive of a rather twisted idea to put pictures of rotting teeth on sugary foods to deter people from eating them.

In other words, The Guardian has hired an English major-turned-political activist who is completely ignorant of basic science to run its health page. And the result is exactly what you'd expect: It's scientifically illiterate and politically bonkers.

Matthews & Associates Pushes Anti-Vaxxer Propaganda, Junk Science

By Alex Berezow — July 17, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health



Credit: Public Domain/Wikipedia

Americans love to sue people.

 

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.

Glyphosate and Pesticides: Et Tu, Live Science?

By Alex Berezow — July 3, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Two weeks ago, we reported on a bizarre decision by the online news arm of the journal Science: The outlet had reprinted an article from a politically slanted environmentalist website that hyped concern over a particular chemical. The article fell quite short of the high standards we associate with the journal.

Now, Live Science has done something similar, but it's far worse. Normally a reliable source of information (and an outlet with which ACSH has a reprinting agreement), Live Science published an article that is a dream for anti-pesticide and anti-chemical fearmongers.

The article, written by Christopher Pala, begins with an ominous warning that is far more suitable for the pages of an H.P. Lovecraft story than a science article:

On a former sugar plantation on the dry southeast coast of Kauai, Hawaii, far from the tourist beaches, agrochemical companies are testing a secret cocktail of toxic pesticides on genetically modified corn.

Good grief. Was the "secret cocktail" being sprayed from black helicopters? And why, exactly, is it a problem for chemical companies to conduct field trials with their products? Isn't that what we want them to do before they sell them on the market?
The article goes on to say:

The most common unrestricted pesticide, glyphosate — sold as the herbicide Roundup — is "probably carcinogenic in humans," the World Health Organization determined in 2015.

No, it didn't. The World Health Organization says that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer, the exact opposite of what was written. Instead, the author cited IARC, a rogue outfit inside the WHO that is under fire for what appears to be scientific fraud. IARC is the only agency that declares glyphosate to be a carcinogen; the U.S. EPA and the European Food Safety Authority, in addition to the WHO, reject IARC's conclusions.
Toward the end of the article, the author states:

There is some uncertainty as to why the companies don't want to disclose which pesticides they use.

No, there isn't. Companies don't want to disclose information because they know journalists and activists will use it against them. And if they don't disclose the chemicals, they'll be attacked anyway. So, there's no benefit from transparency when a company is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
Like the news arm of the journal Science, Live Science needs to be careful, or its good reputation will be harmed. The funny thing about reputations is that it takes years to build them but mere moments to destroy them.

'Science' Publishes Environmentalist Scaremongering

By Alex Berezow — June 21, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

The online news arm of the journal Science is a solid source of information. However, recently it made a very strange editorial decision that could potentially harm its reputation.

Yesterday, Science reprinted an article that was provided by E&E News, a website that bills itself as "a news organization focusing on energy and the environment." That's true enough, but it also seems to take a particular viewpoint on energy and the environment, specifically that green energy is the way to go and the environment is full of scary chemicals. The reprinted article quoted only Democrats, and E&E seems to have a strange obsession with Sean Hannity, Scott Pruitt, Scott Pruitt, Scott Pruitt, and the Koch Brothers.

Given the dubious framing of its news reporting, one would think that Science would be careful to associate its brand with E&E News, especially on a controversial topic like "chemicals." Environmental sites are always eager to report on some chemical detected at trace levels, but actual science news outlets should be more skeptical. The article begins:

President Donald Trump's administration has released a politically charged toxicology report about nonstick chemicals showing they can endanger human health at significantly lower levels than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has previously called safe. [Emphasis added]

Right off the bat, the article is misleading. First, the only reason the report is "politically charged" is because environmentalists say it is. Second, we simply do not know if nonstick chemicals (referred to as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS) are bad for our health. Third, even if they are, the concentration of these chemicals has dropped dramatically in our bodies over the past several years. All three of these points are worth a closer look.

The Trump Administration made efforts to block the release of the report because an unnamed source said it was a "public relations nightmare." Of course, this anonymous source is correct. Whenever any news about "chemicals" is released to the public, we know for certain that it will be sensationalized and misreported. And that's exactly what happened, not just in Science, but also in outlets like Politico.

The same organization that released the report, known as ATSDR (which is part of the CDC), explains on its website that studies that have examined the effect of these chemicals on the human body are contradictory. The only thing we know for sure is that animals given high doses have health problems. Of course, that's true of nearly any chemical.

In June 2017, ATSDR released a report that said average PFAS concentrations in the blood ranged from 1.3 to 6.3 parts per billion (ppb), depending on the specific type of PFAS. Once again, the report noted that studies on human health are "inconsistent and inconclusive." Additionally, ATDSR shows that, since 1999, PFAS concentrations have fallen dramatically in our blood because manufacturers voluntarily stopped making them when health concerns were raised. On top of that, in 2016, under the Obama administration, the EPA recommended that PFAS levels in drinking water remain below 70 parts per trillion.

That is the background to this most recent PFAS report by ATSDR, which suggests a stricter standard than that proposed by the EPA in 2016. Thus, instead of focusing on politics and scaremongering over PFAS, the lead paragraph should have read:

A government toxicology organization released a new study about PFAS that suggests lowering the concentration to which humans are exposed, from 70 parts per trillion to perhaps 12 ppt, due to an abundance of caution. The effect of these chemicals on the human body is unknown, and voluntary efforts by manufacturers have already resulted in substantially lower levels of these chemicals in the human body.

That's a scientifically and historically accurate paragraph, but it's nowhere nearly as exciting as a "politically charged" report about a chemical that is endangering people. Science should know better than to reprint articles from environmental sites.

Paul Ehrlich: New Rant From an Unrepentant Secular Doomsday Prophet

By Alex Berezow — April 9, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Do you see yourself as a worthless cockroach contributing to the collapse of human civilization? Probably not, but Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich thinks precisely that about you.

Fifty years ago, he published arguably the worst book ever written, The Population Bomb, which declared that human overpopulation would cause mass starvation. Instead, the Green Revolution (led in part by ACSH co-founder Norman Borlaug) caused global food production to explode, and the world population more than doubled from 3.5 billion in 1968 to 7.6 billion today.

The reason The Population Bomb was so terrible is not because its predictions were wrong; most scientists make incorrect predictions. No, the book is terrible because of how it made people in the developed world feel about people in the developing world. A short anecdote, which I described for Forbes, illustrates my point.

Several years ago, I gave a talk in Seattle about the benefits of GMOs. One person in the audience expressed concern that GMOs were simply helping to "feed the monster" -- that is, the "monster" known as hungry people in poor parts of the world. Though she didn't verbalize it, her words were clear: The world would be better off if poor people (mostly brown and black, I might add) in distant lands weren't given any food. Starve the monster.

This appalling attitude is surprisingly common in allegedly compassionate cities like Seattle. And the book that gives this openly misanthropic, vaguely genocidal belief a veneer of academic credibility is The Population Bomb.

A New Rant from an Unrepentant Secular Doomsday Prophet

Now, at the age of 85, Dr. Ehrlich still hasn't let reality change his mind. In fact, he's doubled down on his apocalyptic prognostications. In an interview with The Guardian, he likens humans to cancer cells. The article reads like a crackpot manifesto, channeling the unscientific ramblings of the Food Babe along with the conspiracy theorizing of Alex Jones:

The world's optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change. 

Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but "the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual 'world destroyer' meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen".

Let's debunk this, line by line.

There is no optimum human population. Dr. Ehrlich pulled the "less than two billion" figure out of thin air. Besides, demographers predict that the population will peak and begin to shrink, probably sometime in the 2100's. The reason is because people tend to have fewer children as they become wealthier. That fact exposes his "cancer cell" analogy as entirely bogus. Humans don't behave like cancer cells.

Dr. Ehrlich's concern over "synthetic chemicals" is simply based on ignorance of chemistry and biochemistry. It doesn't matter if a chemical is "natural" or "synthetic." From a toxicological perspective, the only thing that matters is the dose and how an organism's metabolism handles it.

Chemists can make pretty much anything they want in the laboratory, so there is little practical distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals. There is neither anything magical about the former nor evil about the latter.

Dr. Ehrlich's screed against the cabal of rich people who run "world destroyer" meetings in Davos is so utterly conspiratorial and unhinged, that it makes me wonder if he believes the Illuminati helped fake the moon landing.

The Mouth of Fools Poureth Out Folly

To this day, Dr. Ehrlich stands by his book. Though his timing was off, he claims the book is correct. What explains his lack of repentance in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

Dr. Ehrlich is an ideologue. His predictions are less like the careful analysis of a serious scientist and more like the wish list of a misanthrope. Apparently, wisdom and grace don't always grow with age.

Drinking Raw Milk Is Flunking IQ Test

By Alex Berezow — February 9, 2018  @ American Council on Science and Health

Every single day, you take several IQ tests. You just aren't aware of them.

Did you look both ways before crossing the street? Did you get a flu shot? Did you buy that $4 organic banana? These are all IQ tests, and the result is either pass/fail. Occasionally, flunking one of these daily IQ tests has very real consequences.

The CDC reports that, in August 2016, at least 17 people in Colorado flunked an IQ test when they consumed raw milk and became sick. Milk samples and patient samples both tested positive for antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter jejuni, which causes vomiting and diarrhea.

Thankfully, they learned from this experience. Just kidding. The CDC says, "Although [individuals] were notified of the outbreak and cautioned against drinking the milk on multiple occasions, milk distribution was not discontinued."

That's not just flunking an IQ test. That's like getting kicked in the face by a horse, then tickling its rear end one more time just for fun.

Pasteurization Is a Triumph of Public Health

In Colorado, it is illegal to sell raw milk. Though I once endorsed that policy, I don't anymore. I believe adults should be free to put whatever they want in their bodies, and Darwin can sort things out.

I will, however, continue to relentlessly mock anyone who drinks raw milk. There is no nutritional justification for it and plenty of scientific evidence against it.

It isn't an exaggeration to claim that pasteurization has saved millions of lives. Before the invention of pasteurization, it was fairly common for people to get sick and die from eating contaminated food. Milk alone was known to spread typhoid fever (Salmonella), diphtheria, scarlet fever (Streptococcus), bovine tuberculosis, and even anthrax. Before widespread vaccination, polio could spread in milk.

This grim reality was reflected in the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. in 1900, the top three of which were due to infectious disease: pneumonia/influenza, tuberculosis, and diarrhea/gastroenteritis. Diphtheria was #10.

However, as public health improved, deaths from infectious disease fell. According to Neatorama, which has published a history of pasteurization, infant mortality in NYC fell from 273 per 1,000 live births in 1885 to 94 per 1,000 in 1915. One of the reasons was pasteurization.

The Paradox of Progress

Today, consuming raw milk or cheese is a senseless health risk. The CDC estimates that the risk of becoming sick from unpasteurized dairy products is 840 times higher than from pasteurized dairy products. So, why do people do it?

Because people take our public health triumphs for granted. In our modern society, we have very little to fear. Thanks to pasteurization, our food is safe; thanks to chlorination, our water is clean; and thanks to vaccination, our lives are (largely) free of contagious disease. And as an added bonus, violence is at a globally historic low. Anyone born in a developed country can expect to live into his 70's or 80's.

Completely ignorant of this history, some people have convinced themselves that the "old fashioned" way of doing things was better. In reality, the old fashioned way killed people, which is why society modernized.

Those who insist on rejecting that will have to grapple with the driving force of natural selection.