by Pat Tigges
Junk is not unique in any domain, and science has its junk just like every other field. The scientific community has a good record of eventually exposing the junk through the grinding wheels of peer review and repetitive studies. That’s why we no longer “bleed” people and the earth is not flat.
The key however is time - the time between when the junk hits the airwaves and when good science finally exposes it. That’s where the litigators and regulators step in.
To quiet a paranoid public, politicians throw money at the new “problem” creating new bureaucracies to fix it. The new bureaucrats create an empire with unnecessary and flawed policy and regulations. Advocacy groups enrich their coffers with litigation and grants. And, when new scientific evidence eventually threatens the gravy train they simply ignore to discredit it.
Regulators have no vested interest in searching for the truth. If 20 studies are done and 19 come down on one side and only one on the other, regulators could pick the one that supports their existence and simply ignore the rest. Scientific truth got lost on the way to the bank.
Here’s a good way to explain collective dose, the main weapon used by advocacy groups to convince the public that pesticides are going to kill us all. I’ve written it in the first person which is easier for me and takes less space.
Hold up a bottle of aspirin. “This bottle contains one lethal dose (or two, depending on how may pills you have). If I had ten bottles, I would have ten lethal doses. If I took those ten lethal doses and handed them out around town, giving each person one pill, could I expect ten deaths?
“What your are hearing on TV and from advocacy groups about pesticide toxicity is collective, no matter whether they are talking about cancer, birth defects or poisonings. Those numbers are meaningless, simply because the public is not exposed to agrichemicals in those large doses any more than they are aspirin. Ingestion of a lethal dose results only from accidental or intentional action.
“Why do advocacy groups and reports use the scary numbers? Well, it wouldn’t make much of a TV splash to report that agriculture uses a zillion pounds of pesticides every year and we’re all getting healthier. That’s not news!
Advocacy groups claim they are protecting the public. Hogwash! They are trying to get the government to throw more money around in hopes some of it might land on them.
Pat Tigges Administrator of Eat First! A project of the Pacific Northwest Aerial Application Education Foundation. P.O. Box 415, Coulee City, WA 99115. Phone: 509-632-5256, Fax: 509-632-5100 or email: dptigges@televar.com. Newsletter is $25.00 per year
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
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