Avoiding the Ranks of the Insane

By Rich Kozlovich

Originally I found this on ….where else…. Steve Milloy’s Junkscience.com.   Steve and his editor Barry are amazing. I can’t imagine how much work it must take for them to find and read all of this stuff in order to link it every day. I subscribe to a number of news services to avoid having to spend so much time finding the news that I think is important. I even have some Google alerts based on certain topics, such as DDT and the Endangered Species Act; and I just can’t keep up with it all. It’s difficult when you have a job that interferes with your life.

But….back to the point. This article, “Caffeine: Is there really A Welcome Lift In Every Cup"? By Michael D. Shaw was really worth the time and effort. He starts by saying;

Readers of a certain age might recognize this tag line from a 1950s era promotional campaign, ran on behalf of the Pan-American Coffee Bureau. Back then, the stimulant effect of caffeine was regularly touted, along with an equal number of commercials in which taste was the most important thing. (Mountain grown...the richest kind!)

It should hardly come as a surprise that caffeine is by far the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world. In his 2005 article in New Scientist, science fiction/fact writer and Renaissance man Richard A. Lovett notes that "In North America, around 90 per cent of adults report using caffeine every day." The major dietary sources of this compound are coffee, chocolate, and cola drinks.

I never really thought about caffeine as a ‘psychoactive’ drug, but that is how it has to be defined. This lays foundation for two points; toxicity and reaction; all issues related to the potential impact of all chemicals. Regarding studies showing the impact of caffeine on the body he states;

Perhaps the best known scare study came out in 1980, and was done by FDA scientist Thomas Collins (no relation to the cocktail). Collins said to be equivalent to 200 cups of coffee in one gulp. Not surprisingly, a large number of birth defects appeared in their offspring. However, when Collins redid the study in 1983, he simply added the caffeine to the rats' drinking water, and the dose was spread out through the day. This time, the birth defects returned to whatever the normal level is for lab rats.

When the dust settled, the consensus became nothing more than common sense: Caffeine taken in moderation, via conventional dosing methods, poses no danger to most people. This viewpoint is echoed by respected holistic physician Wayne R. Bonlie, MD of Timonium, Maryland. But then, folks don't always have common sense.

Did you get that? Being “force-fed pregnant rats ridiculously high doses of caffeine” causes an adverse physiological reaction but when exposed to normal doses the impact is meaningless. That is basic science. The dose makes the poison, yet when it comes to pesticides these types of studies are touted as definitive proof that pesticides cause _____ (fill in the blank).

The reality is that we need to have society become better scientists because we can’t trust those who have a battery of letters behind their names. Scientific integrity has been made an oxymoron by government grant money. Global warming has exposed them for what they are. This became obvious to those of us who watched university researchers promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for structural pest control.

I have stated over and over again that if the only government grant money available to them was to prove that there was no such thing as IPM in structural pest control they would do an about face so fast that you would think they were a color guard in a military parade. The same is true of Global Warming, chemicals and carcinogenicity, ADHD, autism….and oh well… you get the picture.

In the real world versus the lab, where real life takes place, the universe works on certain principles such as threshold effects and the reality that when the molecular load of anything is too small cells will not react to it. The greenies would have you believe otherwise and they have plenty of ‘scientists’ on their side who are so corrupt that they will say anything in order to attain grant money and recognition for the things they spout, which brings them outside financial rewards by way of speaking fees. This, in spite of the fact that so many of them almost have a monopoly on being wrong; from Malthus on population to Rachel Carson on DDT to James Hansen on global warming. So why do we listen to these people?

As I see it we have four options. Ignorance; which is fixable; stupidity; which is ignorance coupled with complacency; insanity which is unavoidable if you accept their conclusions; or clear rational thinking which means accepting the reality that to be green is irrational and misanthropic and everything the greenies say are lies of commission and lies of omission.

As Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 – 180 C.E.) once noted; "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."