By Rich Kozlovich
Over the years many of us have watched Chuck Norris movies and TV shows and enjoyed them for the most part. Norris isn’t what anyone would call a great actor, and the writing and story lines weren’t going to win any awards either, but who cared? We wanted to see Chuck Norris playing Chuck Norris; “Fighter of Evil”, and he did a bang up job of defending the weak and defeating the wicked. So when Chuck Norris, “Fighter of Evil”, says something it must be true because he’s one of the good guys. Yeah….and Meryl Streep is a great epidemiologist.
Norris jumped into the ‘arsenic’ in apple juice claptrap started by Ole Doc Oz, but apparently he didn’t learn anything from that foray into ‘science’, and hasn’t bothered to read anything that is contrary to his personal convictions since then. By the way, you may wish to read the third comment in Norris’ arsenic article.
Like Ole Doc Oz, Norris has set himself up as an “organo-phile” promoting all the organic claptrap touted by the most radical thinkers in the world…..environmentalists. He recently posted the first article in a two part series titled, “Chuck Norris battles genetically modified foods”. He starts out saying, “If this column and the next don’t get you to eat organic, nothing will.”
His article is a typical of the shotgun arguments used by the greenies. What they do is shoot out a lot a stuff and hope no one will have time to analyze their comments and realize they didn’t say anything. When you throw out smatterings of what appears to be science combined with a whole lot of emotion, speculation and red herring fallacies, but little substance….it’s difficult for the average person to realize they are offering very little foundation for their views that is factual, or logical.
He states that;
“Genetically modified plants are grown from genetically modified, or engineered, seeds, which are created to resist insecticides and herbicides so that crops can be grown to withstand a weed-killing pesticide or integrate a bacterial toxin that can ward off pests.”
And that’s bad why? Because according the Norris;
“Genetically modified crops constitute 93 percent of soy, 86 percent of corn and 93 percent of canola seeds planted in the U.S. and are used in about 70 percent of American processed food”…..and since the food isn’t labeled as such…it’s bad.
But that’s bad why? Apparently he feels it’s bad because;
The “Food and Drug Administration has permitted the sale and planting of genetically modified foods for 15 years and that the Obama administration has approved an “unprecedented number of genetically modified crops,” such as ethanol corn, alfalfa and sugar beets. The Alliance for Natural Health USA added that the U.S. Department of Agriculture now wants to eliminate any regulatory controls from genetically altered corn and cotton.”
And that’s bad why? Apparently it’s bad because Monsanto is;
“The world’s largest seed-maker and a publicly traded American multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation, is leading the pro-GMO march and moving full steam ahead in being the No. 1 U.S. and global farm supplier.”
He is also upset because Monsanto is;
“in a growth mode, and with the combination of momentum in our core businesses and new layers of growth coming online from an increasingly global portfolio, we have the strategic drivers in place to continue our growth trajectory next year and beyond.”
So Monsanto is growing by working hard to produce products that will allow “farmers to grow more food with less land, water and energy” in order to help feed the estimated “nine billion people expected to populate the planet by 2050”. And that’s bad why?
At this point I haven’t seen one thing from him that encourages me to eat only organic from now on. It would seem to me that Norris is at a loss to explain why we all should revert to the primitive with any argument that even slightly resembles logic or science. Is it possible he recognizes that since he goes on to say;
“[Monsanto] is also the company that brought us products we now know were far more dangerous than advertised, including the insecticide DDT, the toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs, and the Vietnam-Era defoliant Agent Orange, which poisoned our own soldiers with dioxins. Monsanto also brought us saccharine – sweet, yet artificial, and known to cause cancer in laboratory rats.”
So, when nothing is left he turns to ad hominem attacks with no foundation. First of all let me state this with absolute certainty. That isn’t science. The last part about causing cancer in rats is misleading and the rest are all red herring fallacies….actually that paragraph represent a number of logical fallacies.
Secondly I want to state emphatically that everything society “absolutely knows” about pesticides, especially DDT, is a lie. DDT was man’s greatest and most beneficial discovery since fire. Pesticides don’t cause cancer, endocrine disruption, autism, or any of the things claimed by these radical misanthropes of the green movement. One more thing…..organic farmers use pesticides. Is it possible that Chuck Norris isn’t aware of that?
As for PCB’s; in spite of the many benefits offered by PCB’s the greenies claim that it causes all sorts of maladies, including endocrine disruption. Not true. As Dr. Elizabeth Whelan from the American Council on Science and Health notes regarding an episode on 60 Minutes, the promoter of false Alar claims, regarding their 11/10/02 segment about PCB's in Anniston, Alabama. She states;
The CBS/60 Minutes segment which aired on November 10, 2002 - citing public health risks of environmental exposure to PCBs - was completely lacking in scientific merit.
Contrary to Dr. Carpenter's assertions, there is no credible evidence that environmental exposure to PCBs - at levels comparable to the exposure in Anniston - poses any known risk to human health. The mere presence of measurable levels of PCBs in blood is not by any means a surrogate for current or future ill health.
Not only is there no convincing evidence that background PCB levels in the general population cause ill health of any type, but even the very high levels to which some occupational groups have been exposed have not resulted in increased cancer risk, "endocrine disruption" or intellectual deterioration in children exposed to PCBs in the womb. Thus the charges made in your segment that PCBs do have these negative health effects are unfounded.
You quote Dr. Carpenter to the effect that "there is absolute evidence that they (PCBs) cause cancer in animals, and ....there is evidence in humans consistent with the conclusion that they cause cancer". Actually, when I asked a scientist at the National Cancer Institute recently if the NCI knew of any evidence showing that PCBs cause human cancer, the answer was "no". And Carpenter's statement that "PCB exposure increases the risk of almost all major diseases" is nonsense from a medical and scientific point of view, and would be laughable if it wasn't delivered with such serious intent.
For those who are interested; here is the ‘real story’ on PCB’s! So let’s move on to ‘Agent Orange’ (Dioxin). It is hard to state how much misinformation has been published about Dioxin. Let’s start by attempting to put this in perspective.
“To debunk the dioxin scare, JunkScience.com had a sample of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream tested in 1999 for dioxin -- Ben & Jerry’s had claimed in one of its “green” marketing campaigns that there was no safe exposure to dioxin.”
“We found that a single serving of the Ben & Jerry’s “World’s Best Vanilla” contained 200 times the level of dioxin that the EPA said was safe. Our findings -- published in the proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Halogenated Environmental Organic Pollutants -- jumped up to 2,000 times the EPA’s “safe” level using the agency’s risk estimates advocated in its 2003 dioxin report.”
Michael Fumento, in an article titled, “Call Off the Dioxin Dogs”, says:
"Although dubbed the most dangerous chemical known to man," incredibly this was based entirely on the acute toxicity (poisoning) to a single species of animal -- guinea pigs. In humans incredibly massive doses have never been shown to cause any long-term damage besides severe acne, as was the case with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004.”
The saccharine story is another false cancer scare. Rats, unlike humans, have a unique chemical makeup that produces ‘microcrystal’s’ damaging the bladder when force fed large amounts of saccharine. This does not occur in humans. Remember that mice aren’t little rats and rats aren’t little people. Results in one may have nothing to do with any other living organism, and since this isn’t a function that occurs in humans there is no elevated risk of bladder cancer in humans. One more thing! It must be remembered that when these tests are performed on rats they are using rats that are genetically disposed to growing tumors and they are fed massive doses of the product being tested. Amounts bearing no relationship to what anyone is exposed to in reality. That's why the warning label on saccharine was removed.
Norris quotes;
“the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine and one of the first scientists to speak out about the dangers of genetically engineered foods: “Recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. … Now whole new proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors. … For going ahead in this direction may not only be unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics.”
Impressively scary, but that isn’t science. It’s speculation! It is an emotional appeal to adhere to the Precautionary Principle, which has become the foundation for junk science; another misanthropic legacy of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring.
This next part is almost too irrational to believe. He says;
“So instead of eradicating the need for insecticides and herbicides, genetically modified plants eventually could warrant stronger and more intense pesticides in order to outwit and overcome superbugs and greater strains of diseases. And who’s to say what GMOs will do – now or in generations – inside our bodies as we consume them on a greater scale and they become a part of the bacteria in our digestive tracts?”
Would he like to explain how we’re supposed to eradicate the “need” for pesticides and herbicides? By the way herbicides, just as insecticides, are pesticides. As for the last parts; it’s clear he doesn’t understand the concept of natural occurring resistance and the continuous need to explore new chemistry and new techniques, including GMO’s. As for the bacteria becoming a part of our digestive tracts; can he name one time where that has occurred; or what biological mechanism could cause such an occurrence?
Norris then brings up the debunked claim;
“that exposure to pesticides, insecticides, weedkillers, fungicides, solvents, etc., increased the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease by 30 to 80 percent.”
That really sounds impressive until you find the author of the study says;
“We didn’t study whether the type of exposure, such as whether the compound was inhaled or absorbed through the skin and the method of application, such as spraying or mixing, affected Parkinson’s risk. However, our study suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases.”
This is the first I have heard of this study, but the one I am most familiar with was a study claiming that pesticides cause Parkinson’s conducted by Mona Thiruchelvam which had to be retracted because; “the ORI found that faked cell counts in two grant applications and a number of papers that claimed to show how the pesticides paraquat, maneb, and atrazine might affect parts of the brain involved in Parkinson’s.”
As for the study cited in the article; they didn’t establish how this occurs and clearly don’t have any evidence regarding a biological mechanism to demonstrate how this occurs. The author of the study leave readers with the assurance that his work “suggests that the risk increases in a dose response manner as the length of exposure to these chemicals increases.” That isn’t science, its speculation and weasel words. For me, it always sets off bells when I hear claims that an affliction is caused by so many different compounds. Can it be possible that all these compounds generate the same biological response in order to cause the same affliction? Based on what was stated; it would appear they don’t have a clue if all, or any, of these compounds cause Parkinson’s or not.
Chuck, you're inspirational in your portrayal of a great crime fighter. Go back to that!
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