Celebrity Influence Smacks of Disdain for Rationality

By Jeff Stier May 18, 2022 @ Pundicity

As talking heads blabbered about Will Smith this spring, it brings to mind a broader concept about this nation's unhealthy fixation on celebrity.

Twenty years ago this month, the eyes of the nation's lawmakers were focused on a witness at an otherwise bland hearing.  As CNN's Jonathan Karl reported, "I've never seen so many people crowd into an appropriations subcommittee hearing."

Was it a discussion about how much money will go to education or pandemic preparedness? No, members of Congress and the media crowded to witness superstar Julia Roberts request $15 million of research funding for the rare, albeit serious, Rett syndrome. The International Rett Syndrome Association cites 3,000 U.S. cases of the neurological disorder, which prevents patients from communicating or controlling their body movements.

We all wish there were enough research money to cure or prevent Rett syndrome, as well as many other horrible diseases. But given a limited amount of dollars for research, we should spend that money wisely, getting the biggest bang for each public health buck.

According to Dr. Arthur Caplan, who was then the director of the Center for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania Medical School, "The research pie is more like a balloon; when a celebrity sits on one end, that budget really gets distorted." Distorted, because "the prevalence and burden of a disease is not related to which disease attracts celebrity support."

Should we be taking money from one cause and giving it to another because one disease has a pretty woman as an advocate?

To the detriment of society and public health, matters have only gotten worse in the last two decades. Celebrities, many of whom use their power for good, also do much harm. They not only distort our allocation of research funding but also discourage parents from vaccinating their children, garner undue attention for their most absurd personal grievances and hawk all sorts of potentially harmful magical supplements.

It's easy to blame members of Congress for coming to hear (or see?) Julia Roberts, or CNN and NBC for giving her free airtime and more recently, TMZ and Buzzfeed for posting clickbait celebrity stories, but ultimately it is us, the consumers of this content, who have the power to vote with our remote controls and web browsers.

Nonetheless, it is worth calling out the media for even giving attention to the most non-newsworthy stories. Over the last few months, the Washington Post, NBC News and CNN were among the offenders, running headlines such as "Linda Evangelista files $50M lawsuit over disfiguring cosmetic treatment." The former supermodel did indeed experience an unwanted side-effect of a CoolSculpting treatment. But there's a wrinkle. Given that Evangelista would have been required to sign a waiver accepting the risk of the very side-effects she experienced, her $50 million lawsuit is, at best, a publicity stunt. And our country's top news outlets play the role of the useful idiots.

It's not just "earned media," but paid media as well. Consider the constant ads on the Fox News Channel featuring former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee promoting Relaxium Sleep, non-prescription natural sleep supplements. The non-prescription sleep elixir is, among other things, supposed to help you stay asleep at night. So if you wake at night because of a life-threatening but treatable medical condition like sleep apnea, you don't even need to see a doctor. So much for the "risk-free" offer.

I'd like to blame the media, but ultimately, so long as consumers read these articles, let the Linda Evangelistas of the world have our attention or buy celebrity huckster's products, we get what we deserve.

We don't let musicians write the farm bill. Even the most famous linebackers don't have much say in national defense. We should not give movie stars, models and washed-up politicians so much sway over our individual and public health decisions.

 Jeff Stier is a Senior Fellow at the Consumer Choice Center. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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Biden's Short List For FDA Commissioner: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

March 22, 2021 by Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier Issues & Insights 

As the Biden administration engages the COVID-19 pandemic, a public tug-of-war has emerged over who should be nominated to run the Food and Drug Administration, a pivotal participant in the effort.

An analysis of the two perceived front-runners illustrates that neither would likely introduce the kinds of reform needed at the agency.

One candidate is acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, a long-serving top FDA official with widespread institutional respect, both inside and outside the agency.

To her (far) left is Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, who served briefly as deputy commissioner of the FDA in the Obama administration, and who formerly was the secretary of the Maryland Department of Health, as well as the health commissioner in Baltimore. Earlier in his career, Sharfstein was the health policy adviser to influential, liberal Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. He is currently the vice dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Woodcock's strength is her extensive background in pharmaceutical regulation. However, some perceive her to be overly sympathetic to industry. Woodcock has been at the FDA for 35 years, and would be a sober, steady influence at a time that cries for stability at the agency.

But her institutionalism is also a weakness; all is not well at the FDA. As former Commissioner Frank E. Young quipped, "dogs bark, cows moo, and regulators regulate." Consistent with that propensity, the FDA often exceeds its congressional mandate. Regulators have concocted additional criteria for marketing approval of a new drug beyond the statutory requirements for demonstrating safety and efficacy— requirements that sometimes inflict significant but obscure damage on both patients and pharmaceutical companies.

For example, regulators have arbitrarily demanded that a new drug be superior to existing therapies, although the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requires only a demonstration of safety and efficacy. And in a classic case of regulatory mission creep, Phase 4 (post-marketing) studies are now routine, whereas the FDA used to reserve them for rare situations, such as when there were subpopulations of patients for whom data were insufficient at the time of approval.

The effects of FDA regulators' self-aggrandizing, excessively risk-averse actions range from the creation of disincentives to research and development (which inflates costs) to significant threats to public health, such as the years-long delay in approval of a much-needed meningitis B vaccine.

Another egregious example of the impact of excessive risk-aversion is the saga of a drug called pirfenidone, used to treat a pulmonary disorder called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which used to kill tens of thousands of Americans annually. The FDA unnecessarily delayed approval of the drug for years, although it had already been judged to be safe and effective and marketed in Europe, Japan, Canada, and China. (This deadly delay occurred on the watches of both Woodcock and Sharfstein.) As a result, more than 150,000 patients died of IPF in the United States, many of whom could have benefited from the drug.

The agency's handling of e-cigarettes over the last two administrations is a sorry illustration of how regulatory dilly-dallying undermines public health. The agency's mealy-mouthed endorsement of vaping as only a "potential" tool for tobacco harm reduction for adult smokers failed to sufficiently encourage smokers to make the switch away from consuming nicotine in its deadliest form, the cigarette. As a result, not enough smokers have been using them, while too many kids have.

Contrast this with Public Health England's clear endorsement of using e-cigarettes to quit smoking, which has led to a sharp reduction in smoking without an epidemic of youth vaping. Woodcock would be unlikely to break the FDA's mold in this space, while Sharfstein's blind opposition to private sector-driven innovative solutions would likely shift e-cigarettes from a highly regulated marketplace to an illicit market like the one that caused the outbreak of pulmonary illnesses related to THC-vaping in 2019.

The agency has become extremely top-heavy, with ever more boxes appearing at the top of the organizational chart, even though the vast majority of day-to-day oversight and regulatory actions are taken at the level of FDA's various "centers" – Woodcock's longtime perch, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, the relatively new Center for Tobacco Products, and so on. The FDA needs to be put on an organizational diet.

If Woodcock is the institutional pick, Sharfstein would be the Ralph Nader pick. In fact, Sharfstein's affiliation with failed nanny-state presidential candidates is more current than that. His academic affiliation with the Bloomberg School of Public Health is no coincidence. An outspoken advocate for expanding the scope of the FDA, which already regulates 20 cents of every consumer dollar, Sharfstein would have been the obvious pick for FDA commissioner, or even secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, if former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's multi-million-dollar presidential campaign had prevailed. Far from putting the agency on a diet, Sharfstein would instigate a regulatory feeding frenzy.

What's needed are structural, policy, management, and cultural changes that create incentives for the FDA to regulate in a way that is evidence-based and imposes the minimum burden possible. A number of possible approaches and remedies to accomplish that have been described, but neither Woodcock nor Sharfstein is likely to embrace any of them.

We need significant legislative changes, or just conscientious congressional oversight, to disrupt the agency's built-in bias for overregulation, but political realities make that unlikely anytime soon.

Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. A 15-year veteran of the FDA, he was the founding director of the agency's Office of Biotechnology. Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center. Please follow them on Twitter at @henryimiller and @JeffAStier.

 

Public Health Agencies Care More About Controlling You Than Prepping For Pandemics

What were public health officials at every level of government doing last year? Were they preparing for a pandemic? Or were they using their office to meddle with your lifestyle choices?

By Jeff Stier The Federalist May 11, 2020

The partisan political sniping over Covid-19 is completely predictable and counter-productive. There's plenty of fault to go around, but the blame-gaming should be ignored or discounted for what it is: self-aggrandizing grandstanding.

It is, however, worthwhile to examine a tension that has been brewing in the public health world for decades. That dichotomy is: should we focus on communicable diseases, as has long been the mission of public health institutions, or do we have enough bandwidth and resources to venture out into the much more controversial area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)?

To get to the answer, think about this. What were public health officials at every level of government doing last year? Five years ago? Were they first ensuring that their track and trace systems were in place for a pandemic? Or were they using their office to meddle with your lifestyle choices?

The discipline of public health has long been rooted in fighting contagious diseases. For the most part, it has done very well. Notwithstanding the current Covid-19 pandemic, sanitation, vaccines and therapies—mainly drugs—have dramatically reduced the toll of communicable diseases.

That success has led many in public health agencies, especially in the United States, to argue that we must now use our limited resources to combat NCDs, and that we can address both effectively. It isn't exactly working out that way.

Efforts to fight non-contagious diseases such as heart disease and diabetes frequently raise questions about individual liberty, including the freedom to make poor choices. All too often, the politicized debate causes both sides to overstate or manipulate the science supporting their viewpoints.

When former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the biggest booster of today's public health movement, campaigned against sugary drinks like soda, it landed the city's health department in hot water. For instance, a taxpayer-funded ad campaign created by the Department of Health showed a photo of a man purportedly with amputated legs. The city's ad agency had Photoshopped his legs out of the photo to support the valid claim that Type 2 diabetes can lead to amputations.

The Bloomberg administration's antics, which even elicited criticism from within the health department, indicates the degree to which his wing of the public health movement has lost sight of its most primary and unifying functions: preparedness.

This lack of preparedness is not partisan. It exists in the current Republican administration, as it did in the prior Democrat administration. Cities, counties, and states long governed by each party were equally ill-prepared for a pandemic.

Commentators on the left and the right have referred to Coronavirus and Covid-19 as a "black swan

event." But it doesn't meet the definition. A pandemic of this type was not only predictable, it was something communicable disease experts have warned about rather specifically for many years. The warning signs were ignored, and we were ill-prepared.

A 2007 review article in the American Society for Microbiology's publication, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, entitled, "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus as an Agent of Emerging and Reemerging Infection," concluded: "Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks. The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."

Rather than marshal finite resources towards preparedness for a coming communicable disease, lots of public health resources, including taxpayer dollars, media attention, and legislative priorities, were deployed to address non-communicable diseases, from domestic violence to gun regulation.

Think back to a different time not so long ago. During the second half of 2019, federal, state and city health officials throughout the country were busy confronting a new and scary lung disease. The health reporters covering them churned out news articles, regularly garnering front-page placement.

Major charities such as Bloomberg Philanthropies were making large public health grants. So it should come as no surprise that the American public and political leaders were keenly focused on this emerging health threat.

The disease wasn't Covid-19, of course. It was a something the Centers for Disease Control called e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury, or EVALI.

At the time, public health activists were, for years, calling for bans on the types of e-cigarettes used to quit smoking. Despite strong evidence that nicotine e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than smoking and can help smokers quit, public health agencies treated e-cigarettes as the most important threat to public health. Yet they still failed to convince policymakers to institute widespread bans on the most popular e-cigarettes.

But as consciousness of EVALI reached a crescendo, states began to ban most flavored e-cigarettes, and the FDA further tightened the regulatory screws on nicotine-containing e-cigarettes.

It turned out that none of these nicotine e-cigarettes were ever responsible for the lung disease that bears their name. It took until late December for the Centers for Disease Control to (partly) acknowledge that the lung injuries were caused not by vaping liquid nicotine e-cigarettes such as Juul, but by the use of THC oil contaminated with vitamin E acetate.

Public health agencies were so ideologically opposed to e-cigarettes as a tool for tobacco harm reduction that they sowed panic, promulgated misinformation, and actually caused a failure to identify the true culprit in a life-saving and timely way. Still, nobody has been held accountable.

So, back to the question about communicable and non-communicable disease: Has public health been able to "do both" well? It turns out, that when purportedly trying to do both, public health hasn't been able to do either effectively.

I'm not suggesting that public health's EVALI scandal was the only or even primary culprit for the failure of public health departments around the country to ensure that their communities had an adequate supply of personal protective equipment in the event of a predictable communicable disease outbreak, or that the CDC was otherwise preoccupied. Instead, the EVALI episode was more of a symptom of something wrong in public health.

The institution of public health has largely been co-opted by those with a desire to control individual choices to such a degree that it has largely lost sight of its fundamental role of pandemic preparedness. At this point, taxpayers should realize that we are giving the keys to the public health car to people who have long been driving in the wrong direction.

Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
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It's Past Time to Defund the World Health Organization

by Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier The Bridge  April 17, 2020

President Trump announced at the White House coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday that the United States will immediately halt all funding for the World Health Organization, because it had caused "so much death" by "severely mismanaging and covering up" the coronavirus' spread, putting "political correctness over lifesaving measures."

Other government officials, health experts, and analysts also have raised concerns about the WHO's bungled response to the pandemic, accusing it of being too trusting of the Chinese government, which initially tried to conceal the outbreak in Wuhan. Rather than taking Beijing to task for its initial attempts at a cover-up, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his "very rare leadership" in showing "transparency" in the government's response to the virus.

Taro Aso, Japan's deputy prime minister and finance minister, went so far as to deride WHO as the "Chinese Health Organization" because of what he described as its overly close ties to Beijing. There is no question that the organization and its leader were strangely slow in declaring a global health emergency and, thereafter, a pandemic.

The United States should have reexamined WHO funding years ago. But given the timing of President Trump's remarks in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, we are already hearing condemnation of the administration's plan to scrutinize WHO funding.

Such condemnations are wrong-headed. Although having a global public health body is in line with US interests, the WHO, which has been largely underwritten by the US government, has repeatedly failed us. The current pandemic must be a final wake-up call that something needs to change.

American taxpayers are the largest contributors to WHO's approximately $2 billion budget. Like other UN organizations, the WHO is plagued by persistent wasteful spending, an utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and a failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards. Its Western hemisphere subsidiary, the Pan American Health Organization, supports antidemocratic regimes and actually weakens public health rather than strengthens it, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Why are incompetence and profligacy rife within the sprawling organization? In several respects, it's in the United Nations' DNA.

First, the UN is essentially a monopoly. Inefficiency and incompetence cannot be punished by "consumers" of their products or services spurning the UN and patronizing a competitor. On the contrary, it is not uncommon in these kinds of bureaucracies for failure to be rewarded with additional resources. Unlike in the private sector, where failed projects are shut down, if a program at the UN isn't working, the bureaucrats clamor to expand it.

Second, UN officials are rewarded for making the bureaucratic machinery run—for producing reports, guidelines, white papers and agreements, and for holding meetings—whether or not they are of high quality or make sense. Often, they don't: the bureaucrats often sacrifice quality and veracity for consensus.

Third, there's neither accountability nor transparency at the UN. There's no US Government Accountability Office, House of Lords Select Committee, or parliamentary oversight, and no electorate to kick the UN officials out when they are dishonest or act contrary to the public interest.
Finally, the organization is no meritocracy: the country or region of origin of a leadership candidate seems to be more important than his or her credentials and qualifications.

Under WHO's polio eradication policy in Syria, healthcare workers were allowed to work only with the brutal, corrupt regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but not in rebel-held areas. Thus, although WHO was effective in containing polio within government territory, the disease was able to spread throughout rebel areas. In addition, the organization has been widely condemned for failing to raise the alarm about the dangers of Ebola in West Africa in 2014.

The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) routinely puts out alarmist reports that are contradicted by regulators worldwide. When a US congressional committee attempted to investigate charges of corruption and conflicts of interest, the IARC rebuffed the effort.

Calls for Dr. Tedros to resign are insufficient. He isn't the problem; he's only the latest symptom of an irreversibly corrupt institution.

The United States' hugely disproportionate funding of UN activities—our mandatory assessment and voluntary contributions total some $8 billion of the organization's roughly $50 billion in annual expenditures—might soon be coming to an end. And not a moment too soon.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He was the founding director of the Office of Biotechnology at the US Food and Drug Administration. Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

Nothing's 'Impossible' When It Comes To Innovation

By Jeff Stier and Henry I. Miller @ Issues & Insights March 2, 2020

The Green New Dealers want us to think we have to either live more austere lives under coercive government policies or destroy the planet. Opponents of their plan, the theory goes, are willing to sacrifice the environment for short-term financial prosperity for the elite few.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Meeting Americans' needs, especially those of the neediest, requires free markets that can realize and reward the benefits of technological innovations, big and small.

Big innovations are those such as the high-yielding grains created and made available by "Father of the Green Revolution" Norman Borlaug; small, incremental ones might be the introduction of disc brakes (a few decades ago) and the 5G networks soon to be widely available.

The authors of this piece have distinctly different diets, mainly because one is strictly kosher and the other is (emphatically) not, but we both enjoy eating red meat. And although we are sympathetic to concerns about the impacts of raising and consuming meat, some more valid than others, neither of us is inclined to become a vegetarian, nor do we support the sin tax on meat that some have proposed to fight climate change, spare animals, or whatever.

A remarkable innovation now enables us and other carnivores to enjoy something that tastes very much like meat, but is completely guilt-free. With seed funding from Bill Gates, Google and other innovation-oriented investors, a company called Impossible Foods has sought to address climate change by developing plant-based meat alternatives meant to appeal not to vegetarians, but to meat-lovers like us.

Despite the displeasure of cattle ranchers (because it's competition), opposition from environmental activists (it uses "GMOs"), and – improbably – outrage from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (requires food safety testing on rats to satisfy the Food and Drug Administration), the Impossible Burger is hoofing it into the U.S. market in a big way.

The FDA has confirmed the safety of Impossible Foods' plant-sourced leghemoglobin, a meat protein that is partly responsible for the taste, texture and appearance of meat. The burger even cleared another major regulatory hurdle when it was certified as kosher by the Orthodox Union.

Burnishing its high-tech chops, the company unveiled Impossible Burger 2.0 last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, where it created a sensation. These burgers create a win-win situation. They offer us the ability to reduce our consumption of (real) meat, should we wish to do so – and it's good news for those who think the world would be better off if we did.

The only side effects from the Impossible Burger are headaches, heartburn, and panic attacks in the self-designated food elite who demand that we eat "naturally" to protect the planet.
Improvements in agriculture are typically continual and incremental, but cumulatively they can make a big difference, especially to those at the bottom of the food chain – subsistence farmers. But there are always naysayers, such as the activists who reject farming with state-of-the-art pesticides and crops developed with the most precise and predictable genetic techniques. Why would anyone do that? Simple – they are mouthpieces for the purveyors of inferior, overpriced competing organic products, which are made with primitive practices that are wasteful of water and arable farmland.
How primitive is organic agriculture? Plant pathologist Steve Savage analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2014 Organic Survey, which measures productivity from most of the nation's certified organic farms, and compared them with those at conventional farms, crop-by-crop and state-by-state. His findings are extraordinary: Of the 68 crops surveyed, organic farms showed a "yield gap" – poorer performance – in 59.

Many of the shortfalls were large: Organic strawberries yielded 61% less than conventional farms; fresh tomatoes, 61% less; tangerines, 58% less; cotton, 45% less; rice, 39% less; peanuts, 37% less.
"To have raised all U.S. crops as organic in 2014 would have required farming of 109 million more acres of land," Savage concludes. "That is an area equivalent to all the parkland and wild land areas in the lower 48 states, or 1.8 times as much as all the urban land in the nation."

Inexcusably, the federal government is heavily involved in setting standards for and promoting organic practices. The reason is something of a historical anomaly. When the organic standards were promulgated in 2000, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was unequivocal about the fundamental meaninglessness of the organic designation: "Let me be clear about one thing, the organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is 'organic' a value judgment about nutrition or quality."

Truly disruptive innovation is not only rare, but as Impossible Foods is learning, bringing game-changing products to market requires overcoming resistance from entrenched interests that pretend to represent the public interest.

If we are to raise our standard of living, increase longevity, and protect the natural environment, new and innovative technologies will be essential. And we should let the marketplace decide their success or failure. In today's polarized environment, that's no nothing-burger.

Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center and a senior fellow at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. He was the founding director of the FDA's Office of Biotechnology.

Issues & Insights is a new site formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page. We're just getting started, and we'll be adding new features as time permits. We're doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe the nation needs the kind of cogent, rational, data-driven, fact-based commentary that we can provide.

California's java joke is a wakeup call on cancer warnings

International Agency for Research on Cancer is known to cherry-pick data to reach politically motivated findings

by Dr. Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier @ The Mercury News June 8, 2018

It's often said that California is a bellwether, a place where nationwide trends begin. For the sake of farmers, particularly those in poor countries where coffee is an economically important crop, let's hope not.

Last month a California judge ruled that because of the state's decades-old notorious Proposition 65, which has given rise to warnings about non-dangerous chemicals everywhere from supermarkets to libraries, coffee sellers must now post warnings about the possible cancer risk posed by a compound in coffee.

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics brought the lawsuit against Starbucks and 46 others coffee retailers, claiming the presence of high levels of acrylamide, a chemical created when coffee beans are roasted, is carcinogenic and requires a "clear and reasonable" warning. (Acrylamide is converted in the body to a compound called glycidamide, which damages DNA.)

But acrylamide is also commonly found in other foods, such as French fries, bread, and olives. Its presence in fries previously resulted in litigation from the same activists.

How could warnings of hidden "carcinogens" be without merit? Well, many compounds, both natural and synthetic, in food test positive for carcinogenicity. UC Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames and his colleagues observed that the cooking of food is a major dietary source of potential rodent carcinogens: "Cooking produces about 2 g (per person per day) of mostly untested burnt material that contains many rodent carcinogens." Should there be a Prop 65 warning in every kitchen in California?

Coffee will join more than 800 chemicals on California's Proposition 65 list, which is intended to alert the public about "substances identified as human or animal carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer" (IARC). But therein lies another problem: That agency, which is part of the World Health Organization, has long been criticized for using a flawed approach - basing its decisions on hazard (the possibility of harm at any dose) instead of risk (the probability of harm, taking exposure into consideration).

IARC is known to cherry-pick data to reach politically motivated findings. The agency has reviewed nearly 1,000 substances and activities, and only one has been deemed non-carcinogenic. IARC looks for any shred of evidence to prove that something might cause cancer, even under extreme circumstances. It is confirmation bias at its worst: Reach a conclusion first, find the evidence later.

Moreover, inexplicably, IARC itself issued a press release on June 15, 2016, about the lack of evidence of carcinogenicity of coffee:

After thoroughly reviewing more than 1000 studies in humans and animals, the Working Group found that there was inadequate evidence for the carcinogenicity of coffee drinking overall. Many epidemiological studies showed that coffee drinking had no carcinogenic effects for cancers of the pancreas, female breast, and prostate, and reduced risks were seen for cancers of the liver and uterine endometrium. For more than 20 other cancers, the evidence was inconclusive.

This is the folly at the heart of proposition 65: If there's a scientifically insignificant amount of a chemical that causes cancer in high-dose animal experiments, a warning is required, even if consumption of the product doesn't actually cause cancer. Indeed, in the case of coffee, where evidence suggests a protective effect against certain cancers, a warning is necessary nonetheless. How can that be? In the California court's contorted opinion, "Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health."

If California is truly a bellwether, be forewarned: Common sense and justice are under attack.

Dr. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center.

Earth Day: More About Hurling Tomatoes Than Planting Them

By Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier April 24, 2018 @ American Greatness and Jeff Stier Pundicity

Earth Day has changed a lot since its inception in 1970, and not for the better. In the spirit of the time, it started as a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, idealistic experience. Attendees were prototypic tree-huggersIn recent years, Earth Day has evolved into an occasion for environmental Cassandras to prophesy apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, and proselytize.

Now there's more heaving tomatoes than planting them.

Instead of focusing on how to preserve and protect nature, many of those stumping for Earth Day on Sunday expressed opposition to environment-friendly advances in science and technology, such as agricultural biotechnology and nuclear power. Another pervasive sentiment was disdain for the capitalist system that provides the resources to expend on environmental protection and conservation. (It's no coincidence that poor countries tend to be the most polluted.)

Rachel Carson, Earth Day's Patron Saint

 School kids are increasingly involved in Earth Day activities, and many are assigned to read Rachel Carson's best-selling 1962 book Silent Spring, an emotionally charged but deeply flawed excoriation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects. As described by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet eminently readable analysis, "Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic," Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimize "positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking: neo-Malthusian population control and anti-technology efforts."

Carson's proselytizing and advocacy led to the virtual banning of DDT and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides even though Silent Spring was replete with gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of misconduct.
Carson's observations about DDT were meticulously rebutted point by point by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, a professor of entomology at San Jose State University, a longtime member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

In his stunning 1992 essay, "The Lies of Rachel Carson," Edwards demolished her arguments and assertions and called attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications. Consider this from Edwards:

This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that "in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable." The World Health Organization stated that DDT had "killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance."

Meiners and Morriss conclude correctly that the influence of Silent Spring "encourages some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world."

Eco-Fundamentalism

 One of the United Kingdom's great thinkers, Dick Taverne, (a.k.a., Lord Taverne of Pimlico), discusses the shortcomings of New Age philosophy in his book, The March of Unreason. Taverne deplores the "new kind of fundamentalism" that has infiltrated many environmentalist campaigns — an undiscriminating back-to-nature movement that views science and technology as the enemy and as a manifestation of an exploitative, rapacious, and reductionist attitude toward nature. It is no coincidence, he believes, that eco-fundamentalists are strongly represented in anti-globalization and anti-capitalism demonstrations worldwide.

Taverne's views echo those of the late physician and novelist Michael Crichton, who argued in his much-acclaimed novel State of Fear that eco-fundamentalists have reinterpreted traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths and made a religion of environmentalism. This religion has its own Eden and paradise, where mankind lived in a state of grace and unity with nature until mankind's fall, which came not after eating a forbidden fruit, but after partaking of the forbidden tree of knowledge — that is, science. This religion also has a judgment day to come for us in this polluted world — all of us, that is, except for true environmentalists, who will be saved by achieving salvation, in the form of "sustainability."

Environmental Alarmism as a Philosophy

 One of Crichton's characters argues that since the end of the Cold War, environmental alarmism in Western nations has filled the void left by the disappearance of the terror of Communism and nuclear holocaust, and that social control is now maintained by highly exaggerated fears about pollution, global warming, chemicals, genetic engineering and the like.

This year's officially designated, exaggerated fear is plastics, and pursuant to the Earth Day theme, "End Plastic Pollution," the Earth Day organizers have produced a "Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit," which enumerates all the scary warnings that activists should use to "empower journalists" to frighten the public and spur politicians to drastic regulatory action.

How dire is the plastics threat? According to the Earth Day website, it's off the charts: "From poisoning and injuring marine life to the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our food to disrupting human hormones and causing major life-threatening diseases and early puberty, the exponential growth of plastics is threatening our planet's survival." (Except that naturally-occurring bacteria have been discovered that rapidly degrade plastics, and genetic engineering will likely boost their efficiency.)

The eco-fundamentalists often peddle fear in the guise of promoting safety. French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner captured their view of the world nicely:

You'll get what you've got coming! That is the death wish that our misanthropes address to us. These are not great souls who alert us to troubles but tiny minds who wish us suffering if we have the presumption to refuse to listen to them. Catastrophe is not their fear but their joy.

The tiny-minded misanthropes have enjoyed some of what they would consider "successes." They have effectively banished agricultural biotechnology from Europe and Africa, have the chemical industry on the run, and have the pharmaceutical industry in their crosshairs. Should we be surprised that plastics are next?

Lord Taverne believes these are ominous trends that conflict with the principles of the Enlightenment, returning us to an era in which inherited dogma and superstition took precedence over experimental data. Not only does eco-fundamentalism retard technologies and the availability of products which, used responsibly, could dramatically improve and extend many lives and protect the environment, but they also strangle scientific creativity and technological innovation.

Defending Science, Reason, and Democracy

 With Congress, the administration, and many Americans now firmly on the side of more sensible, more limited regulation, it behooves activists to collaborate in good faith and to support advances in environment-friendly technologies and business models. Among these, we would include ridesharing services, Airbnb, modern genetic engineering applied to agriculture, state-of-the-art agricultural chemicals, and nuclear power, all of which enable us to do more with less but which are regularly vilified by activists.

We are not sufficiently naïve to expect that to happen. Rather, we suspect that activists' eco-fundamentalism will continue to undermine the health and wealth of civilized society.
Lord Taverne observed that when you defend science and reason, you defend democracy itself. Well said, sir, and happy belated Earth Day to you.

Earth Day has embraced hysteria and abandoned science

by Henry I. Miller and Jeff Stier @ Foxnews.com April 20, 2018

Sunday is Earth Day, a celebration conceived by then-U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson and first held in 1970 as a "symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship." In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience. Most activities were organized at the grassroots level.

In recent years, however, Earth Day has devolved into an occasion for professional environmental activists and alarmists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, and proselytize.

Passion and zeal now trump science, and provability takes a back seat to plausibility. The Earth Day Network, which organizes Earth Day events and advocacy, regularly distorts science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its Big Government agenda.

With a theme of "End Plastic Pollution," this year's event is no exception.

The Earth Day organizers have produced a "Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit," which enumerates all the scary warnings that activists should use to "empower journalists" to frighten the public and spur politicians to drastic regulatory action.

How dire is the plastics threat?

According to the Earth Day website, about as serious as you can possibly get: "From poisoning and injuring marine life to the ubiquitous presence of plastics in our food to disrupting human hormones and causing major life-threatening diseases and early puberty, the exponential growth of plastics is threatening our planet's survival."

Threatening our planet's survival? This isn't hyperbole – it's hysteria. Even Chicken Little didn't claim the falling sky would destroy Earth.

The Earth Day campaign forfeits a good opportunity by injecting a toxic mix of politics and junk science into "opposition to pollution" – that rare issue where we might have broad consensus. It turns genuine environmentalists (like us) into Earth Day skeptics.

The Earth Day campaign itself isn't about ending pollution; it's about ending plastics, foregoing their important applications – and stirring panic.

Consider Bisphenol-A, or BPA, the chemical component of many plastics that environmentalists love to demonize. One prominent environmental group claims BPA is "capable of interfering with the body's hormones, particularly estrogen, and scientists have linked BPA exposure to diseases, such as cancer and diabetes."

The above claim is not true. It is science fiction, not science.

Repeated independent studies have found that BPA poses no risk to humans at the levels at which we are exposed. The most recent analysis of a study conducted by the federal government and published in February by the Food and Drug Administration found "minimal effects" for the BPA-dosed groups of rodents. And the doses were far higher than humans are ever likely to encounter.

The various marches and demonstrations this Earth Day won't be limited to the supposed calamity of plastic pollution, of course; they'll feature many other causes as well.

But instead of a genuine concern for nature, many of those stumping for Earth Day on Sunday will more broadly oppose environment-friendly advances in science and technology, such as fracking, nuclear power, and genetic engineering to produce new crop plants.

And if past is prologue, another recurrent theme will be disdain for the capitalist system that provides the resources to expend on environmental protection and conservation.

This Sunday will likely also be heavy on vitriol toward the regulatory rationalization and reforms of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's new leadership has begun to correct the incompetence, disdain for science and corruption of recent decades.

The Earth Day Network has a "Greening Our Schools" initiative, so it's not surprising that kids holding signs they're too young to understand are a fixture of Earth Day events.

A frequent Earth Day assignment kids get in schools is to read Rachel Carson's best-selling 1962 book "Silent Spring," an emotionally charged but deeply flawed condemnation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects.

As described by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet eminently readable 2012 analysis, "Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic," Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimize "positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking: neo-Malthusian population control and anti-technology efforts."

Carson's proselytizing and advocacy led to the virtual banning of the pesticide DDT and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides, even though "Silent Spring" was replete with gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of misconduct.

Carson's observations about DDT were meticulously rebutted point by point by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards, a professor of entomology at San Jose State University. He was also a longtime member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.
In his stunning 1992 essay, "The Lies of Rachel Carson," Edwards demolished her arguments and assertions and called attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications in the book. Consider this from Edwards:

"This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that 'in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million (human) deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.' The World Health Organization stated that DDT had 'killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.'"

One of the United Kingdom's great contemporary thinkers, Dick Taverne – also known as Lord Taverne of Pimlico – discusses in his book, "The March of Unreason," the New Age philosophy that underlies the organizers of Earth Day.

Taverne deplores the "new kind of fundamentalism" that has infiltrated many environmentalist campaigns – an undiscriminating back-to-nature movement that views science and technology as the enemy and as a manifestation of an exploitative, rapacious and reductionist attitude toward nature.

That eco-fundamentalism is out of step with current events. Congress, the Trump administration and many Americans are now firmly on the side of more sensible, more limited regulation. So it would behoove the Earth Day activists to collaborate in good faith and to support advances in environment-friendly technologies and business models.

Among these advances, we would include ridesharing services, Airbnb, modern genetic engineering applied to agriculture, and state-of-the art agricultural chemicals. All these things enable us to do more with less – but they have been vilified by activists.

Perhaps adding Lord Taverne's book to the Earth Day curriculum would allow students to consider the issues in a more thoughtful way. But we are not sufficiently naïve to expect that to happen.

Rather, we suspect that activists prefer that their eco-fundamentalism continue to go unchallenged. They don't want reason, science and respect for differing views to interfere with their agenda.

As far as Earth Day is concerned, a more egalitarian, evidence-based approach might advance civil society, alleviate human suffering and even help protect the planet.

Congressional oversight weeds out corrupt international junk science

by Julie Kelly and Jeff Stier February 16, 2018 This appeared in the Washington Examiner 

This may be the year when Congress finally cracks down on the corrupt World Health Organization. The last straw may be not what WHO did, but what it didn't do.

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has been investigating the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the WHO, amid accusations that IARC holds secret proceedings and conducts shoddy research to reach politically-motivated conclusions. Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who has been threatening to withhold federal funding for IARC, twice asked IARC to testify at a hearing to explain itself. IARC refused to send an official to answer questions at a February 6 hearing. The agency has received more than $48 million in U.S. tax dollars via the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. is the WHO's largest donor.

Smith's request wasn't just refused, it was dismissed with bureaucratic diplo-speak that could put its author in the running to be the next U.N. secretary general. IARC spokeswoman Véronique Terrasse told POLITICO Europe in November that IARC "will respond when we receive an official request through the proper channel." IARC believes it is only accountable, if at all, to the U.S. State Department, and that any request must be directed at American representatives on IARC's governing council.

Congress is asking questions because IARC's findings on the carcinogenicity of certain chemicals, personal behaviors, and environmental factors often diverge from mainstream science. And its junk-science conclusions cannot just be ignored, because they go on to heavily influence policy, public opinion, and even legal actions.

For example, California might soon require coffee shops to post cancer warnings based on two IARC reports that concluded the acrylamide found in roasted coffee beans and the act of drinking very hot beverages can cause cancer. The agency's widely-criticized 2015 allegation that red and processed meats are human carcinogens have been used to justify sin taxes.

Chairman Smith warned at the hearing that the "selective use of data and the lack of public disclosure raise questions about why IARC should receive any government funding in the future." The committee heard testimony from experts at the EPA and U.S. National Cancer Institute about IARCs widely discredited "hazard-based" approach, focused only on the chemical's dose, rather than a "risk-based" approach which takes into account actual exposure.

One of IARCs most disputed reports is highly suspect; its 2015 assessment declared glyphosate, the world's most widely-used herbicide, is a "probable human carcinogen." It's the only major scientific organization to reach that conclusion. Subsequent studies, including a major review issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in December, found no link between glyphosate and cancer. Glyphosate is controversial because it's the main herbicide used on several genetically engineered crops — called Roundup Ready — that have been developed to withstand the chemical without harming the plant. It was developed by Monsanto, the bête noire of the global environmental movement.

How did IARC reach such a different conclusion from so many leading institutions? In October, a Reuters investigation found that unknown officials at IARC made "significant changes and deletions" to a draft of the report. IARC deleted language from a draft report citing an EPA-ordered study which "firmly" and "unanimously" concluded that glyphosate did not cause abnormal growths in mice.

This deletion, and nine similar to it, were crucial because, as Reuters put it, IARC's "conclusion was based on its experts' view that there was "sufficient evidence" glyphosate causes cancer in animals. There was only "limited evidence" it could do so in humans.

Committee members also expressed unease over IARCs secret proceedings and lack of standard scientific protocols, such as peer review. "IARC monographs do not employ any independent outside peer reviews," said Texas Republican Brian Babin. "Instead an IARC working group collaborates behind closed-doors to select data, analyze data, and reach conclusions. So, without any public engagement or independent scientific peer review, the working group acts as hand-in-hand with IARC staff as judges, juries, and executioners."

Insularity can be a breeding ground for corruption. The committee is looking into the role of Christopher Portier who recommended that IARC evaluate glyphosate. He was chosen to serve as an "invited specialist" to the glyphosate working group. Now, court documents have revealed that Portier was hired by a law firm suing on behalf of glyphosate "victims" several days after the glyphosate monograph was issued.

According to news reports and Portier's own admission, over the past two years Portier has earned more than $160,000 for his "expert testimony" on several glyphosate lawsuits. At the same time, he was active in trying to pressure the European Parliament and U.S. agencies not to publish favorable findings about glyphosate without disclosing this obvious conflict.

Let's be clear about what's happening here: a public charity is refusing to answer questions by the charity's largest donor about an unfolding scandal.

Global public health is too important to cede to a scandal-ridden organization behaving as if it is beyond not only reproach, but oversight. Congress should cut IARC funding to let the beneficiaries of our generosity across the world know that they are answerable to taxpayers through our representatives in Congress.

Julie Kelly is a senior contributor to American Greatness. Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the Consumer Choice Center.

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It's High Time To Cut U.S. Funding For This Troubled International Cancer Agency

The United States has failed to hold the World Health Organization accountable for the nearly $2 billion in U.S. funding WHO receives each year.

By Julie Kelly and Jeff Stier This appeared here
The Federalist
December 19, 2017

Since Donald Trump's election, international bureaucracies that receive U.S. tax dollars have been on notice that our unchecked government largess to them is about to end. The World Health Organization is one example of a bloated, inefficient agency that is ripe for reform.

As Jeff wrote in June, "WHO is plagued by persistent wasteful spending, utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards." The United States has failed to hold the WHO accountable for the nearly $2 billion in U.S. funding WHO receives each year.

WHO's new director-general is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian doctor who served as a top official in that country's ruling Marxist government. In October, Ghebreyesus laughably appointed now-deposed Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe as a "good will ambassador." (He later rescinded the appointment amid widespread condemnation by member states and donors.) According to an Associated Press investigation earlier this year, WHO spends as much on travel expenses each year as it does on programs to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

Congress has recently begun asking oversight questions about potential misconduct at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a WHO affiliate based in Lyon, France. But IARC has been snubbing its nose at requests for information. Now, the committee doing the investigation, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is threatening to cut off federal funding until it gets answers. House leadership must recognize that this move comes not a moment too soon, and it must be prepared to back up the threat if necessary.

Cancer, Cancer Everywhere IARC convenes a working group each year to evaluate the cancer-causing potential of chemicals, food, personal habits, and environmental factors. Out of the more than 1,000 hazards IARC has analyzed over the past 50 years, only one has been deemed non-carcinogenic.

IARCs alarmist reports occasionally smack of propaganda intended to advance a wider political agenda. As we wrote in November 2015, the agency's flawed study that said bacon and red meat might cause cancer was likely tied to the United Nations' climate change goal to slow global meat consumption because farm animals purportedly contribute to global warming. Others panned IARC for doing a poor job of communicating risk by failing to explain the difference between absolute and relative risk.

While risk communication should be a core competency of IARC, they are now in hot water for something that suggests a more sinister agenda. At issue is a 2015 study that claimed glyphosate, a commonly used weedkiller known as Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen.

Glyphosate has become the latest target of the environmental left because it was created by its nemesis, the St. Louis-based Monsanto, and is used on genetically engineered crops, which green activists oppose. Just as the global movement against genetically engineered crops—as well as a bill in Congress to mandate the labeling of GMO foods—was making progress, this report conveniently gave a scientific imprimatur and health warning to back up those efforts.

IARCs glyphosate report has been widely criticized by scientists and farmers around the world since nearly all the research, both academic and industry, has concluded that glyphosate poses little harm to human health. Subsequent studies, including two conducted by President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency, also found no link between glyphosate and cancer. Since the report was issued, credible accusations about IARCs use of poor-quality data made sense of IARC's strange conclusion.

But now it has come to light that someone omitted favorable findings from the draftbefore the report was finalized. It seems that IARC has its own Peter Stzrok problem. Like FBI investigator Stzrok, the agent who edited a crucial part of former FBI director Jim Comey's statement about Hillary Clinton's use of a private server, reports are now emerging that key IARC officials have egregious conflicts-of-interest.

Major Conflicts of Interest Revealed In an effort to find out who was behind the scientific meddling, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has been investigating how the report was handled and recently asked IARC to provide a list of potential witnesses to testify at a congressional hearing next year. On November 1, Chairman Lamar Smith sent a letter to IARCs executive director, expressing concern over "troubling evidence of data deletion, manipulation, and potential conflicts of interest" with the glyphosate report, and asked the director to furnish a list of names of "IARC-affiliated individuals who would serve as potential witnesses for this hearing."

Smith is particularly curious about the role of Christopher Portier, a part-time employee with the Environmental Defense Fund, who recommended that IARC evaluate glyphosate although he has no background in chemical research. Portier also served as an "invited specialist" to the IARC group evaluating glyphosate. But in court depositions made public in September, Portier admitted he was hired by a law firm suing on behalf of glyphosate "victims" the same month the glyphosate-causes-cancer report was issued. As Julie wrote here:

Portier has been a hired gun, giving expert testimony on behalf of cancer-stricken farm workers and their family members who believe glyphosate caused the disease. It has been a profitable gig. Over the past two years, Portier has banked about $160,000 for his time and has another $30,000 in billable hours now outstanding. (He is earning $450 per hour for his "expertise.") During that time, as he pressured EU and U.S. agencies not to publish favorable findings about glyphosate, Portier failed to disclose his conflict of interest. 

(Portier did not respond to an email seeking updated compensation figures.)
IARC is refusing to cooperate. Not only did the agency snub a congressional request for potential witnesses, it has advised American scientists who participated in the working group (including academics at public universities) not to respond to press inquiries: a pretty bold rebuke from an agency that has received $48 million in U.S. tax dollars.
Smith is not taking no for an answer. Last week, he sent a follow-up letter to IARC, warning the agency about disregarding his request, and threatening that "if IARC does not provide a full response to the request for potential witnesses, the Committee will consider whether the values of scientific integrity and transparency are reflected [at IARC] and if future expenditures of federal taxpayer dollars to this end need to continue." 

It comes down to this: The WHO and IARC have long behaved as if they are above oversight, let alone reproach. Now, as the glyphosate report scandal comes to a head, congressional leadership must stand with the committee and state that global public health is too important to cede to scandal-ridden ideologues. 

This case illustrates again why the WHO and IARC must be put on a regimen of tough love in the form of responsible stewardship. Given their brazen dismissals of any obligation to be transparent, Congress should immediately cut funding to the WHO and IARC to ensure that beneficiaries of our generosity use taxpayer dollars only for the legitimate purposes for which they were allocated.

Julie Kelly is a food policy writer in Orland Park, Illinois. Jeff Stier is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

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The EPA Shows Again That It's an Affront to Common Sense

by Henry I. Miller and Jeff StierNational Review Online November 23, 2016

For decades, in administrations Democratic and Republican alike, the Environmental Protection Agency has been a paragon of waste, fraud, and abuse, a corrupt taxpayer-funded Evil Empire. "Science" there is just a tool to be manipulated in order to advance radical anti-technology and anti-industry agendas, even if it means distorting the intent of statutes and affronting common sense.

The EPA is the prototype of agencies that, driven largely by politics, spend more and more to address smaller and smaller risks. In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17. For example, the agency's restrictions on the disposal of land that contains certain wastes prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year — about three cases every five years — and avoid $20 million in property damage, at an annual cost of $194 to $219 million.

In his excellent book Breaking the Vicious Circle, written shortly before he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer cited another, similar example of expensive, non-cost-effective regulation by the EPA: a ban on asbestos pipe, shingles, coating, and paper, which the most optimistic estimates suggested would prevent seven or eight premature deaths over 13 years — at a cost of approximately a quarter of a billion dollars. Breyer, appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton, observed that such a vast expenditure would cause more deaths than it would prevent from the asbestos exposure, simply by reducing the resources available for other public amenities......To Read More...

Is Food Political?

Celebrity Chef Tom Colicchio and Left-Wing Interest Groups are Making It So with "Sham Consensus" Food Policy Scorecard

By Jeff Stier December 12, 2013

Washington, D.C. - Jeff Stier, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and Director of its Risk Analysis Division, has issued a statement in response to the new "National Food Policy Scorecard" announced this week by the activist group Food Policy Action, supported by celebrity chief Tom Colicchio and consisting of organizations associated with the left:

This scorecard is a sham. It does not, as Food Policy Action claims, "reflect the consensus of top food policy experts." Rather, it represents the narrow views of a select group of some of the nation's most ideologically-divisive activists.....To Read More.....  

 My Take - Once again we find "consensus" among radicals promoting radical views. Surprise! And once again we find radicals attempting to force everyone to adopt their views of reality, irrespective of what the rest of the world wants. In order to do this they attempt to undermine our views with the views of "experts:", unless the "experts" agree with them and then they condemn anyone who dares disagree with the "experts"!

The only good thing about this is the left has no other tools left in their arsenal and the public is fast becoming aware their views aren't "consensus" views or "expert". What fascinates me is why they are so hot to control everyone's life? Everywhere in the world where this kind of central planning and control has been adopted - or imposed - it has been a failure to those societies. Dystopia follows leftism as sure as Sancho Panza followed Don Quixote. A madman!