By Alan Caruba
News
releases trumpeting not merely inaccurate, but false, science have become a way
of life for Americans and others around the world. There is rarely, if ever, any
fact checking done by the editors and reporters who pass along often dangerously
false science on a wide range of topics, with many reports designed to alarm
consumers.
Such
is the case with bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that has been in use for some 60
years to protect the contents of metal food containers and create shatter
resistant plastics. In 2011 I wrote a
four-part series about the efforts to ban BPA which has been subjected to
more than 5,000 studies, none of which has found harm or undue risk in normal
use. Its safety was reaffirmed earlier this year by the refusal of the Food and
Drug Administration to ban it.
But
the anti-chemical drumbeat continues. A recent study at the University of
California-San Diego that purported to show a risk of danger when BPA was
metabolized and this finding was announced by a news release issued by the
university. It was reviewed and approved by researcher Michael Baker and
contained the traditional hype we see when organizations want to whip up public
concern when none is warranted. Remarkably, the tactic was exposed in a lengthy
article by Jon
Entine in Forbes magazine.
News
releases trumpeting information that is not merely inaccurate but false have
become a way of life for Americans and others around the world. There is rarely,
if ever, any fact checking done by the editors and reporters who pass along
often dangerously false pseudo-science on a wide range of topics, from chemicals
to the climate. But Entine’s article revealed something many has suspected but
few have ever admitted.
Baker
confessed to Entine that “I have no evidence, none at all, that BPA causes any
problems in humans. This was a theoretical exercise, and it would be trumped by
what actually happens in the real world. Based on what I know now, neither BPA
nor its metabolites are harmful. I am upset that my structural study is misused
by some.”
“Misused”?
Hardly. More like part of the massive effort by the opponents of the real
science regarding BPA and it is designed and intended to frighten people because
fear is the most potent weapon that the many advocates of false causes that mask
themselves as saving lives or even saving the Earth.
Writing
in the National
Review, Julie Gunlock noted that reports on Baker’s study, read by those
without knowledge of the real facts about BPA, “causes moms like me to gnaw off
their fingernails at the thought that we might be poisoning our children with
chemicals. But that’s okay; regular moms and dads (already struggling with high
food and fuel costs) can just run out and support the cottage industry that has
sprouted up in the wake of these terrifying headlines—the BPA-free
industry.”
“Of
course, what parents won’t hear about is Baker’s mea culpa because if there’s
one thing parents can count on from today’s science writers is an absolute
dearth of Entine-esque journalism when it comes to BPA.” She could not be more
correct.
Science
writing today is one of the most debased forms of popular journalism found in
newspapers and magazines and BPA is just one example. Consider our food supply.
A recent commentary in The
Wall Street Journal by Dr. Henry I. Miller, a physician, molecular biologist
and fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, cited the way
Greenpeace, one of the leading environmental organizations, “has always had a
flair for publicity” to become “a $260 million-plus per year behemoth with
offices in more than 40 countries.”
Dr.
Miller warns that the Greenpeace PR machine “is now spearheading an effort to
deny the poorest nations the essential nutrients they need to stave off
blindness and death. The targets are new plant varieties collectively called
‘golden rice.’ Rice is a food staple for hundreds of millions, especially in
Asia. Although it is an excellent source of calories, it lakes certain nutrients
necessary for a complete diet. In the 1980s and 1990s, German scientists Ingo
Potrykus and Peter Beyer developed the ‘golden rice’ varieties that are
biofortified, or enriched, by genes that produce beta-carotine, the precursor of
vitamin A.”
Hundreds
of millions of children of pre-school age are at risk of vitamin A deficiency,
leading to blindness and death within a year for about 70% of those children and
Greenpeace is using its multi-million dollar flacking apparatus to ply its
nonsense to a gullible and uncritical news media and reduce access to this
valuable food source.
Now
ask yourself how many children and adults would die from botulism in unprotected
cans and bottles of food?
These
and countless other examples represent the deep commitment of environmental
organizations to limit and reduce billions of human lives which they regard as a
nuisance that harms the Earth. Like golden rice, BPA saves lives. It is just one
of countless chemicals that protect and extends life every day.
The
real threat is the researchers and agenda-driven scientists intent on advancing
the environmental movement’s objective of killing as many people as possible to
“save the Earth.” They accomplish this through a media that either approves of
this agenda or is just so starved for ratings and financial survival they’ll
report any sensational headline available. The real threat is the debased
“science journalism” that aids and advances this agenda.
©
Alan Caruba, 2012
