TORONTO Last Monday, a group called the Center for Children's Health and the Environment in New York ran a full-page ad in The New York Times. "Pesticides could become the ultimate male contraceptive. Why? Sperm defects, sex reversals and other abnormalities."
Nothing grabs vigorous reader attention more than references to sexual dysfunction. Looking for a good scare? How about receding testes, shrinking penises, inability to penetrate members of the opposite sex and all caused by "an array of synthetic chemicals known as endocrine disruptors." Well, at least it's not the beer. In what was essentially an attack on the world's chemical industry, the ad rehashed a host of false alarms publicized over the last decade by the likes of Theo Colburn in her infamous and largely discredited book, Our Stolen Future. The ad said something is happening to the reproductive systems of birds of prey around the Great Lakes and alligators in Florida. The alligator reference harkens back to one of the opening sequences in Our Stolen Future, the story of a 1980 chemical spill at Lake Apoteka, Fla. Scores of alligators were killed immediately. But apparently scientists later found the remaining alligators went on to produce offspring with assorted sexually abnormal features, including an unusually large number of hermaphrodites. The cause, it was speculated, was residue chemicals in the water that interfered with hormone production.
Maybe chemical-induced hormone disruption is the explanation for the increasing number of she-male ads in the sex-for-sale section of Toronto's alternative newspaper. Probably not, however, since the claims that chemicals in the environment cause serious hormone disruptions and other health problems have been dismissed by scientists who are not part of the anti-chemical activist crusade. Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that there's no evidence for chemical-caused hormone disruption.
Nor can scientists find links between chemicals and cancers. But that hasn't stopped the activists. The three other ads in the New York Times cycle carry alarming themes. If sex doesn't grab attention, maybe children will. "More kids are getting brain cancer. Why? Toxic chemicals appear linked to rising rates of some cancers," said one of the ads that depicted a nurse holding a balding baby. Another ad, which shows a baby feeding at a mother's breast, says: "Our most precious natural resource is being threatened. Why? Toxic chemicals are being passed on to infants in breast milk."
It is impossible even for scientists to respond to such agit-prop. The Center for Children's Health would have paid almost $600,000 US (funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund) just to place the four ads in the Times. If the claims in the ads had been issued to the media in a news release, they would have been ignored. The ads bypass the media, spreading the junk science to millions who have no reason to question the validity of the claims or think that there might be flaws in the science or even lies in the claims. The claims are becoming received wisdom by virtue of constant repetition.
Elizabeth Whelan, head of the American Council on Science and Health, says the ads are "absolutely, totally and blatantly a lie. The one that really got me is the one that says more kids are getting brain cancer. What a horrible thing to say to parents of young children. If you were to do a search in a medical library into the etiology, the cause, of brain cancer, you would find absolutely zero reference to toxic chemicals."
The children's centre, says Whelan, is claiming "that children are getting sick, learning disorders and cancer from background levels of chemicals used to produce food. Is that true? No, and there is no such evidence."
In a letter to the world's largest chemical companies, Whelan last week asked how long the industry intends to stand by and say nothing while their industry is slowly destroyed. "We have silence in reaction to advertisements that distort and make a mockery of science."
Readers who want to see the ads for themselves can go to www.childenvironment.org. There is no immediate antidote, but some counter-information can be picked up on the Web site of the American Council on Science and Health at http://healthfactsandfears.com. Another option is to track down a copy of The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg, a Swedish environmentalist who blows most junk science away, including the chemical scares promoted by Theo Colburn and the ads. Lomborg, for example, cites the conclusion of a 650-page report in 1997 prepared under the auspices of the World Cancer Research Fund, the American Institute of Cancer Research, the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer: "There is no convincing evidence that any food contaminant (including pesticides) modifies the risk of any cancer, nor is there evidence of any probable causal relationship. Indeed, there is currently little epidemiological evidence that chemical contamination of food and drink, resulting from properly regulated use, significantly affects cancer risk."
