Cows, Phones, Food, and a Blue-Skinned Politician

When my friend Ted, who is very skeptical about democracy, sees a crazy person or an idiot, he likes to say, "Remember: that person gets one vote, and you get one vote." The past few weeks have been full of events that make you wonder about the wisdom of the masses but the elites don't come off looking so clever, either:

Oregon the state that reminds us that if everything in life were put to a vote, the masses would soon be declaring porpoises citizens and who knows what else will vote November 5th on whether foods with genetically-modified ingredients must be labeled as such in order to be sold in Oregon. G.m. foods are harmless, have been safely consumed by all Americans for years, and are less genetically-exotic than, say, a conventionally-hybridized new brand of cucumber...but perhaps Oregon will nonetheless follow Zambia's example and choose empty store shelves over "genetic contamination." Come to think of it, the Pacific Northwest has both greens and neo-Nazis, who ought to find plenty of common ground in the effort to maintain "genetic purity."

Oregonians get silly ideas such as fear of biotech from places like Harper's magazine, the October issue of which ran an essay by Rutgers biologist David Ehrenfeld arguing that cows should not be given hormones that boost their milk output. Ehrenfeld catalogues a few less-than-dire side effects ones that can easily occur even without additional hormones such as sore cow knees. Then, not surprisingly, Ehrenfeld announces that as his essay continues we will "gradually leave the realm of science and medicine," entering "the territory of ethics, economics, and social well-being." (Any time a biologist announces that he is gradually leaving the realm of science, it is a warning sign.) What follows is a plea for animal rights and for an end to the alienation of humanity from nature, pleas bolstered by the (rarely explained) inherent moral superiority of small family farms over more efficient big agribusinesses. Science, back in the realm Ehrenfeld has left behind, still says milk is milk, whether the cows producing it were treated "as if they were mere machines" (and injected with hormones) or were treated as beings with as much right to freedom and dignity as, well, porpoises.

Science also now says acrylamide the hypothetically-ever-so-slightly-carcinogenic chemical that had the media doing frightening reports about bread and fried foods for months occurs naturally when certain foods are heated. No word yet on whether activists (who are normally terrified of any chemical capable of increasing cancer risks but in love with all things "natural") are confused by the findings. After all, if the environmental alarmists were consistent, they ought to be denouncing Mother Nature for spewing "cancer-causing chemicals" at us (in this and countless other equally trivial ways), with the same ferocity they use in denouncing big chemical companies. They won't. Nature good, man bad no matter what the facts are and no matter how safe the whole food supply, natural or unnatural, actually is. (Read about ACSH's acrylamide-related lawsuit.)

Columbia University's school of public health also has a hard time separating politics from science, if an Associated Press story is accurate: A course on infectious diseases will reportedly ask whether there is a danger that people infected with anthrax and smallpox in hypothetical future outbreaks might be "shunned by their communities as people with AIDS were in the 1980s." One can only hope that students will come out of the class having scrawled in their notebooks this important, potentially world-saving reminder: "If a deadly disease is airborne and easily spread (unlike AIDS), shunning is good." The targets of the shunning will soon be recovered or dead, which will probably be of much greater concern to them than their failure to get invited to parties during the plague.

Speaking of parties, the innovative folks at California's YWCA are working on an interesting technical fix to a scary risk for party-goers. The organization plans to distribute drink coasters with built-in chemical detectors that can spot the presence of the "date rape" drug rohypnol (commonly called "roofies"), which is used to render women both manipulable and prone to temporary memory loss. I regard the chemical-sniffing coaster as a positive development, but what I still don't understand is why this drug got the nickname "roofies" when rohypnol has the far more fitting term "hypno" right in the middle.

In another positive development, a federal judge, citing a lack of credible evidence, threw out an $800 million lawsuit from a man alleging that cell phones caused his brain tumor. If only the anti-cell phone and anti-power line activists who have cost government and industry billions by stoking public fear of broadcast towers and aboveground EMF could be sued for a change. Make the paranoiacs pay for a change.

Is there a politician who might rise and rescue us from all the crazy legislation, regulation, and litigation? Well, it probably wouldn't be healthy to hold your breath. The Libertarian Party, the one political party loudly opposed to most regulations and environmentalist fears, has made headlines with only two of its candidates this year, by my count, and neither of them is the best standard-bearer for sound science. The California Libertarian Party is running an avowed Druid for governor, while the Montana Libertarian Party's Senate candidate has turned blue literally from using a quack alternative health remedy containing colloidal silver. A friend of mine thinks he looks like a Smurf, but I say he looks much more like a member of the alien race called the Andorians from Star Trek, though without the antennae. If that resemblance helps cement the already-strong coalition between libertarians and Star Trek fans, I'll call the incident a net benefit.

Ah, democracy! Still the world's messiest but most entertaining form of peer review.

October 24, 2002

I was wondering what the purpose was of using the word quack in describing colloidal silver. Generally, that means that the item does not work for the purpose for which it is being used. Do you have information that I do not have?

What is occurring around our office and other places when this colloidal silver removes skin problems, keeps cankers from forming, and in effect behaves the way that we would expect a bacteria-killer to function? Besides, with 5,000 to 15,000 years behind the use of silver, where again does the quack word become valid?

Perhaps you meant to say "quick" as in quicksilver, which was its original meaning. Those using it in teeth, dentists, were sometimes called quacks.

Best wishes,
Robert Russell

Seavey replies:

"Quicksilver" means mercury, not silver, but in any case, just because something can be used to fill holes is no reason to believe it is protective against numerous diseases. Scientifically baseless claims about colloidal silver have become common enough to worry the FDA, who noted the substance's popularity in a report on Web scams years ago: "Of great concern to us at the FDA is the promotion of colloidal silver on the Internet, which is falsely claimed to provide cures for tuberculosis and the plague..."