It's the first day of autumn, which is a good time to ask whether you suffered any shark attacks or nuclear power plant accidents this summer. Probably not, though that's the sort of outlandish risk the media love to do stories about rather than familiar but greater risks such as overexposure to the sun. It's the first day of autumn, which is a good time to ask whether you suffered any shark attacks or nuclear power plant accidents this summer. Probably not, though that's the sort of outlandish risk the media love to do stories about rather than familiar but greater risks such as overexposure to the sun. An August 9 New York Times op-ed by David Ropeik and Nigel Holmes summed up the media's misplaced priorities well:
Between Memorial Day and Labor Day last year, major American newspapers and wire services ran 2,240 articles on West Nile virus, which kills fewer than 300 Americans a year, while there were 257 articles on food poisoning, which will kill more than 5,000 of us.
One of the most common risk-assessment errors is pointing to exotic, hypothetical causes of cancer such as environmental chemical exposure instead of the major known causes so it was nice to see this passage in a New York Daily News article:
[Dr. Dennis Deapen from the Keck School of Medicine at USC, describing new findings, said:] "We all live in a relatively small area, breathe the same air, drink the same water, and have the same climate. Yet there are profound differences in our cancer patterns between ethnic groups." Based on the report's findings, doctors said environmental pollution plays a much smaller role in the development of cancer than lifestyle factors, such as smoking and drinking, diet and exercise.
Finally, reminding us that primary responsibility for avoiding risk rests with the individual, lawsuits against fast food companies for making people fat inspired amusing quotes in an AP article by Siobhan McDonough (who also included some serious observations about the role of genetics by ACSH's own Dr. Ruth Kava, but let's stick to the comedy):
"I don't think people want to go back," says Tomas Philipson, a University of Chicago economist. "They'd rather be fatter and richer"...
"Almost everyone can afford to be fat," says John Calfee of the conservative American Enterprise Institute...
Lawyers are "salivating over the idea that these foods are as addictive as nicotine," said psychiatrist Sally Satel. "The term addiction can be stretched until it's meaningless. It's litigation addiction"...
"So food is more cheap, more prevalent and much tastier," said Rick Berman of the Center for Consumer Freedom, which represents restaurants and food makers. "Then do we need less food that tastes like crap?"...
To sum up: worry less about being eaten or living in a toxic town and more about the amount you're eating and whether you're putting on pounds.
