In a blog entry published on Friday, Anrew Van Dam with the Association of Health Care Journalists finally noticed the media bias against bisphenol-A (BPA) that ACSH staffers almost alone against the crowd have been condemning for some time. In a review of American media coverage of the controversy of bisphenol-A, researchers at STATS (a nonprofit, nonpartisan Statistical Assessment Service affiliated with George Mason University), say the media failed to properly weight different studies based on their size and research methodology.
ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan has noticed the trend: If you looked at media coverage of BPA for the last six months, you d find that a vast majority of the reports were biased in favor of anti-chemical scares. There were very few scientists who were willing to defend BPA despite all the evidence that proves it s not dangerous. The FDA has already ruled time and time again that BPA is safe as used. How could they come out with any other assessment, unless a new administration can overturn scientific evidence?
This needs to be brought to light, says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. All of this hype comes from two or three junk science groups like the one under Frederick vom Saal that has been trying to scare people about BPA for over ten years. They automatically doubt any corporate-funded study -- including any researcher who ever received industry support -- for absolutely no reason other than the fact that they want to be praised as heroes.
Well, I don t know their motivation, if it s publicity-seeking or what, says Dr. Whelan, but I know that they aren t advancing the cause of public health. Any reassessment study would take so long that BPA would probably be banned everywhere already by the time that they prove it is safe again.
