Jill Bolte Taylor’s inspiring story of stroke and recovery in a brain function specialist got a nice treatment in the New York Times a week ago: “A superhighway to bliss.”
Trafficking workers’ bodies for profit
May 27, 2008If a guy beats someone to death, it’s murder, right? And so the nation’s labor laws hold an employer liable for the death of a worker when unsafe working conditions caused the death.
But what if the worker doesn’t die? What if the worker only loses his arms, or legs, or arms and legs?
No death, no crime, U.S. law says.
What if the employer poisons the worker with cyanide that eats away the worker’s brain?
No death, no crime, U.S. law says.
My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Employers who maim their workers face, at worst, a maximum civil penalty of $70,000 for each violation.
Read a plea to change the law, in the New York Times, from David H. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
Barnum’s Law and toxic feet
May 26, 2008Much as we’d like to deny it, the evidence to verify Barnum’s Law just keeps piling up.
Here’s a blogger astounded by the black stuff on the pad on her feet, convinced that it’s toxic stuff magically drained out of her body, through her feet.
Who is going to tell her the facts?
Uh, you haven’t been suckered by that scam, have you?
Update: The blogger in question seems to have gotten the message: The post has been yanked. Smart people change things when their errors are pointed out.
Business, no environmentalists, oppose DDT in Africa
May 16, 2008Steve Milloy and an entire host of DDT denialists hope you never read any newspaper from Africa. Your ignorance is their best argument.
If you don’t read African newspapers, they can continue to blame environmentalists for any case of malaria that occurs in Africa. They’ll claim, though it’s not true, that environmentalists urged a complete ban on the use of DDT. They’ll argue, falsely, that African governments were bullied into not using DDT by environmentalists, ignoring the fact that some African nations have just never been able to get their kit together to conduct an anti-malaria campaign, while other nations discovered DDT was ineffective — and most of the nations have no love for environmentalists anyway (Idi Amin? Jomo Kenyatta? Who does Milloy think he’s kidding?).
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from the Daily Times in Malawi, that say it’s Milloy’s old friends in the tobacco business who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from New Vision in Kampala, Uganda, that say it’s the cotton farmers who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If Steven Milloy wanted to get DDT used against malaria in Africa, in indoor residual spraying (IRS) campaigns, all he has to do is pick up the phone and ask his friends to allow it to be done.
Someone who will lie to you about their friends’ misdeeds, and try to pin it on a nice old lady like Rachel Carson, will go Charles Colson one better: They’ll walk over your grandmother to do what they want to do. In fact, they’ll go out of their way to walk over your grandmother.
The New Republic seems to have come around to get the story straight. Truth wins in a fair fight — it’s a fight to make sure the fight is fair, though.
John Stossel? Your company doesn’t get tobacco money any more. What’s your excuse? Do you really believe the Bush administration is beholden to environmentalists on this one issue? How long have you been covering politics?
(Texts of news stories below the fold.)
DDT blast from the past: 1951
May 16, 2008DDT denialists like Steven Milloy like to paint Rachel Carson as a lone, cranky and crackpot voice in the wilderness against DDT (never mind how that makes the DDT industry look, unable to use facts and the $500,000 public relations campaign to get their message out).
It’s not so. As Carson noted, concerns about DDT were raised early, and often.
The Dallas Public Library makes available much of the news from the Dallas Morning News of the last century. On my way to find something else, I plugged in “DDT” as a search term. Among other articles that popped up was a May 9, 1951 story of Texas scientists warning a Congressional committee of the harms of DDT.
“Hazard to health,” was the flying head, “Renner Scientist Cites DDT Harm.” The story, by the News’ Washington Bureau reporter Ruth Schumm, covered a hearing before an unnamed committee of the House, “investigating the use of chemicals in foods.” (Where was the copy editor on that one?)
John M. Dendy of the Texas Research Foundation delivered the testimony. Dendy worked out of the Foundation’s laboratory in Renner. Renner was an independent community then, located south of Renner, west of Coit, and north of Campbell Roads (no, it’s not there today).
Studies in the foundation’s laboratories at Renner, Dallas County, have proved that DDT and other chemicals are now causing mass contamination of milk, meat and other foods, Dendy said.
Dendy said that crops absorb the DDT sprayed on them — still true, and more problematic since it’s been discovered that DDT is also damaging to some plants — and animals that graze the crops get that dosage. Dairy cows, beef cattle and sheep were the chief animals mentioned.
Even though the Texas State Health Department has ruled that no DDT should be present in milk comsumed by human beings, DDT is showing up in the Dallas milk supply even in December, long past the usual season for spraying with insecticides. About half of the Dallas milk supply is imported from Oklahoma, Missouri and Wisconsin, he said.
* * * * *
In the Texas Research Foundation tests, the degree of contamination ranged from 3.10 parts per million in lean meat to 68.55 parts per million in fat meat, Dendy testified.
In milk, the DDT conamination ranged from less than .5 parts per million to 13.83 parts per million.
Dendy testified that so far as he knew, the exact effects of such poisoning on human beings has not yet been established.
Dendy warned in his testimony that DDT builds up over time in “human and animal fat tissue,” so the dangers to human health become greater as the exposure grows over time.
The worried Congressmen wanted to know if there is a substitute for DDT.
Dendy said he was not working on that problem, but he knew others were.
Notably absent from the hearing was the committee chairman, Rep. James J. Delaney, D-NY, according to the list offered by the DMN. That’s right: Delaney was the one who, in 1957, got his amendment passed to the Safe Food and Drug Act, the organic act for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) making it illegal to use anything known to be carcinogenic as a food additive (DDT doesn’t count, because it’s not a food additive, but a food contaminant, which is regulated not by the FDA, but by the Department of Agriculture).
So, in 1951, before Rachel Carson had left the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11 years prior to the publication of her book Silent Spring, 21 years before the EPA banned use of DDT on crops, conservative scientists from Texas were alerting Congress to the dangers of DDT.
It’s in the history books. You can look it up.
Top story for Teacher Appreciation Week: Student donates kidney to teacher
May 10, 2008I got some very nice cards, especially those that were hand made, from the heart. I got a candy bar when I really needed it.
This woman got a kidney from a former student. How could you top that?
In Elwood, Indiana, former student Angie Collins saved Darren Paquin’s life. What did he teach her, besides English?
DDT linked to testicular cancers in next generation
May 2, 2008Rachel Carson’s careful citations in her book Silent Spring have been reinforced by a recent study that shows a more direct link between DDT and human cancers, contrary to claims by lobbyists, junk science purveyors and practitioners of voodoo science.
Another study suggests DDT causes damage to the reproductive organs of children of people exposed to the pesticide. The connection is again to the daughter product, DDE.
Danger appears to result from exposure in utero or from breast feeding. The Reuters India story said:
Researchers led by Katherine McGlynn of the U.S. government’s National Cancer Institute examined blood samples provided by 739 men in the U.S. military with testicular cancer and 915 others who did not have it.
The link between DDE and cancer was particularly strong with a type of testicular cancer known as seminoma, which involves the sperm-producing germ cells of the testicles.
If diagnosed, testicular cancers are among the most treatable. It generally strikes men in their 20s and 30s. About 8,000 new cases per year show up in the U.S. In an average year testicular cancer kills 380 Americans. The NCI study suggests about 15 percent of cases in the U.S. can be attributed to DDT exposure.
It is possible some of the men who later developed cancer of the testicles were exposed to DDE at very young ages — in the womb or through breastfeeding, the researchers said.
“In testicular cancer, there’s a fair amount of evidence that something is happening very early in life to increase risk,” McGlynn said in a telephone interview.
DDE remains ubiquitous in the environment even decades after DDT was being banned in the United States — and is present in about 90 percent of Americans, McGlynn said.
“The trouble with these chemicals is they hang around a long time. It’s in the food chain now,” McGlynn added. People who eat fish from contaminated areas can absorb it, for instance.
The study was published on-line in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on April 29, 2008, ahead of print publication.
Resources:
- CTV (Canada) story, with links to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute
- MLA format citation: Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “Pesticide Metabolites Associated With Increased Risk Of Testicular Cancers, Study Shows.” ScienceDaily 30 April 2008. 2 May 2008 ; more colloquial format: McGlynn, K. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, April 29, 2008: vol 100: pp 1-9
- Science Daily report on the study
- Web/MD report, “Cancer Risk Lingers for Long-banned DDT“
- Earlier Science Daily report on Yale study that will look at potential causes of the spike in testicular cancers, focusing on endocrine disruptors like DDT and its byproducts.
- NCI Cancer Trends Report, 2007 – Pesticides
World Malaria Day 2008
April 25, 2008April 25, 2008, is World Malaria Day. I’ve purchased some bednets thorugh Nothing But Nets to help fight malaria. Educating others about the disease is one of the chief goals, too.
Will you help, please?
See the statement from the World Malaria Day community below; pass it along to someone else.
A Malaria Community Statement –
April 25th is World Malaria Day and also Malaria Awareness Day in the United States. In observance of this day and in recognition of the tremendous opportunities to reduce the burden that malaria imposes on the health of people worldwide, we, the Malaria Community, stand in support of the following statement.
We Have Made Progress
Dynamic new public and private partnerships and renewed commitments to strengthen
longstanding efforts to combat malaria are showing positive results. Global partners include
bilateral, multilateral and U.N. programs, faith-based groups, business coalitions and private
foundations. The single largest U.S.-funded malaria program, the President’s Malaria Initiative
(PMI), has accomplished the following:
- Indoor residual spraying benefiting more than 17 million people;
- Procurement and distribution of 5 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets;
- Procurement of 12.6 million artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) treatments and training of more than 28,000 health workers in use of ACTs; and
- Procurement of malaria treatment for more than 4 million pregnant women.
Expanding Access to Current Interventions
It is imperative that stakeholders in the fight against malaria maximize global access to existing proven interventions including insecticide-treated nets, indoor residual spraying with insecticides, and effective medications. Through generous donor contributions, access to essential interventions is improving—yielding dramatic successes in places like Ethiopia and Rwanda where malaria infections and deaths have decreased by more than 50 percent. But the availability of interventions is only half the battle. We must find means to expand delivery of proven interventions, strengthen the capacity of partner countries to administer basic interventions at the community level, share best practices across countries, and motivate individuals to protect themselves and their families.
Investing in New Tools
Simultaneously, we must increase investment in developing new, improved technologies for controlling malaria, including effective drugs, insecticides, and vaccines. Resistance to the most commonly prescribed drugs in most countries has been rapidly increasing. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) must be readily available and affordable, and new therapies must be developed to prevent resistance to ACTs and eventually replace them. The U.S. government’s commitment to expedite the development of highly effective malaria vaccines is needed now, understanding that the process will take significant time and investment. The potential of developing a vaccine of even limited efficacy could have a significant impact on deaths and illness, especially among infants and young children.
Global Problem, Local Solutions
Achieving results will also depend on the effective engagement of national, regional and local governments in the effective deployment of malaria control tools. To guarantee the best use of resources, steps must be taken to ensure that anti-malaria tools, research and investment reach the communities that need them the most, while ensuring that no community is left unsupported. Community-based efforts to deliver malaria prevention and treatment programs must inform the development of the comprehensive global strategy needed so that efforts can be sustained over time. All stakeholders need to be engaged in thoughtful, coordinated planning that brings to bear the best evidence from all levels of efforts to control or eliminate malaria while addressing changes in the epidemiology of the disease.
Note carefully and well that the major organizations fighting malaria neither slam Rachel Carson, whose methods they use to fight malaria today, nor call for a return to wholesale poisoning of Africa and Asia with DDT, but instead urge wise use of resources including an expansion of health care to aid the human victims of malaria. Malaria is the problem, not science.
World Malaria Day is a logical extension of Earth Day; the two are not in opposition.
More Resources:
How DDT could work in aggressive breast cancers
April 18, 2008A Quebec research team finds that DDT’s breakdown product, DDE, could promote aggressive breast cancer growth; news report on forthcoming journal paper.
Other news on cancer and DDT:
- BioMed Central/Breast Cancer Research (2008, February 15). How DDT Metabolite Disrupts Breast Cancer Cells. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 27, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080213193738.htm
- Childhood exposure to DDT linked to breast cancer
- Unnoticed epidemic: DDT linked to 1960s premature births
Science funding: Kicking our future away
April 9, 2008Drat.
We get Charlie Rose’s program late here — generally after midnight. I’m up to my ears with charitable organization duties (“Just Say No!”), work where I came in midstream, family health issues, and other typical aggravations of trying live a well-examined life.
I caught most of an hour discussion on science in America, featuring Sir Paul Nurse, president of Rockefeller University and Nobel laureate, Bruce Alberts, editor of Science, Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Harold Varmus, Nobel winner and president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Lisa Randall, the Harvard nuclear physicist (string theory).
It was a great policy discussion. It had great humor, and great wisdom. And at the end, Rose thanked Nurse and others for helping him put on a 13-part seminar on science policy.
Thirteen parts? And I caught just the last few minutes of #13?
There is the Charlie Rose archives! Here’s the show I caught, “The Imperative of Science.” Great discussion. Scary — Lisa Randall notes that the action in physics has moved to CERN, in Europe, and the search for the Higgs Boson. Varmus and Nurse talk about restrictions in funding that bite at our ability to keep the world lead in education and science. Educators, especially in science, should watch.
Are we kicking away our ability to lead in technology, health care, and other vital economic areas? One cannot help but wonder in listening to these people discuss the difficulty of getting support for critical research during the Bush administration. They each stressed the hope that the next president will be one literate in science.
Pfizer underwrote the series. The entire series is available for viewing at a site Pfizer set up. (Signs of change: Notice that physics is represented by two women; there are signs of hope in American science.)
Go see, from Pfizer’s website on the series:
The Charlie Rose Science Series
- Episode 1: The Brain — Exploring the human brain from psychoanalysis to cutting edge research.
- Episode 2: The Human Genome — Exploring the contributions that have been made to science through the discovering and mapping of human DNA.
- Episode 3: Longevity — An in-depth discussion of longevity and aging from the latest research on calorie restriction, anti-aging drugs, genetic manipulation to the social and economic implications of an increase in human life span. (Longevity News Release)
- Episode 4: Cancer — A discussion of the latest advances in cancer, from the genetics to cancer prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment and management of care. (Cancer News Release)
- Episode 5: Stem Cells — A roundtable discussion on the latest advances in embryonic and adult stem cell research, their implications, and potential to change the way medicine is practiced.
- Episode 6: Obesity — An informative dialogue on the growing obesity epidemic, its impact on overall health and the latest research to help understand, treat and prevent obesity. (Obesity News Release)
- Episode 7: HIV/AIDS — A panel of leading experts addresses current treatment and prevention strategies, and new medical breakthroughs being used in the fight against HIV/AIDS. (HIV/AIDS News Release)
- Episode 8: Pandemics — An exploration of factors that could create a global pandemic and how the science and public health leaders are addressing the crisis. (Pandemics News Release)
- Episode 9: Heart Disease — A panel of experts explores the biology and genetics of cardiovascular disease, prevention and treatment, the development of medical, surgical and interventional therapies and steps individuals can take toward a heart-healthy lifestyle. (Heart Disease News Release)
- Episode 10: Global Health — A roundtable discussion on initiatives aimed at fighting infectious diseases, protecting women and children, and strengthening global public health systems. (Global Health News Release)
- Episode 11: Human Sexuality — A panel of experts explores major trends in human sexual behavior, sexual desire and satisfaction, and sexual dysfunction issues. (Human Sexuality News Release)
- Episode 12: Diseases of the Brain — Examines the science of brain exploration, diseases that affect the brain throughout the life cycle, current brain research, and new technologies. (Disease of the Brain News Release)
I wish all news programs covered science so well, and made their material so readily available.
Cocoa buyers stand against DDT use in Uganda
April 1, 2008Stephen Milloy can’t even herd his own cats — why should we listen to him?
While Milloy proclaims junk science and loudly impugns the reputation of a dead woman (Rachel Carson), it’s his business colleagues who demand Uganda avoid DDT, not environmentalists.
New Vision in Kampala reports that a local council has rejected DDT use, and told Uganda’s government the reasons why:
Bundibugyo district council has rejected the Government’s programme of indoor residual spraying of DDT.
During a council meeting last Wednesday, the councillors argued that the anti-malaria project would scare away organic cocoa buyers.
According to the LC5 chairman, Jackson Bambalira, Olam and Esko, the cocoa buyers, threatened to stop buying the produce if the area was sprayed with DDT.
“We know that malaria is a number one killer disease in our district but we have no option. The Government should look for another alternative of containing malaria by supplying mosquito nets but not spraying DDT.”
You and I know that indoor residential spraying (IRS) shouldn’t harm crops in any way, even if DDT is the pesticide used. Can the cocoa growers and buyers be convinced DDT won’t get into their products?
How many stories like this have to appear before the anti-environmentalists stop their unholy campaign against Rachel Carson? Complaining, falsely, about evils of environmentalism doesn’t save anyone from malaria, especially when it’s not environmentalists blocking the campaign against the disease.
Think evolution doesn’t affect you?
February 11, 2008One of our Texas biology instructors, Steve Bratteng in Austin, wrote for the Austin American-Statesman about the reality of evolution-based medicine: It works.
If you are unaffected by one of these maladies, you’re very lucky. If you are affected by one of these maladies, thank Darwin that evolution helps treat these problems, or at least helps understand what’s going on.
Steve presented this list of 13 questions to the Texas State Board of Education in 2003, to several grumbles. The creationists at the Discovery Institute couldn’t answer them, either.
Boost test performance: Start school later
February 5, 2008Students perform better when schools adjust schedules to accommodate the realities of biology: High school students don’t learn or test well in the morning. Go here for an introductory discussion of the issues.
Of course, in order to boost student performance by starting high school later, bus schedules would have to change. Change costs money. Anyone care to wager whether this quick, proven method for boosting student performance will catch on, considering it costs a little?
Seattle Times special on fighting malaria
February 4, 2008Dr. Bumsted at Biocultural Science and Management alerted me to the Seattle Times’ special section on fighting malaria. The extensive set of articles ran in the newspaper on Friday, February 1, 2008. You can order a copy of the special reports in a separate section here.
Photo caption from Seattle Times: “Malaria strikes hardest at young children, such as 5-month-old Mkude Mwishehe, who lies comatose in the regional hospital at Morogoro, Tanzania. Babies often die as a result of fever, anemia and brain damage caused when the mosquito-borne parasites destroy blood cells and clog blood vessels.”
Seattle’s news organizations look at malaria in large part because malaria is a target of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The package features outstanding photography of malaria-affected Tanzania and Zambia, good interviews, in-depth reporting, good writing, and multi-media presentations that might be suitable for classroom work. The multi-media pieces could be used as examples of what students should be doing with PowerPoint projects.
The Seattle Times’ work on the fight against malaria is a tour-de-force masterpiece of what a newspaper can do to promote the public good. The newspaper demonstrates the heights writers can aspire to. Good on ’em, as Molly Ivins would say.
I have not found a single mention of experts calling for more DDT, as the junk-science purveyors do. There are several attempts to urge DDT by readers in the Q&A session, but the expert malaria fighters are careful with their facts — it’s a real education. Read the articles. The research and the work against malaria pushed by the Gates Foundation is exactly the research and work that DDT-happy advocates frustrate with their political screeds.
Which group does more to save Africans, those who fight malaria as described in The Seattle Times, or those who rail at environmentalists and call for more DDT?
Posted by Ed Darrell 







