Scare Science: When facts don't matter
Steven Milloy of Junkscience.com had an insightful op ed in the New York Post recently. He focused on allegations of pulmonary fibrosis among 9/11 responders, some of which turned out to be entirely bogus (i.e. the afflicted had a long history of smoking). But he raises a broader issue:
There are, in fact, no scientific or medical data to back up the proposition that 9/11 responders as a population have suffered any special health effects over the long term.
But facts and science matter little in the face of the larger health-scare industry, which seeks to medicalize life experiences into various "syndromes" and epidemics, usually associated with politically incorrect events and entities such as the military, chemicals, fast food and industry.
New York City's trans-fat ban, Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, obesity, childhood cancer caused by power lines, breast cancer on Long Island caused by pesticides, World Trade Center syndrome - you name the health scare - have all been promoted with utter disregard for science and facts by the health-scare mob, aided in large part by a complicit or gullible media.
We pay a high price for these scares - one that can go beyond strained nerves and the tens of billions of taxpayer and consumer dollars wasted annually.
Query: how many millions have we spent encouraging universal salt reduction in the absence of any link between salt intake and cardiovacular outcomes?
