Show me the money!
Show me the money!
Reuters reported on Monday July 20, that two years after New York City declared war on artificial trans fats, nearly all the city’s restaurants had successfully cut the artery-clogging fats from their menus, according to city health officials. Artery-clogging fats? The story went on to say that trans fats have become notorious because they not only raise so-called "bad" LDL cholesterol, but also lower levels of so-called "good" HDL cholesterol. In 2006, before the health department ban, half of New York City's restaurants were using trans fats. By November 2008, less than 2 percent were, according to Dr. Sonia Y. Angell and her colleagues at the Department of Health in their article in Annals of Internal Medicine .
What they could not say was how this initiative actually helped the citizens of New York. The presumption is that ridding the food supply of trans fats will definitely improve the cholesterol levels of millions of people. Improving the cholesterol levels should result in reduced cardiovascular disease, but has it ? Since most New Yorkers eat in restaurants, often several times a week, there should be a significant decrease in the number of people that will have heart attacks and die - right? That is what everyone is after - right? And certainly with all the modern statistical tools we have available and with a precise knowledge of the exact date that the trans fat ban went into effect, we must be able to demonstrate the health benefits that accrued from the New York ban. Surely we can be spared the lame “cardiovascular disease is multifactorial, therefore we can't really tell if the ban worked" excuse. The fact is there are no metrics in place to measure what should have been the primary goal of the ban. The people behind the ban were arrogant enough or insensitive enough to dispense with the trivialities of actually determining if their initiative really accomplished anything. There is nothing in place to "Show me the money!"
For 1500 years, the world believed in 'spontaneous generation' simply because the Greek philosophers said it was so. Francis Bacon, often referred to as the father of the scientific method, didn't buy it and effectively said, "Show me the money!" Credibility has to be based upon evidence.
The scientific integrity of this country and its institutions is declining because we are associating credibility with institutions rather than with evidence. We accept notions without demanding evidence. It may well be that there is spontaneous generation and that New York's citizens have actually benefitted from the trans fat ban, but until there is objectively-obtained evidence to confirm this, the only ones who have really benefitted are those individuals and institutions who have garnered free publicity. Consumers should be served a lot better than that!
