A British media smackdown

(Via Bad Astronomy)

Here's a great bit from a London Doctor discussing the media's flawed coverage of the vaccination issue. He broadens it to include the flaws of media coverage of health in general (something that would absolutely apply on this side of the pond).

Take a look, it's marvelous.


I'm curious how this got put together. If this was just him and his editing software and some friends (you can do a lot with a few people these days). Good on London Tonight for putting it on the air.

Imagine the discussion we could have with informed members of the public are allowed to voice their opinions on issues in a nationally televised format....

It would be like.... what's the word I'm looking for....Journalism??

No, that's not it. It'll come to me...

Car seat ratings: Epic Fail

It wasn't so long ago, Consumer Reports retracted their ratings on child safety seats. CR explained that their test simulated side impacts of 70 MPH, rather than the 30MPH they'd intended.

Bad test - bad results. While any seat was better than no seat, parents had to wait months to get the verdict on their seats.

I remember being ticked off, since I'd already bought my daughter's chair based on their recommendations.

That feeling can't really compare to the visceral reaction I have to this:

That'd be the chair I bought. It's the Britax Companion - one of the most expensive seats on the market - simulating a 35 MPH impact with a wall.

Here's the bonus round:

The NTSB carried out the tests, but never publicized the results.

Look, there's a limitation to the test that's one thing - but kid seats start smashing into seat backs, you'd think there would be some follow up.

The Trib adds this nice tidbit about the safety test applied to all child safety seats (emphasis added):

Before being sold, seats must pass a test simulating a head-on crash at 30 m.p.h. on a sled bench. In the tests analyzed by the Tribune, regulators crashed actual vehicles into a wall at 35 m.p.h.

Claybrook said the crash tests suggest something that is common sense: Car seats can be judged more thoroughly when evaluated inside a real car as it is crashed.

The Tribune found, for instance, that many of the higher injury ratings occurred when the baby dummy's head hit the rear of the vehicles' front seats. The sled tests wouldn't pick up this potential injury because there's no front seat to hit, so regulators are considering adding one.

In the meantime, we have products that are good at surviving test conditions, and not much else.

(H/t ProPublica)

A bad year for the anti-vaccine movement

...and thank God.

David Gorski is a surgical oncologist, and also a well-known though bepseudonymed blogger for Science Blogs. His anti-antivaccination stance is legendary, for good reason: he is incredibly well-spoken and his posts railing against the pro-measles (haha) crowd routinely eviscerates them.

But none of his posts has ever done so in such a remarkably thorough fashion as in this lengthy post in which he destroys the movement from top to bottom.

 (H/t Bad Astronomy)

The strength of the post, in my opinion - is to hold the heroes of the anti-vaccine movement up to the light and watch them wither.

I have no problem with scientific questions about the safety of vaccines - but this "I know in my heart" nonsense has got to stop. Make with the science, or shut the hell up.

The best food-safety enforcement tool

...is what we have now.

At least according to the WSJ editorial page (emphasis added)

Since the peanut butter-salmonella scandal was traced to PCA last month, the company and CEO Stewart Parnell have taken a very public path to corporate oblivion. Within weeks of linking the salmonella outbreak to contamination at its facilities, PCA's plants have shut down, its customers have fled, and the company has filed for bankruptcy protection. Civil lawsuits have been filed across the country.

[snip]


Regulators share some of the blame here, since the Washington Post reports they didn't even know the company's Plainview, Texas, plant existed until this outbreak. To hear consumer groups tell it, however, the answer to regulatory failure is -- more regulation! The Center for Science in the Public Interest is among those supporting a bill pushed by Representative Rosa DeLauro that would take food safety away from the Food and Drug Administration to create another, presumably more activist agency.

Other proposals would aim to trace food on every step of its journey of growing, sorting, processing, distributing and mixing on the way to grocery stores and pantries. But it's nuts to think any kind of reasonable inspection regime can make the food supply safer than it already is. Taxpayers can't afford to hire enough inspectors to guarantee the safety of the entire food chain. Meanwhile, such a regime will raise costs for law-abiding companies and consumers.

The best food-safety enforcement tool is the one now being wielded against PCA and Mr. Parnell in the form of corporate self-destruction. Their fate should be chastening to any company inclined to play fast and loose -- and will do more to enforce food safety standards than any army of inspectors.

Tell that to the nine people who died. Or the hundreds of people who got sick while the CDC scrambled to find out how widespread this problem was - or where it orignated.

We may not need an army of inspectors, but an improved audit trail for food products that affect vast swaths of the country would speed any future investigation AND increase the certainty that future offenders will meet the corporate oblivion that the WSJ embraces.

"That fantasy is gone in Europe..."

Beegobug passed along a Harper's article by Mark Shapiro called Toxic Inaction which is the reaction I'd have had to the CJR article I'd mentioned earlier (if I were a better writer, more informed and had lots of time).

In it, Mr. Shapiro lays out the reasons that Europe has decided to be proactive about regulating chemicals in commercial use:

[in 2005,] World Wildlife Fund International tested the blood of three generations of women from twelve European countries. The largest number of chemicals—sixty-three—was found in the group of grandmothers. Given the number of years they had had to accumulate exposure, this result was perhaps not surprising. But the next-highest level was among their grandchildren, aged twelve to twenty-eight, who in their short lifetimes had amassed fifty-nine different toxic chemicals.

Now, I know - discussions of chemical safety are areas where amateurs should tread lightly. Silent Spring wasn't exactly ironclad science - and outright bans of substances may limit scientific or industrial uses that do not threaten the public or pose environmental hazards.

However-
It would seem that the model of "let's test chemicals on the public at large" is just flat out insane. Europe seems to get it:

Europeans have recently decided to do something about all the untested chemicals that are ending up in their blood. “The assumption among Americans is, ‘If it’s on the market, it’s okay,’” explained Robert Donkers, an E.U. official who was asked to review Europe’s regulatory laws after the baby-product scare. “That fantasy is gone in Europe.” Donkers’s efforts were the first steps in what became, seven years later, a new E.U. chemical regulation called REACH—Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals. REACH amounts to a revolution in how chemicals are managed, and in how production decisions around the world will be made from now on. Regulations set by the most powerful countries have quickly become, through trade, the international standard.

It goes without saying that the US chemical industry is militantly opposed to these regulations. They of course, have political backing:

The changes in Europe follow eight years of vigorous opposition from the U.S. chemical industry and the Bush administration. Four U.S. agencies -- the EPA, the Commerce Department, the State Department and the Office of the Trade Representative -- argued that the system would burden manufacturers and offer little public benefit.
In 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell directed the staffs of American Embassies in Europe to oppose the measure. He cited talking points developed in consultation with the American Chemistry Council, a manufacturers trade group.

The ACC wants the status quo. You know, the one where they supply the government agencies with the science - so they can make informed decisions?

How's that working out?

Let's try a test case. Bisphenol A (or BPA). (via Bill Moyers Journal):

Bisphenol A is actually the chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic. It's the hard, clear plastic used in baby bottles, and it also is the lining of all metal cans made in the United States - beer cans, soda cans, food cans. And this chemical leaches out of all of these products into any kind of food or beverages that come in contact with it.

Okay. BPA is a chemical. It's in contact with a lot of substances we ingest. So?

Bisphenol A, BPA, is what is known as an endocrine disruptor...

The manufacturers of BPA, and their lobbyists, say it is safe. U.S. regulators agree. One team of investigative journalists decided to ask…why? Susanne Rust is a science reporter with the MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

[snip]

Endocrine disruptors were first identified as the cause of wildlife abnormalities in the early 90s. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, though, repeatedly reassured the public that BPA, at least, was safe.

So, the regulators say it's safe. What's the problem? People always say things are dangerous, did anyone look into the new claims?

...prompted by an outcry from advocacy groups, President Bill Clinton signed the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996. That same year, the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended.
The combined legislation promised a chemical screening program of endocrine disruptors to be overseen by the EPA. The goal was to determine whether or not they were dangerous to human beings.
1998 - the EPA, headed by Carol Browner, sets a deadline to fast track the testing of 15,000 chemicals suspected as endocrine disruptors….
1999 - the EPA misses the deadline. The Natural Resources Defense Council sues the agency to enforce screening. 2001 - a new administration takes office; Christine Todd Whitman becomes head of the EPA.
2003 - two more suits are brought against the EPA, one by a coalition of environmentalists and advocacy groups…the other by the attorneys general of four states. The suits attempt to force the agency into compliance with the food quality protection act….
2007 - 11 years after the laws were passed…the EPA had yet to screen its first chemical.

Eleven years - that's pretty lousy. But, again - the regulators had reams of studies that demonstrated the safety of BPA. A single study citing a risk isn't exactly a reason to get all excited. I mean the companies who make this stuff have studied it to death...

In defense of the safety of Bisphenol A, the companies and the ACC cited studies they funded themselves, some paid for by the ACC, which has an annual 75 million dollar budget.
[Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter] SUZANNE RUST: They say the reason they get these, these results is that their studies are better than any of the academic studies, any of the government studies. They can use more animals; they have better controls in their laboratory.

See? More money = better research. Who cares what some underfunded university lab rat thinks? I mean how good can their research really be?

Reporter Suzanne Rust was given the task of looking at all the the state of BPA research.

In all, Rust evaluated 258 studies done over two decades involving lab animals with spines, the type scientists consider most relevant to human beings.
SUZANNE RUST: Right away, you could see that 80% of these studies all found that this chemical caused harm.

But, why does the government regulatory body say it's safe? How does that make sense?

More than half the studies, 168 of them, evaluated Bisphenol A at low doses. The vast majority of those - 132 of the 168 - showed harm to lab animals. And, Rust would report, "nearly three-fourths of the studies that found the chemical had no harmful effects were funded by industry." Rust's overall conclusion: an overwhelming majority of the studies found BPA to be harmful in lab animals - causing breast and testicular cancer, diabetes, hyperactivity, obesity, low sperm counts, miscarriage and other reproductive failures. Studies paid for by the chemical industry were much less likely to find damaging effects or disease.

What the...?

All of the studies Rust had evaluated were in the public domain, as available to government regulators as they were to a reporter in Milwaukee.

Yeah. The guys who make the stuff pay for their own studies. They give their studies to the regulators - who dutifully file them away in case there are questions - and the FDA never goes out and does research on their own. Nor do they keep abreast of the latest findings.

The FDA takes what it is given and asks no questions.

And they are merely the latest example of a regulatory body that has been co-opted by the industry it is supposed to be regulating.

The BPA battle is still being fought.

Arrgh!

If Europe's no longer trusting the assurances of the chemical industry - why do we? We are sure to get some benefit from overseas regulation - but stuff that can't be exported will simply be sold here.

Makes you wonder.

Come to think of it, why haven't we always done it that way?

All too often, when you take a moment to think about how something works - it suddenly occurs to you to ask why it works that way.

In this case - there is an answer, it's just not a particularly satisfying one.

The Washington Post on A1 writes that a tough new European law regulating the chemical industry is affecting the way U.S. products will be made—and its sounds like that’s a good thing.

The new regulations will force companies to prove chemicals are safe before they start selling them, as opposed to how it is in the U.S., where “where regulators must prove that a chemical is harmful before it can be restricted or removed from the market.”

(via CJR's Opening Bell)

Yeah, why the hell is that, anyway?

And while we're on the subject - anyone care to explain this little factoid (via WaPo)?

In the United States...the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, grandfathered in about 62,000 chemicals then in commercial use. Chemicals developed after the law's passage did not have to be tested for safety. Instead, companies were asked to report toxicity information to the government, which would decide if additional tests were needed.

So the 62,000 chemicals already in use as of 1976 have not been subject to government scrutiny. After 1976, manufacturers will be asked to provide information about their dangers to the government.

So the government can follow up. If it wants to.

How's that going, so far?

In more than 30 years, the Environmental Protection Agency has required additional studies for about 200 chemicals...

So, of the 18,000 chemicals introduced into the market in the last three decades, the EPA has asked for studies of 200 of them.

*calculator sound*

1%

Okay, sure - that sounds bad, but -

The EPA has banned only five chemicals since 1976. The hurdles are so high for the agency that it has been unable to ban asbestos, which is widely acknowledged as a likely carcinogen and is barred in more than 30 countries. Instead, the EPA relies on industry to voluntarily cease production of suspect chemicals.

Well... that sucks.

Postscript:

Oddly enough - When I went looking for the five substances that the EPA has managed to ban, I came across the same WaPo article - as presented in the Seattle Times. This version spells out what got banned and adds a bonus:

Only five chemicals have been banned by the EPA since 1976: polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs; fully halogenated chlorofluroalkanes; dioxin; hexavalent chromium; and dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, or DDT.
Asbestos was banned for a while, although the ban was overturned in 1991. Asbestos, widely acknowledged as a likely carcinogen, is barred in more than 30 countries.

-and if Truthdig is accurate, DDT was banned prior to the TSCA, which would lower the EPA's post 1976 count to a measly four:

In the three decades since the landmark Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) became law in 1976, the EPA has banned only five chemicals or chemical categories: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), fully halogenated chlorofluroalkanes, dioxin, asbestos (though this ban was overturned in 1991), and hexavalent chromium. The pesticide DDT, which was banned in 1972 (before TSCA was enacted), is still being found in people’s bodies today.

Ahhh, good times....

Smut

(via Sivacracy)

Knee jerk legislation isn't limited to national security. Alice Marwick of U of Illinois at Chicago's First Monday details the sad, reactionary story of the Communications Decency Act (CDA):

On 3 July 1995, Time magazine published a photo of a horrified child on their cover with the tagline “Cyberporn: A new study shows how pervasive and wild it really is. Can we protect our kids — and free speech?” (Elmer–DeWitt, 1995). The article was precipitated by a new study released by Carnegie Mellon, one of the premiere computer science schools in the country. The study found that 83.5 percent of online images were pornographic, and that adult material available online was more extreme and problematic than its print and video equivalents (Rimm, 1995).

[snip]

The Cyberporn scare story and Rimm study gave concrete evidence to Exon’s claims that pornography ran rampant on the Internet, was readily available to children, and needed to be tightly controlled. The Time magazine story spawned a nation–wide media interest in the topic and the CDA passed the Senate 84–16. The Telecommunications Act, including the Exon Amendment, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

[snip]

The Rimm report, though, was far from a typical peer–reviewed scholarly source. Marty Rimm was a 30–year–old undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon (CMU) who had finagled publication in the Georgetown Law Journal by promising spectacular results in exchange for complete secrecy.

[snip]

Unfortunately for all parties involved, Rimm’s results were found to be a combination of shoddy social science methodology, questionable research ethics, and wishful extrapolation. Far from analyzing all online images, Rimm had looked solely at adult bulletin boards and the alt.binaries hierarchy of newsgroups, places where adult content was prevalent (Hoffman and Novak, 1995a; Mullin, 1996). Less than a month later, two marketing professors at Vanderbilt University wrote a lengthy critique of the study that threw its results into question. The 83.5 percent statistic which had prompted the Time story and fueled the entire cyberporn panic turned out to be largely made up (Hoffman and Novak, 1995b).

Ready, fire, aim.

The CDA got struck down, but remains a rallying cry for outraged conservatives who feel there's just way too much freedom going on out there. And the same forces that spawned CDA have not been idle:

This is of particular interest currently as a new Internet content bill, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), is being debated in the U.S. Congress. The technopanic over “online predators” is remarkably similar to the cyberporn panic; both are fueled by media coverage, both rely on the idea of harm to children as the justification for Internet content restriction, and both have resulted in carefully crafted legislation to circumvent First Amendment concerns. Research demonstrates that legislation proposed — or passed — to curb these problems is an extraordinary response; it is misguided and in many cases masks the underlying problem.

No one's against protecting kids - but legislation that purports to defend children should be scrutinized as rigorously as one that that vilified them.

There's a big difference between what a bill says it will do, and what it would actually do if enacted.

It's a great report.

UK PSA

An awareness test that's rather clever.

Piss in my pond and tell me it's raining

Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's a-maz-ing...
--Randy Newman's It's a Jungle Out There

If you live near the Great Lakes, the Center for Disease Control is sounding a lot like Monk's theme song: they know about some horrible things in your drinking water, but they're not going to tell you.

(h/t to Emptywheel)

The draft executive summary (PDF), which is helpfully stamped with 'Do Not Cite or Quote," has a few items you might want to be aware of (italics in original, bold emphasis added):

...Of the 108 hazardous waste sites included in the 25 [Areas of Concern], 71 sites were identified as having a potential human health impact. Of this number, 2 are classified as urgent public health hazards, 29 are identified as public health hazards, and 40 are listed as indeterminate public health hazards as defined by the [Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry] Public Health Assessment Manual.

Vulnerable populations (i.e. children less than 6 years of age, reproductive age women, and older adults) living within a one-mile radius from the AOC hazardous waste sites included approximately 5,000 residents for the Lake Superior AOCs, over 200,000 persons for Lake Michigan AOCs, approximately 9,000[?] persons in the Lake Ontario AOCs, and over 7,000 residents for the Lakes Erie and Huron AOCs, respectively. These figures indicate that the total number of individuals within one mile of AOC hazardous waste sites totals an estimated 230,000. According to analysis of ATSDR's HazDat database for 2003, there were over 15,000 instances where contaminants of concern were found at levels above health-based screening values in a variety of media (i.e., water, air, and soil).

This report indicates that there are 25 AOCs which have not been remediated and that over 9 million residents are living within these AOC counties. The AOC county health measures (health status indicators) that compare unfavorably with the median of the peer counties and also with the U.S. population data merit further attention. Differences between the peer counties, the U.S. population data, and the U.S. AOC counties indicate elevated rates of disease beyond the norm (norm being the peer counties and the U.S. population data).

While no causal inferences or associations are made in this report, of the 26 AOCs, elevated rates were observed for infant mortality in 21 AOCs, low birth weight in 6 AOCs, and premature births in 4 AOCs. Elevated cancer mortality was also seen for breast cancer in 17 AOCs, colon cancer in 16 AOCs, and lung cancer in 12 AOCS...

They finished the report late last year, and the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly - but this is yet another report that was intended for public release - and hasn't been.

People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you


I could be wrong now, but I don't think so

Real ID gets delayed

(From CNet)

If the Bush administration gets its way, all Americans will be required to present Real ID-compliant identification documents--or risk facing "inconveniences" at airports and federal buildings--by 2017.
...
"What the Department of Homeland Security has done is to kick the can down the road to the next administration, and probably not just to the next administration, but conceivably two to three administrations from now," Barry Steinhardt, an ACLU attorney, said on a conference call with reporters.

What started out as a fine idea, mutated into an unfunded mandate, and then became a bloated pile of regs looking to land on people - is now some other administration's problem.

Yeah, that's leadership.

TSA: Keeping you safe. Our data? Well, not so much…

As one of the agencies keeping evil from our shores, the Transportation Security Administration isn't exactly covering itself with glory when it comes to information security.

CSO has flagged them with two of the Top 10 Data Breaches of 2007.

7. TSA -- Doing DHS Proud!
Victims: 3,930
Class Action Outrage Scale: 7 out of 10 lawyers
D’oh! Factor: 3 out of 5 Homers

Two laptops with names, addresses, birthdays, Social Security numbers and commercial driver’s license numbers of truckers who transport hazardous materials are missing and considered stolen from TSA. Don’t worry, though. How easy could it be to pose as commercial truck driver transporting hazardous materials with only that information?


3. TSA, Part II -- Still Doing DHS Proud!
Victims: 100,000
Class Action Outrage Scale: 3 out of 10 lawyers
D’oh! Factor: 4 out of 5 Homers

Thieves stole a computer hard drive with the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and bank account and routing information of current and former employees, including federal air marshals. Don’t worry, though. How easy could it be to pose as an air marshal with only that information?

While it is extremely unlikely that these robberies had anything to do with one another, isn't it nice to know that the TSA stores this information, unencrypted, on machines that are unsecured?

Lovely.

What passes for free speech in Pakistan

From the NYT:

A student protest at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Notice how everyone is hiding their face. Such is the nature of free speech in a dictatorship.