The trouble with the "reality" of certain effects is the way in which
this reality is framed. When we say "no adverse effects observed," many
assumptions are built in: Which effects are we looking for? What do we
know about what is healthy or normal? How bad does something have to be
before it can be measured? What is the length of time of the treatment?
How variable is the population? How valid is the assumption that high
dose over short time is equivalent to low dose over long time? What
life stages have we missed?
So, to simplify the dichotomy,
Group A believes that we know a lot about what is healthy, that we will
notice and be able to measure all adverse effects, and that all the
simplifying assumptions are valid.
Group B does NOT believe that we know much about what constitutes
health, or that we will notice and be able to measure all adverse
effects, and/or that all the simplifying assumptions are valid.
It cannot be "proven" whether Group A or Group B is more correct, and it
almost certainly varies from one specific situation to another.
However, I invite you to ask your physician "why" questions about all
your physiology, if you are extremely confident that we know all about
how things work in an intact organism. Like, why do I have a slight
headache right now, and why didn't I have one at this time yesterday?
What causes these things?
Given these two divergent groups, the questions then become exclusively
social.
Are people allowed to make personal decisions based on whatever criteria
they are comfortable with as individuals? Shall we assume that "the
public" doesn't understand science, and so decisions must be made for
them, or that they must be protected from conflicting information? What
are the roles and responsibilities of the government, of public
universities, of private corporations? How much does the potential for
monetary gain influence the quality of the information, the direction of
research, the political process, or the dissemination of information?
One thing I know for sure: When discussing oligochaete taxonomy, I have
never been accused of being somehow biased or political. When
discussing sustainable agriculture or almost any environmental issue,
one is nearly always suspected of perpetuating some political view. I
offer full disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest, in the
interest of having a substantive discussion, and I expect the same from
anyone else, because there is much at stake, and discussion of science
with people who have only financial objectives in mind is a soul-sucking
waste of time.
> Brewster Kneen wrote:
> > > Harm, however, is much more difficult to actually prove,
> > > in the current ideology of 'science', than no harm.
Wilson, Dale wrote:
> Brewster has got it exactly backwards.
Brewster got it exactly correct. Harm from low levels of anything, over
long periods of time, given an infinite array of possible interactions
from other environmental unknowns is very difficult to prove, and minor
harm probably cannot ever be proven. Yet individual people want to
protect themselves from minor as well as major harm, and don't care that
what harms them personally is not harmful to most people.
Wilson, Dale wrote:
> But people
> are concerned with risk estimation at the one-in-a-million level and below.
> So, in a very practical sense, it is easier to prove harmfulness.
No, PEOPLE are concerned with much more than the one in a million
level. Regulators and regulated industries are the ones fixated on the
one in a million threshold. Getting the paperwork done is not the same
as proving harmlessness. People want to make their own decisions no
matter what the risk assessments suggest, since no individual fits into
the averaging process built in to any risk assessment process. There is
a lot of conversation in the risk management crowd about how to
"educate" people out of this determination they seem to have to make
decisions for themselves.
Wilson, Dale wrote:
> The recourse is to estimate risk at very high doses. If the risk is small
> at high doses, then it is probably much smaller still at low doses.
Yes, that is one of the assumptions built in.
Wilson, Dale wrote to Misha:
> This isn't "rocket-science" and
> it isn't primarily a social issue.
But it IS primarily a social issue. The social question remains: Do
you insist that *I* must use aspartame, because of the lack of proof of
harm, because YOU are comfortable with the protocols, assumptions,
etc.? Or are you willing to let me do as I decide, based on the
criteria I value and the assumtions I find plausible?
Better still, allow me to tell you that I don't use aspartame because
*I* do not experience it as sweet! It doesn't work for me. I wonder if
my doctor can explain to me exactly why that is at my next office
visit. Would you insist that I ought to use it, since apparently most
people find that it works as a sweetener? If I would just read more
peer-reviewed journals, would I eventually find that it makes my coffee
sweeter?
Wilson, Dale wrote to Misha:
> What interests me is why you are so
> fired up about aspartame.
Now that is a very interesting question, coming from someone who just
wrote:
(Wilson, Dale wrote to Misha:)
> I have
> dug up a hundred or so papers on the toxicity of aspartame,
That sounds like quite a bit of work to me.
Loren Muldowney
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