Page 74 - Summer2015

All Thumbs Book Reviews

often hear the argument that people are only A23LM as being alive at week eighty-eight, dead from week ninety-two
exposed to very small amounts. There is even through one hundred four, and alive again at week one hundred eight. Fi-
a nice mathematical formula to make it look all nally, mercifully, it died for the last time (we think) at week one hundred
scientific. The formula has a name—Haber’s twelve.
Law—named after the man who came up with it. Robin devotes many pages to the issue of cancer. Cancer is an ancient
Toxicity is equal to the concentration multiplied illness but occurred rarely until recently. It was non-existent in Alaskan
by the time it takes to cause a reaction. Like golf natives, rare in parts of Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and equatorial Africa until
scores, the lower the number, the better and less those areas were compromised by civilization. Before most of us were born
toxic. Industry likes to focus on the concentra- the causes of cancer were well-understood. Identical twin studies had been
tion and ignore the fact that if the time is years ruled out for genetic causes. It was known that benzene, arsenic, asbestos,
or decades, you still end up with a high “score” synthetic hormones and radiation were causes. Having known all this for
of exposure. so long and, on top of that, Nixon declaring war on cancer in the early
Robin spills the beans on a number of tech- 1970s, how is it that cancer is still so prevalent? Epidemiologist Richard
niques industry uses to cheat on safety testing. Clapp summed up the situation nicely. “The logic behind the precaution-
Metastudies that compile statistics from multiple ary principle runs counter to the private interests of the pharmaceutical
other studies can be twisted by mixing apples industry, for whom cancer is the crab with the golden claws. And those
and oranges. When looking at toxic exposures who sell us drugs to treat our chronic diseases are the same people who
of farmers, if you include studies of livestock polluted us, and continue to pollute us. They’re winning on all fronts.”
farmers with crop farmers you are mixing The conflict of interest goes beyond industry doing its own product
two very different groups with very different safety studies. The regulators for the most part come from industry. The
exposures. The results of such a fruit cocktail scientists who evaluate food safety or contamination issues for WHO or
will be meaningless. Manufacturers also like to FAO are usually retired or have spare time and are not the best around.
keep their toxicology data secret, which doesn’t The best have better things to do. When industry is asked for data, they
exactly inspire my confidence. provide it—mountains of it. It would take years to go through all of it.
A strain of rats called Sprague-Dawley was The whole system was created by industry for industry. On top of all that
“invented” about fifty years ago by Charles River there is a deceptive snowball effect. Corporations like to tout their products
Company. These rats reproduce robustly and are as approved by every food safety agency in the world, or at least most of
insensitive to estrogen. As you might imagine, them. However, that doesn’t really mean they all independently studied
chemical companies strongly prefer to use these the product. If the FDA approved it, often Health Canada, European and
rats in their studies of product safety, since other agencies rubber stamp that approval. If the FDA dropped the ball
endocrine disruption and estrogen dominance (gee, that never happens) then it gets dropped all over the world. Many
are associated with pesticide exposure. Studies food safety officials are clearly more concerned about industry wellbeing
on these test animals therefore prove exactly than your safety. A senior EFSA (European Food Safety Association) of-
nothing. This is not an accident or an isolated ficial said that banning aspartame would be impossible not just because
mistake. This is conflict of interest at work. The of the impact on the industry but the food safety system itself would lose
industry then floods the literature with studies all integrity if it admitted to such a huge mistake.
like this and you hear the words, “the majority For all these and many other reasons it should be clear that the system
of studies show…,” which may sound good to needs a major overhaul and that will not happen if we are counting on the
those impressed by consensus science. Again, current batch of experts to do the job. This book does do a good job of
this proves exactly nothing. collating information from at least one hundred books, archives of lawyers,
Sometimes you only need to see a brief NGO experts and personal interviews across ten countries. The thumb is
excerpt from a study to get a good feel for the UP. Review by Tim Boyd
quality of work. One study would have us believe
that they “took specimens of the uterus from
male rabbits.” Another study recorded animal
74 Wise Traditions SUMMER 2015 Wise Traditions

154242_V16N2_text.indd 74 6/25/15 3:55 PM