The pesticide report that nobody read

This interesting article, coupled with some of Mike Rowe's appearance on TED, has gotten me thinking about activism in general, and how they are really just two sides of the same media-manipulation coin. It's a sort of passing thought, so I won't really articulate this any further. Here are the salient points of the article, with link at the bottom. I'll also post Mike Rowe's video as well.

The pesticide report that nobody read
Posted: June 16, 2008, 7:20 PM by NP Editor

By Terence Corcoran
...For more than a decade, the likes of Greenpeace, the Ontario College of Family Physicians, The Globe and Mail and scores of activists and city politicians have waged a relentless campaign against pesticide use.

It’s easy to generate a junk science scare. You make stuff up, exaggerate the risks, politicize the subject and spin it into a corporate and ideological battle. And, above all, you ignore the facts. Which is what happened last month when Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) released its final reassessment of the leading pesticide, 2,4-D, and found the chemical to be safe when used properly.

No major media — not one — picked up the story, even though it systematically demolished every health and environmental claim the scaremongers had dumped onto a gullible community of journalists...

...So much for Health Canada’s work: One of the most comprehensive scientific reviews in Canadian history, carried out exclusively by Health Canada scientists and reviewed by independent government and university researchers trashed in 30 seconds by an activist repeating claims rejected by the review. All that work and the last media report ends with repetition of the junk science Health Canada had spent millions disproving...

...an op-ed in the Citizen by Neil Arya, of the Ontario College of Family Physicians, one of the leading proponents of the pesticide scare. Responding to Mr. Gardner, Dr. Arya trotted out the same old arguments his group has been using for years. He began with the usual catch-all scaremonger cop-out, accusing Health Canada of saying that a hazardous substance was safe. “Science cannot say 2,4-D, or any other toxic chemical designed to kill a biological organism, is safe.”

Health Canada actually said 2,4-D was safe when used as directed — a logical statement that accompanies most human activity. We don’t drive cars off cliffs because it’s not safe. Any automobile is not safe when driven unsafely. Dr. Arya is playing with the reader’s mind and warping Health Canada’s thorough review of the issue...

...It’s easy to lay the charges and mount a campaign, to convey fear and uncertainty, compared with the dry business of actually conducting a science review. The excerpts from the Health Canada 2,4-D review elsewhere on this page are no fun. It’s easy to scare people with the fact that 2,4-D is a chemical descendant of Agent Orange, but not all that interesting to learn that Agent Orange is actually a different chemical. It’s easy to mention Sweden and Denmark, countries that have banned 2,4-D, but tedious to read of the reality behind the ban and the fact that Europe as a whole and other jurisdictions continue to approve its use...

...It’s a growing activist theme — the chemical soup concept — that looms as the next big science scare. Even if one chemical is safe, it could be a risk when combined with others. The prospects for expanding popular concerns and regulatory paralysis are limitless.

Full article HERE.

Here's Mike Rowe's session from TED.

The Whitehouse has a Blog

Check it out here.

In Kim Stanley Robinson's "60 Days and Counting", one of things I found intriguing was the President's use of a basically an internet forum, where he would post, comment, and basically keep in touch with the sentiments at ground level. While not quite that bi-directional, this weekly address would seem to offer the same sort of accessibility to the layman. I say sort of, because it IS just week one.



The White House also has a Youtube channel. Pretty cool.

As an aside, American politics seems far more interesting how, as opposed to the last 8 years of tragicomedy.