Junior,

Michael Crichton also has a new book out called "State of Fear," which is a critique of the environmental movement in fiction. Because it is polemical in nature, character, and plot development were definitely sub-par when compared to his other works. An interesting read nonetheless (though few of those who disagree with him are going to follow his recommendations-follow up on his source material).

Ryan

Bjorn Lomborg book, page 7. Sorry, I quit reading his article after I read his thoughts on pesticicdes and how by not using pesticides there would be more cancers. Nope, too silly for me.

Miichael Crichton, nothingseems to resonate with me, sorry.

Not sure what I was suppose to be understanding as less doom an d gloom, seems more like sci-fi and denial. what did you like about what they were saying?

I don't trust the way the science is being done on either side of the question. So I like Crichton's proposal to try to remove the monetary and the political agendas from the scientists work. It can never be done completely, but much like a seperation of church adn state it is a good ideal to strive for.

Lomborg's book, from the little I've read is an attempt to be even handed. I like that he says more people have access to clean water, and while that is good it is not good enough. I think it's important to recognize the gains as well as the problems. Otherwise it becomes fear mongering.

Here is the quote about pesticides, "As
regards pesticides, we should also ask how
much damage they actually do and how much
it would cost to avoid their use. Recent
research suggests that pesticides cause very
little cancer. Moreover, scrapping pesticides
would actually result in more cases of cancer
because fruits and vegetables help to prevent
cancer, and without pesticides fruits and vegetables
would get more expensive, so that
people would eat less of them."

What about the quote is not true?

jb

"True" to me is very much open to a philosophical debate or managing a hypothetical construct. You get a belief system and support it with a set of priciples. It comes down to arguing ideaologies and that can get so taxing and difficult.

"As regards pesticides, we should also ask how
much damage they actually do and how much
it would cost to avoid their use. Recent
research suggests that pesticides cause very
little cancer. Moreover, scrapping pesticides
would actually result in more cases of cancer
because fruits and vegetables help to prevent
cancer, and without pesticides fruits and vegetables
would get more expensive, so that
people would eat less of them"

Why would it cost to avoid the use of pesticides?
What research determined that poisons arent bad for you?( Often Monsanto does do their own lab work for government use. I call it a conflict of interest myself, others may think it is just darn nice of Monsanto to allow the use of their labs to test their products)

Why would spending less money on pesticides cause more fruits and veggies to be more expensive?

People need to be educated and know that eating fruits and veggies is like investing in your health, eating fruits and veggies with poisons in it is not in your best interest.

YOu either pay more money now for healthy food or you pay later when you are ill and your health is compromised because of all the poisons in your system.

I cant believe I am actually dignifying this line of questioning. However, I do believe like most people in the United States that if its not cheap and easy then one just passes it up and gets on with life.

Not many are actaully educated in how nutrients enter the body and are used and how foreign matter and poisons and such are taxing to the body and create a degenerating process on the system instead of a regenerating process.

If the fruits and veggies have been compromised in nutrients, dainted with toxic residues, and processed in more nutrient robbing chemicals...what is left?

When given the choice, I will not eat fruits and veggies where I know toxins were used to grow it.

If we are so advanced in the agri-world, then why is there so many diseases and cancers. Why will there be a 90% chance that all women will someday get breast cancer in todays world of advanced medicine and technology?

We are making obese people who are actually starving for nutrients, instead eating nothing more than empty calories and toxins.

I did think at first that Bjorn had a really handsome face and appeared charismatic like, but after reading a bit, well...hes just another pretty face and you dont want to know my opinion on him other than that.

Sue,

organic methods are more labor intensive, the cost more than offsets the savings from the elimination of pesticides.

Ryan

Point of order......Just how much/many pesticides are we talking about ingesting from fruits and vegetables?

Ryan, that hasnt been my personal experience. I am a very lazy gardener and only grow for my family. If I had to grow commercially,I may agree. HOwever, in my growiing expereince, I just keep the soil healthy and the plants seem to take care of themselves, I havent use any toxic chemicals since 1986. I havent noticed any labor intensive demands and I have saved money on lots of chemicals that I havent had to buy as I have been composting and using sea weed instead. I havent had to join a gym, because I would rather be playing in my gardens. The kids are out with me and they play in the dirt nearby when I am working outside.I save money by not taking the kids to a parent trap place or a gym.

In 1992 I followed the Maine board of pesticide control board around for anumber of years while they were deiciding how toxic to classify velpar. During this time period I interviewed some farmers. SOme of the farmers didnt even or couldnt tell the differce when the herbicide was used and when it wasnt. The yeilds didnt change prior or after. and the same dead brown spots in the blueberry feilds are still big dead brown spots...nothing grows there. Ledge? over staurated with chems?other reasons?

My point is that I dont believe that we need all those pesticides and that there can be other things used instead that are not toxic and yet get the results. The most important thing is the top soil needs to be better understood. Our soils need to be healthier.

SoCal, dont go getting soft on pesticides...Its a short term solution for an investment of ill health and a chemical dependency that wants your pocket change.

I haven't read Lomborg's book but I know it has generated criticism across the board. Web sites have been created that serve to refute Lomborg --see link.

I'm not a scientist, esp. one with background in toxicology, so I can't honestly critique the paragraph quoted regarding the relationship between chemicals and cancer. Here is an article from grist.org (found on the linked site) written by someone who does have science background.

.....
Unhealthy Skepticism
On Bjorn Lomborg and environmental hazards to human health
By Devra Davis
12 Dec 2001

You know what they say about people who become statisticians? They lacked the personality to become accountants.

Whatever their personalities may be, those who spend their lives sorting through reams of numbers often lose sight of what those numbers mean and represent. The Skeptical Environmentalist is a big and infuriating book, written by a statistician and self-described former environmentalist who confesses to having no training in science. The book purports to disclose the true numbers describing a vast terrain, from ecosystems and biodiversity to human health and climate change. The author, Bjorn Lomborg, notes that given the enormous amount of information available on the global environment today, an infinite number of stories can be told, proffering both good news and bad. Arguing that the bad news has received more than its fair share of attention, Lomborg chooses to focus on the "good" stories, and on some bona fide mistakes that have been made by environmentalists.

There is much in this book with which many reasonable people would agree. What could possibly be wrong with an environmental treatise that offers a vision of a world where children will live longer and better, have cleaner water and food, more economic and social resources, and enjoy a safer planet? As the author notes, many aspects of life around the world are, in fact, better than ever. And yes, some environmental organizations and experts have erred in the past in their use of numbers.

A statistically dead duck.

But "better than ever" does not mean good enough, and Lomborg is hardly immune from mistakes either. When it comes to public health, his lack of understanding of science has led him to produce many fundamentally flawed analyses. It is true that people are, on average, living longer and better than ever -- especially people who are white and wealthy. But considering only global or national averages conceals far too many tragedies. Good statisticians know to beware of averages, recognizing that they do not map perfectly onto reality. Consider the story of the two hunters who wait around for hours until a duck flies overhead. One hunter fires a shot into the air a foot in front of the duck. The other fires and hits the air one foot behind the duck. On average the duck is dead -- but the hunters go home hungry.

In other words, understanding the causes of health and disease that can be controlled through public policy requires more than just a surface treatment of numbers; it requires studying patterns and undertaking meaningful analyses. While modern medicine treats individuals for specific diseases in localized organs, public health scholars understand that the patterns of these diseases reveal characteristics of the groups to which we belong and the ways in which we live.

To Health in a Hand Basket

Although he doesn't intend to do so, Lomborg documents (but fails to acknowledge) a number of instances in which good environmental policies have lead to successes in public health. For instance, he shows that there has been a dramatic drop in measured levels of DDT and related pesticides in human blood and fat. The recent declines in breast cancer incidence and mortality that he correctly reports could, in part, reflect this decreased exposure to pesticides and other agents known to stimulate hormonal activity.

Public health problems keep cropping up.

In general, Lomborg focuses on denying or minimizing environmental threats to public health. For example, notwithstanding the aforementioned declines in breast cancer rates, the disease remains a serious public health problem. Moreover, it is still largely unexplained, with fewer than one in 10 cases occurring in a woman born with a genetic defect. Doctors and scientists have traditionally invoked individual risk factors, such as reproductive history and nutrition, to explain breast cancer incidence, but that practice ignores a growing body of research on the risks from exposures to chlorinated organic solvents, plastics, fuels, and other harmful agents.

The jury is still out on such toxics, largely because of an appalling failure to collect useful data. Lomborg fixates on recent findings from several studies showing that women who already have breast cancer do not have higher levels of pesticides in their bodies when diagnosed with advanced disease. In fact, pesticide levels in people have dropped because of the success of the environmental movement. It is not possible to estimate pesticide levels from 10 to 20 years ago, when tumors that are discovered today may have begun to grow. Cancer takes decades to develop -- and some types of cancer, including breast cancer, can stem from prenatal exposures about which we have no records whatsoever. So are we really confident that finding no difference in chemical residues in women who are ill and those who are healthy means that these chemicals are safe?

Moreover, the body chemistry of those with cancer changes in ways that are not well understood, and certainly not by someone with Lomborg's lack of training. Consider DDT. The parent compound DDT is highly estrogenic; that is, it stimulates the female hormone and raises estrogen levels. There is no question that the greater the cumulative exposure to hormones such as estrogen in a woman's lifetime, the higher her risk of developing breast cancer. Hence, exposure to DDT is a risk-factor for cancer. But DDT's long-lived metabolite, DDE, which is what can be measured in the human body years after exposure to DDT, is actually anti-estrogenic and androgenic. However, in another form, DDE acts primarily as an antiandrogen. Total PCBs, a group of toxic chemicals that include materials which are both estrogenic and anti-estrogenic, are similarly complex. Many estrogenic PCBs are not persistent and would not be detectable in plasma years after exposure. So we don't know if some women with breast cancer have been exposed to such toxins at a critical point in their lives, causing the disease to develop -- but we do know that these same compounds can affect the health of turtles, fish, rodents, and polar bears.

Not Very Trendy

Lomborg's analysis of cancer trends is as convenient, and as lacking, as his analysis of possible carcinogens. He shows that in the developed world, total death rates from cancer have dropped as men have stopped smoking. He does not show that the incidence of new cases of cancer not known to be linked to smoking has increased, so that young men of Generation X are four times more likely to get cancer than were their grandfathers. Lomborg ignores one of the most widely accepted and unexplained health trends in modern society -- the growth of testicular cancer in young men in industrial countries. Ethylene glycol ethers and a variety of modern solvents and plastics have been shown to shrink the gonads of rodents, increase deformities of the male genitalia, lower sperm count and quality, and result in smaller testes in exposed workers.

In looking at the decline in sperm counts, Lomborg makes a remarkable point. First he tries to argue that sperm count has not really dropped as much as some people say; then he acknowledges that it has in fact declined, but adds that, "Of course, this is not a problem if it is simply due to the fact that we have more sex."

Fair enough. The notion that increased sexual activity on a broad scale could be occurring and could cause sperm count to drop is pretty straightforward. However, Lomborg fails to address the possibility that the decline in sperm counts is due to more than one factor. What if exposure to the same environmental hormone exposures that have been shown to affect fish, turtles, polar bears, whelks, snails, and deer has permanently damaged the human gene pool? What if by the time we can be sure it is three generations too late? Are sick and injured people the only valid evidence on which to base public policy?

These questions might seem like precisely the kind of vague alarmism that Lomborg decries. But the point is that although answers to questions like these are unknowable right now, we do know this: When it comes to matters involving our own health and that of our planet, it is better to be approximately correct than precisely wrong.

In his efforts to be precise, Lomborg is wrong in some important ways. He generally argues that we lack sufficient proof that the environment is harming humans. He takes this absence of irrefutable evidence to mean that such harm does not and cannot occur. In other words, Lomborg is willing to assume the risk that this unprecedented global experiment in which we are engaged will not produce irrevocable damage. But let's be clear here: What's at risk are our lives and the sustainability of our only planet. That is not a risk many of us take willingly.

- - - - - - - - - -

Devra Davis, a leading epidemiologist and researcher on environmental health and chronic disease, is Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School.
.....

Here is a link that might be useful: info pollution

On Crichton, I agree that it is necessary to seperate politcal agendas from results of scientific research. I'm reminded of this story reported last week.

.....
Published on Thursday, February 10, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings
More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds
by Julie Cart

More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says.
.....
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0210-12.htm)

From what I've read in the original link and another speech he gave linked on the following page, Crichton is better at science fiction. Below is a link which gathers critiques of Crighton's work by those in the field. The only one I've read is written by the author of an article in Science misquoted by Crichton.

Here is a link that might be useful: info pollution again

Two good postings, Althea. Lomborg's book was widely panned by experts of specific parts, including this very effective criticism by Dr. Davis. No matter the scientific and statistical validities offered up by Lomborg, the impact on public perception of environmental matters has been spun toward rejecting science as flawed processes and conclusions. Practically no one has read the book; no matter. The talking heads and pundits, great scientist all, will report to us Truth.

Political pressures on wildlife scientists can thus become more acceptable in the interest of "balance" as if science results are somehow negotiable.

Sue,

I'm not a commercial farmer so my use or non-use of pesticides is irrelevant. I happen not to because my weekend labor is less expensive than pesticides. I also don't have 30 acres of monoculture (less labor intensive, but an "eat at joe's" sign to disease and insects).

Ryan

Lomborg never says everything is hunkydory. He simply states that there has been progress made. And he sights statistics to support that. He then goes on to say more work needs to be done. And yet all of the critical attacks claim he is saying "everything is fine". And that's not what he says.

I find that disturbing. It means that the person doing the critique, has an agenda and is willing to bend and ignore the words of another to push that agenda.

Lomborg says that fewer people are starving today than were 40 years ago. He doesn't say , "Ok the job is done. Let's go sit by the fire." No he urges people to continue to work and fight the good fight. He also didn't say that pesticides are safe and don't cause cancer. He stated that recent studies have said they are not as dangerous as once believed. Now he doesn't say what study and that is a failing on his part. He goes on to say we should weigh the cost of not using them. What would happen if they were stopped tomorrow? I certainly don't advocate there willy nilly use and would rather buy organic when I can afford it. But it is a good question and should be given some consideration. And not with anecdotal accounts, but with science and the best facts we can gather. Not just the facts that support our personal agenda.

jb

No, there are more people starving now than 40 years ago although statistically there has been a decline. The world population is more than twice the size of that of 40 years ago. Your selection of this criterion so typically highlights what is wrong with Lomborg's approach; to wit, starvation is somehow an environmental problem. The world produces more than enough calories and protein to feed everyone adequately.

The ability for the evironment to produce food is an environmental issue. It is one of many measures you could use to determine how we're doing. I realize that it is not the only reason that people are starving. An inequitable distribution by the people in power is probably more responsible than the condition of the environment.

The percentage is still valid. A greater percentage of the population is being fed. That is a positive. To say it's not relevant is like looking at the per share cost of a stock rather than the percent of growth. What is important, in terms of measuring performance, is the percentage of growth.

It is also important to note that when he calculated the precentage he compared developing countries to developing countries. He didn't throw the US into the group with Ethiopia. That would skew the results.

Why, when he states that the conclusion from the statistics says there is more work to be done, do you have a problem with what he says?

jb

jb; I would say that willy-nilly use of pesticides is not the norm of commercial farming. Willy-nilly costs money...rather, risks of not using pesticides are usually weighed against grade sheets, computer analysis/modeling, statistics (trapping/counting populations), gut instinct, crop history, etc.

lily; the part of the article about getting more cancer (actually from the diminished availability of fruits and vegetables in people's diets...if I understand the reasoning) is actually false. The common person would probably die from starvation rather than cancer if they had to grow their own food. The talent and the opportunity simply is not within our society (if we were a national island). But face it, if we didn't grow the fruits and vegetables then others will and it would be imported...just as a huge quantity of the beef we consume is. David1

I'm a firm believer in the principle that if you remove a bad substance or habit from your diet that you had better have a good substance or habit to replace the bad one if you expect to succeed in your removal with any permanance.

Simularily, to remove pesticides/herbicides from farms, you have to have a replacement plan in gear.

lets bring back the small farmer and support our communities locally.

jb, you can try to toss in these red herrings and insist that the environment is a major or lesser contributor to global hunger. That dog won't point. The vast majority of knowledgeable observers and commentators agree that more people are being fed and that the Green Revolution was mostly successful (particularly Asia and some areas of Latin America.) For Lomborg to claim the existence of negative drumbeat from environmentalists is closer to being a red herring than useful analysis.

If we accepted your assertion that environment was significant in world hunger, then we could attribute, for example, the environment for poverty around the world, or for tyranical governments, or for poor public health in Africa.

I did spend over a decade doing international ag research and development in "developing" countries. We rarely concerned ourselves with sustainable agricultural systems that relied on environmental conditions. Limitations in food availabilities are related to limits in infrastructure and appropriate institutions for production, storage, processing and redistribution. The occasional environmental catastrophe strike ill-fed and the well-fed regions. Ask yourself why "catastrophe and famine" is assigned to the former while "market shortages" is assigned to the later?

lily; small farmers can't compete against big farmers and the two have very different end goals even though the small farmer's is money and lifestyle (or quality of life) and the big farmer's is money and lifestyle (or quality of life). We are medium sized in our farming, orchards, monoculture and will be too small in the trend of the next generation's economy. We have a friend in Iowa, soybeans, corn, cattle, (no more hogs) who knows his farm of this third generations is nothing more than a hobby farm. $1 million is what he could get for it and that is beyond his wildest dreams...but doesn't want to leave. The trend is big to survive. I look at the USDA statistics and see in our county less farms (orchards and rice) over the last decade; less farms, greater income per farm, less net income per dollar. WalMart wins. David1