Archive for 2002
Are Parents Endangering Their Children with SUVs?
Keith Bradsher has written a book (which this writer has not read), High and Mighty: SUVs–The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way, which (as you might suspect) does not look favorably on SUVs. Stephanie Mencimer reviews the book for The Washington Monthly, and includes a claim about the role that SUVs play in fatalities involving young children that doesn’t stand up very well to scrutiny.
Mencimer writes,
Ironically, SUVs are particularly dangerous for children, whose safety is often the rationale for buying them in the first place. Because these beasts are so big and hard to see around (and often equipped with dark-tinted glass that’s illegal in cars), SUV drivers have a troubling tendency to run over their own kids. Just recently, in October, a wealthy Long Island doctor made headlines after he ran over and killed his two-year-old in the driveway with his BMW X5. He told police he thought he’d hit the curb.
Of course to evaluate the claim that “SUVs are particularly dangerous for children” we would need actual statistics rather than an isolated anecdote. Just how big of a problem is parents running over their own children? And to what extent do SUVs and other large vehicles play in this problem?
Whether or not the answers to this question appear in Bradsher’s book, I cannot say, but Mencimer certainly appears uninterested in sharing the information necessary to obtain a better understanding of the problem.
A search for data that would substantiate this claims comes up surprisingly short, largely because the number of fatalities involved appears to be so small that nobody keeps the sort of records that would tell us how many children die when their parents run over them, much less sorted by type or size of vehicle.
Kids n’ Cars, a group centered around preventing accidents involving children left unattended around cars, appears to be the only group tracking national statistics of such incidents, but even their efforts aren’t enough to allow us to address Mencimer’s claims adequately.
According to Kids n’ Cars, in the 5 year period from 1997-2001, there were at least 358 fatalities that involved unattended children around a vehicle. Of those, 115 fatalities involved children being run over by a car. So, during that period, an average of 23 children were killed when they were backed over by a car.
But how many of those involve SUVs and how many involve a parent-child relationship?
According to an interview with Kids n’ Cars’ Janette Fennell, 70 percent of such fatalities involved large vehicles, such as trucks, vans and SUVs. Fennell also claimed that about 50 percent of such fatalities involve parents running over their children.
For the sake of argument lets just assume that every time a parent fatally backs over his or her child, they are always driving an SUV. That would mean that from 1997-2001, there were on average 12 parents annually who ran over and killed their own young children with SUVs. Given that as of 1997 there were approximately 13.8 million SUVs registered in the United States (and there were likely close to 20 million by the end of 2001), 12 fatalities is certainly a tragedy but hardly much of a “troubling trend.”
If we look at all of these fatalities, the bottom line is there were still only 115 such fatalities in five years involving a class of vehicles which had approximately 60 million registrations as of 1997. Installing a swimming pool is far more dangerous — about 350 children under 5 die annually from drowning in residential swimming pools.
Sources:
CPSC Warns: Pools Are Not the Only Drowning Danger at Home for Kids. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, May 23, 2002.
SUV Registrations Nearly Double in Five Years, Census Bureau Reports. Census Bureau, October 19, 1999.
More tots being run over, killed. Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2002.
Statistics. KidsNCars.Org, Accessed: 12/7/2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Michael Fumento on the Atkins Diet Study
Michael Fumento has an interesting analysis of the much-publicized Duke University Medical Center study of the Atkins Diet which is being trumpeted as proof that the diet works. The small study of 120 people found that patients on the Atkins Diet both lost more weight and had lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. Well, at least the did if you don’t look too closely at the study.
The Atkins Diet, of course, is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that involves eating lots of meat while eschewing carbohydrate-rich foods such as potatoes.
There are a number of problems with the Duke University study that followed two groups of 60 dieters — one group on the Atkins Diet and the other group on a high carbohydrate diet. The biggest one is the extremely high dropout rate among the Atkins Dieters. According to Fumento, fully 43 percent of the group on the Atkins Diet dropped out before completing the six month study, compared to just 25 percent of those on the high carbohydrate diet. As Fumento puts it,
Moreover, it’s generally accepted that drop-out rates anywhere near this level completely invalidate a study because you don’t know how all those drop-outs would have affected the result. Maybe those Atkins dieters were quitting not only because of carbohydrate cravings but also because they weren’t losing weight or losing it fast enough to satisfy them.
As for the decline in cholesterol and triglycerides, Fumento points out that this is likely explained simply by virtue of the fact that those who remained on the Atkins Diet for six months did lose more weight, on average, than those on the high-carbohydrate diet. Weight loss in and of itself seems capable of lowering cholesterol and triglycerides levels.
Interestingly, Fumento cites a study similar to the Duke study that is slated for publication soon. Gary Foster, the University of Pennsylvania research behind that study, tells Fumento that people on the Atkins Diet lose weight for one simple reason: they eat less calories. Foster told Fumento that the Atkins Diet, “gives people a framework to eat fewer calories, since most of the choices in this culture are carbohydrate driven.”
But the high dropout rate of the six month Duke study highlights the question of whether or not people on the Atkins Diet can stick with it (and how do the cholesterol and triglycerides of people on this diet for a long period of time compare to people on high-carbohydrate diets with similar BMIs?)
So far, though, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the Atkins Diet has anything to recommend it over a balanced, low calorie diet combined with regular exercise.
Source:
Hold the Lard! The Atkins Diet still doesn’t work. Michael Fumento, Reason, December 5, 2002.
Tags: Michael Fumento
Deodorant Doesn’t Cause Breast Cancer
For the past few years this idiotic rumor that underarm deodorant contributes to breast cancer has been circulating around the Internet. To put the rumor to rest, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle put it to the test and found, not surprisingly, that there was no link between deodorant and breast cancer.
The study included 813 women with breast cancer and 793 women without breast cancer. They were interviewed about their personal habits as they pertained to underarm deodorant usage and underarm shaving.
They found no increased risk for breast cancer related to either underarm deodorant usage or underarm shaving.
Source:
Deodorant not linked to breast cancer: study. Suzanne Rostler, Reuters, October 15, 2002.
Tags: Cancer
Cell Phone Lawsuit Dismissed
In early October, Steven Milloy wrote an excellent story about a federal judge’s dismissal of an $800 million lawsuit that claimed cell phone use had cause a man’s brain tumor.
Judge Catherine Blake dismissed the lawsuit citing the plaintiff’s failure to provide any valid scientific evidence for this claim.
Milloy notes that the plaintiff’s main body of evidence were studies by Dr. Lennart Hardell, who has published two studies on cell phone use and brain cancer. A 1999 study by Hardell found no “overall increased risk for brain tumors associated with exposure to cellular phones.” A 2001 study claimed to find such a link, but was criticized for being a flawed rehash of the 1999 study. Finally, Dr. Hardell has conducted as-yet-unpublished research that, again, found no link between cellular phone use and brain tumors. Despite this, according to Milloy,
. . . Dr. Hardell nonetheless maintained the overall findings didn’t matter because the cancer was only associated with ipsilateral phone use, in which the cancer develops on the same side of the head as the phone is held — as in [the plaintiff, Christopher] Newman’s case.
Judge Blake dismissed this claim since Hardell also reported a statistical association between ipsilateral use of cordless phones and cancer, “even though there is otherwise no scientific claim that cordless phones cause brain cancer.” A defense expert attributed Hardell’s results concerning ipsilateral use to “recall bias” — study subjects’ inability to accurately recall which side of their heads phones were used.
At one point, Milloy notes, the plaintiffs lawyers actually called a meteorologist to give testimony about radiofrequency radiation! That tactic didn’t work, but it did give Milloy an opportunity for a great one-liner which pretty much sums up the “cell phones cause cancer” claims,
It’s comforting to know that while cell phone reception has improved, reception of cell phone junks science hasn’t.
In fact it’s a very good sign to see the cell phone nonsense rejected by court so soundly and relatively quickly rather than seeing a repeat of what happened with breast implants and other similar unfounded health claims.
Source:
Cell Phone Suit Gets Bad Reception. Steven Milloy, FoxNews.Com, October 4, 2002.
Tags: EMF
Do Children Who Harm Animals Later Harm People?
It has become almost a mantra within both animal rights circles and the larger mainstream media that children who harm animals are on the path to harming human beings. But is this claim true?
Manchester Metropolitan University researchers Heather Piper and Steve Myers looked at such claims and found a surprising lack of any actual valid evidence for it. They write,
A few years ago, the notion that abused children were likely to become abusers was common. This is no longer accepted as true. In this case the dominant view is that harming animals is directly linked to, or can be treated as part of a cycle leading to, violence towards people. It is suggested that the relationship is clear cut, consistent and predictable. This argument suggests that harming animals can be a predictive variable in indicating future harm to people. There are serious flaws in this argument. Although there may be some disturbed individuals who are cruel towards both animals and people, extreme cases do not provide the basis for generalized conclusions.
Piper and Myers identify two major problems with the alleged link between harming animals and harming people. First, the studies that claim to find such a link rarely define animal abuse in a methodologically sound way,
Few studies define what is animal abuse or violence or harm. Does cruelty include pulling the legs off spiders, or only those of vertebrates? Does it matter that one society eats dogs and another keeps them as pets? Richer children may legally kill animals through fox hunting, whereas poorer ones are prosecuted for similar behavior towards a cat or a dog.
Second, such studies have a deeper methodological flaw in who they choose to study,
Research supporting the supposed links is based mainly on extreme and non-representative samples. Accounts suggesting links between those who have harmed animals and later violence toward humans often rely on the same small sample of extreme criminals in the US. Researching a limited population to produce a broadly applicable generalization is problematic. Any number of life experiences could also be shown to correlate with the behavior.
A further problem is that much of the research tends to suffer from fallacies of logic. Just because some serial killers have harmed animals, this does not mean that all or even the majority of those who harm animals will become serial killers. Yet this stance is taken in much of the literature.
Piper and Myers conclude that “Social workers should not uncritically accept the arguments that have been put forward about linking animal and human violence.”
Source:
Missing Link. Heather Piper and Steve Myers, Community Care, October 3, 2002, p.38.
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Tags: Uncategorized
Helen Caldicott’s Back
Helen Caldicott — the woman who claimed that Space Shuttle launches were destroying the ozone layer — is back with a retread of a radiation story ahead of possible U.S. military action in Iraq. This time around, Caldicott has joined in the chorus of those who believe that depleted uranium in some U.S. ammunition and armor used during the Persian Gulf War is causing birth defects and other problems in Iraq.
Depleted uranium is uranium 238 which is generally used to reinforce tank armor and, alternately, in ammunition designed to destroy enemy tanks. The primary advantage of uranium 238 is that uranium is an extremely dense material. In a much-publicized example of the power of depleted uranium armor in the Persian Gulf War, for example, one U.S. tank managed to take close ranged direct hits from three separate Iraqi tanks and not only survive but also managed destroy all three of the enemy tanks.
But according to Caldicott, depleted uranium is still dangerously radioactive,
. . . it is a potent radioactive carcinogen, emitting a relatively heavy alpha particle composed of 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Once inside the body — either in the lung if it has been inhaled, or in a wound if it penetrates flesh, or ingested since it concentrates in the food chain and contaminates water — it can produce cancer in the lungs, bones, blood, or kidneys. Third, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, meaning the areas in which this ammunition was used in Iraq and Kuwait during Gulf War will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time.
Depleted uranium is, in fact, barely radioactive (otherwise it would not be a very suitable battlefield weapon). In fact, in most parts of the world the top layer of soil is hundreds of times more radioactive than depleted uranium. Aside from weapons, depleted uranium is used as counter weights in aircraft and in radiation shielding for medical equipment.
Caldicott nonetheless claims numerous radiation-related health effects on children from the use of depleted uranium during the Persian Gulf War,
My fellow pediatricians in the Iraqi town of Basra, for example, are reporting an increase of 6 to 12 times in the incidence of childhood leukemia and cancer. Yet because of the sanctions imposed upon Iraq by the United States and United Nations, they have no access to drugs or effective radiation machines to treat their patients.
The incidence of congenital malformations has doubled in the exposed populations in Iraq where these weapons were used. Among them are babies born with only one eye or missing all or part of their brain.
The main problem with this is that the major effect of exposure to uranium is renal problems, which is the major illness that afflicts people who work in uranium mines and are exposed to the substance regularly. There is also some possibility that such workers may have an elevated risk of lung cancer after years of exposure, but separating out miners’ exposure to uranium and radon makes it difficult to establish this with any certainty (elevated risk of lung cancer in uranium miners has usually been ascribed to radon gas exposure given that it is airborne).
Claims of increased levels of birth defects, leukemia and cancers are simply not credible since the Iraqi government has shot down every attempt to independently study the alleged problems.
Source:
Medical consequences of attacking Iraq. Helen Caldicott, San Francisco Chronicle, October 10, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
VegSource.Com Promotes Quack Health Solutions
VegSource.Com maintains that it provides advice for living a healthy vegan lifestyle but more often than not it simply promotes the same old lame quack health advice that has been debunked over and over again but never fails to find adherents alternative health circles. Exhibit A is a bizarre article by Roopa Chari, M.D., “The Key to Longevity: Cleansing the Colon.”
To get a firm idea of the quackery involved in Chari’s article it is necessary to start reading in the middle with these two sentences,
Many people’s colons are packed with a lifetime of old, hardened feces leading to toxemia or the accumulation of poisons. Dr. Tilden said that diseases were crises of toxemia.
The first sentence is a claim that was long ago disproven through analysis of the colons of people undergoing surgical procedures and autopsies (although simply disproving a hypothesis is never enough for the true believers).
But Dr. Tilden is the real focus of interest. She is referring to Dr. J. H. Tilden, a world-class quack who became moderately famous in the early part of the 20th century for his view that, as Chari gleefully repeats, all disease was caused by “toxemia.” What did this mean in practice?
Tilden rejected the germ theory of disease, arguing instead that all diseases were caused by toxins that were normally evacuated from the body but that which, in diseased persons, were retained in the body and polluted the blood. In fact, Tilden rejected the idea that there were different diseases. In his view, everything from cancer to the common cold to syphilis was but the outward manifestation of a single phenomenon — toxemia.
Consider a disease such as diptheria. Tilden dismissed the idea that diptheria was a bacterial infection and advised against vaccination. Rather, Tilden believed that diptheria was caused when children were overfed and that the only sensible treatment was washing out the bowels 2-3 times per day “using as large enemas as can be put into the bowels.”
VegSource.Com gives Chari a platform for warmed-over Tilden-style views. According to Chari,
Often the main cause behind sickness and disease is the retention and reabsorption of this toxic waste. A major benefit of a good cleansing program is that you digest food better, eat less and smaller quantities of food are more satisfying. A pot belly and bloating is another indication of an expanded and inflated colon that is full of fecal matter.
Chari also repeatedly cites Dr. Richard Schulze and recommends his herbal methods of bowel cleansing. Schulze, like Tilden, maintains that just about every disease known to man can be cured with such methods. He claims, for example, to have had patients reverse their Alzheimer’s by taking his herbs. Schulze has even gone so far as to claim that AIDS can be cured by a regimen of juice and enemas.
Perhaps Nelson should change VegSource.Com’s tagline from “All are welcome” to “All types of quacks and frauds are welcome.” That would certainly be more accurate if Nelson is going to continue to publish nonsense like this.
Source:
The Key to Longevity: Cleansing the Colon. Roopa Chari, M.D., VegSource.Com, August 2002.
Tuesday, October 8, 2002
Tags: Miscellaneous Alternative Medicine
Misleading WHO Study on Violence
Last week many news outlets reported on a study by the World Health Organization that blondes were becoming extinct — that turned out to be a hoax. No such study existed. But now WHO seems to be using a genuine report to distort the rate of homicides by intimate partners.
The New York Times summarizes the WHO report on intimate murder this way,
The study found that violence against women by their male partners occurs in all countries, regardless of economic class and religion. Data from Australia, the United States, Canada, Israel and South Africa show that 40 to 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.
But the situation is not the same for male murder victims. In the United States, for instance, only 4 percent of men murdered from 1976 to 1996 were killed by their wives, ex-wives or girlfriends.
The problem with this statistic is that it makes it appear that the odds of a man being murdered by a girlfriend, wife or ex-wife is far lower than the risk that a woman will be killed by a boyfriend, husband or ex-husband.
But in the United States, the actual annual figures break out to something like 1,300 women killed by male intimates compared to about 600 men killed by female intimates. In most years, about 1/3rd of all murders by intimate partners are committed by women.
But at the same time, it is correct that only 4 percent of men who are murdered are killed by women they have an intimate relationship with. But this is because men are so much more likely to be murdered than are women. As WHO notes, men constitute approximately 3/4 of all homicide victims (in the United States, about 80 percent of murder victims are men).
Another major problem with WHO’s study on violence is that it lumps in suicide as an act of violence. Yes suicide is a problem and needs to be addressed, but somebody who wants to kill himself is not the same sort of social problem as somebody who wants to kill other people. Out of the 1.6 million victims of violence annually that WHO cites, well over 1 million of those deaths are the result of suicides.
Finally, WHO has lowballed the number of people who died as a result of violence at only 191 million in the 20th century. The complete report isn’t available online, but that figure is way too small unless WHO is playing with politics with who counts as a victim of violence.
Sources:
First ever Global Report on Violence and Health released. World Health Organization, Press Release, October 3, 2002.
War, Murder and Suicide: A Year’s Toll Is 1.6 Million. Sheryl Gay Stroberg, New York Times, October 3, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Media Credibility on the Verge of Extinction
Numerous media outlets last week carried an incredible story — blonds would become extinct within 200 years. A World Health Organization study, it was reported, had looked at the issue and found that since blondness is caused by a recessive gene, blonds would gradually become rarer and then finally completely absent from the human gene pool.
The only problem with this is that it’s a complete hoax from start to finish. Several British newspapers initially reported these claims, and then newspapers and broadcast television (including CNN) in the United States picked up on the story. Few reporters and news agencies who reported the story, it turns out, ever bothered to actually check with the World Health Organization to find out if it had actually conducted such a study.
And, of course, it never has. The WHO put out a press release this week saying the story was completely bogus.
Source:
Extinction of blondes vastly overreported. Washington Post, October 2, 2002.
Stop those presses! Blonds, it seems, will survive after all. Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, October 2, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Washington, DC’s Keystone Kops
The Associated Press reports that police in Washington, DC are once again looking at Ingmar Guandique as a possible suspect in the murder of Chandra Levy. Guandique was arrested and convicted for attacking two female joggers in the same general area that Levy’s remains were found.
The scary thing is that DC police had ruled him out as a suspect apparently based largely on the fact that he passed a lie detector test. Now the police want him to take another lie detector test because they think the first one was faulty.
What is really faulty here is that a pseudoscientific process like a lie detector test is used to rule suspects in or out. Why don’t they just bring Uri Geller and a bunch of kids with dowsing rods in to tell them whether or not Guandique killed Levy. They’re likely to be as accurate as their lie detector test.
Source:
D.C. Police Probing Man in Levy Murder. Associated Press, September 29, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized