Archive for 2002
Is Organic Agriculture Viable? Probably Not
Ronald Bailey took a look at the inconvenient parts of a Swiss study that the media largely covered as offering proof that organic farming was viable and efficient. A close look at the study, however, finds that it is neither.
First, it is important to note that organic crops are not efficient at all when it comes to land use. The crop yields the Swiss researchers found were significantly lower for organic crops than for intensive modern farming. Bailey notes that the study found that organic “cereal crop yields in Europe typically are 60 to 70% of those under conventional management.”
This simply confirms what has been obvious for a long time — any wholesale switch away from intensive farming to organic farming would mean converting massive amounts of land to agricultural purposes.
The Swiss researchers maintain, however, that organic farming is more energy efficient. Their study claims that organic farms use only half the energy that conventional farms do. The difference is mainly due to the use of fertilizers and pesticides in intensive agriculture. By the time that the higher crop yields of intensive farming is factored in, though, this 50 percent energy savings is lowered to 19 percent.
But does organic farming really save energy? Not according to Bailey,
Secondly, the researchers declare that they found nutrients “in the organic systems to be 34 to 51% lower than in conventional systems, whereas mean crop yield was only 20% lower over a period of 21 years.” But — to ask the organic advocates’ own question — is organic agriculture sustainable over the long run? Again, the fine print says no. As their research confirms, organic farming is mining the soil of its vital minerals, particularly phosphorus and potassium. Eventually, as these minerals are used up, organic crop production will fall below its already low level. Conventional farming, on the other hand, restores mineral balance through fertilization.
So much for sustainable agriculture.
Source:
Organic Alchemy: Organic farming could kill billions of people. Ronald Bailey, Reason, June 5, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Chernobyl Hysteria In Great Britain
A British statistician created a fresh headline grabbing health issue when he told New Scientist that birth defects and infant mortality in Great Britain increased between 1986 and 1989. The cause? According to statistician John Urquhart, radiation from the Chernobyl accident is behind the increase.
There is just one minor problem with that possibility — although some Chernobyl radiation did reach Great Britain, it did not reach the five regions that Urquhart claims suffered from increased birth defects and infant mortality.
Moreover, studies in countries such as Germany, Hungary and the Ukraine which did receive Chernobyl radiation have found no evidence of any increased infant mortality attributable to the nuclear accident.
Dr. Michael Clark from the National Radiological Protection Board told the BBC that Urquhart’s claim that Great Britain received a dose of radiation 40 percent as large as the Ukraine did is “not true” (in fact it is downright absurd). Clark suggested that, “These results [the claimed increased birth defects and infant mortality] need to be looked at again by a professional epidemiologist to confirm the findings.”
Somehow, I suspect Urquhart’s thesis will disappear when the light of peer review is shined on it.
Source:
Chernobyl scare dismissed by experts. The BBC, June 26, 2002.
Tags: Radiation
Salon.Com Debunks John Edward
Shari Waxman has a short but sweet debunking of John Edward. Waxman writes about probability and how “Crossing Over” is set up such that something would be really wrong if Edward’s vague statements didn’t apply to one dead relative or another of any given studio guest.
But the best part of Waxman’s article was the depiction of just how far Edward and his true believers go to rationalize his statements into fitting specific events. Waxman writes,
In his book, Edward offers an example of his powers that is so dubious I thought he was joking. As it goes, once he told a “sitter” (the person being read) that someone in her life was doing something with wallpaper; it was odd, Edward recalls, that it had no meaning for her that day. Until, lo and behold, a few months later, the sitter’s sister-in-law changed the border in her bathroom! Add up the probabilities of the hundreds of independent events involving wallpaper and the sitter’s friends and family over the course of months and the realization of his prophecy is nearly inevitable. The art of intelligence insulting has rarely known such mastery.
Direct hit!
Source:
Shooting crap: Alleged psychic John Edward actually gambles on hope and basic laws of statistics. Shari Waxman, Salon.Com, June 13, 2002.
Tags: John Edward
The Horrors of For-Profit Hospitals
The BBC recently published an unintentionally hilarious article on a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The headlined blared, ‘More die in private hospitals’ - researchers.
After supposedly studying the medical records of nearly 40 million people over a 13-year period, the researchers concluded that more people die in private hospitals than in public ones. The BBC continued,
The researchers have suggested the higher mortality rate may be because hospitals run for profit in the US have to pay dividends so shareholders and tax, and have less money to spend on patients.
They say their findings should discourage Canada from privatising its healthcare system.
In fact this was a meta-analysis of 15 different studies and the best it could do was find a whopping two percent difference in adjusted mortality rates. That low of a difference is statistically irrelevant. A better way to summarize the findings would have been, “Study find no difference in mortality rates between profit and non-profit hospitals.”
In fact, Canadian Medical Association Journal implicitly recognized this by wondering if the true effect wasn’t hidden by the methodology of the study,
Although studies that analyzed hospitals that changed ownership status were excluded from the meta-analysis, the admissions to hospital that were studied took place at a time when hospitals were characterized by a variety of forms of ownership. Some were long-term not-for-profit hospitals, some long-term for-profit hospitals, some were about to convert, some had just converted, and so on. This information is not characterized or controlled for in the studies included in the meta-analysis. The dilution of the “true effect” of ownership type is likely to bias findings of relative mortality comparing not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals toward no difference. Thus, the mortality difference found is likely to be a conservative estimate.
That is the smell of desperation.
Source:
‘More die in private hospitals’ - researchers. The BBC, May 28, 2002.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing mortality rates of private for-profit and private not-for-profit hospitals. P.J. Devereaux, et al. Canadian Medical Association Journal, May 28, 2002; 166(11).
What price for-profit hospitals? Donald H. Taylor, Jr, Canadian Medical Assocation Journal, May 28, 2002; 166(11).
Tags: Miscellaneous Health Scares
Study Finds No Radon Cancer Link
A British study of almost 6,000 children found that home radon levels had no effect on cancer incidence.
The study took 2,226 children with cancer and 3,773 healthy children and measured radon and gamma ray levels in bedrooms and living rooms. Researchers then compared both overall cancer incidence based on radon levels not only for cancer, but also for six specific types of cancer.
In all cases researchers found that homes with high levels of radon gas and gamma rays were no more likely to have children with cancer than were homes with low levels of radon gas and gamma rays.
British research Richard Doll told the BBC,
The study is the first in the UK to measure domestic levels of radiation and relate them to children’s cancer risk, and it’s pleasing to be able to ease those fears.
. . .
Although some areas have higher levels of radon or gamma radiation than others, the differences don’t seem to be big enough to produce a detectable effect.
That suggests that background radiation is not playing as large a role as some people have feared.
Radon hysteria in the United States seems to have largely passed, and so far studies like this have shown that the furor over radon was simple hysteria.
Source:
Radon cancer fears dismissed. The BBC, June 7, 2002.
Tags: Radon
British Review Finds MMR Dangerous — To Measles Virus
A British review of research into the MMR vaccine from 180 countries has found that the vaccine is in fact dangerous — at least to the measles virus. In humans, though, it is safe.
Dr. Anna Donald and Dr. Vivek Muthu could find no evidence of any link between MMR and autism or bowel disease. They did find that children were likely to develop a minor fever up to 3 weeks after the vaccination as well as finding strong evidence that the MMR vaccine had been instrumental in wiping out measles throughout most of the world.
Donald and Muthu also criticized the research of Dr. Andrew Wakefield — who started the anti-MMR hysteria in 1998 — buy pointing out that his research relied on examining just 12 ill children and not using any healthy controls.
Source:
‘No evidence’ MMR jab is unsafe. The BBC, June 12, 2002.
Tags: Vaccination
Government Officials Charge That MMR Researcher Refuses to Allow Claims to Be Verified
Dr. Andrew Wakefield kicked off anti-vaccine hysteria in Great Britain with his claim that he found measles in the gut of children who never contracted the disease. Wakefield and collaborator John O’Leary just last week announced that they had found the strain of measles used in the MMR vaccine in the gut of children.
The problem is that Great Britain’s Department of Health claims Wakefield has not cooperated in efforts to verify his results. Dr. David Salisbury, who heads up the immunization division of the Department of Health, told the BBC that his department asked Wakefield four months ago for tissue samples that Wakefield used in his studies in order to try to reproduce the results. So far, there has been no answer from Wakefield.
Salisbury told the BBC,
We can speculate forever about what it [Wakefield's finding] might mean — but what we need is a better understanding what has been done and how it has been done.
. . .
Four months on we still don’t have an answer to the questions that we posed — and these questions are crucial.
Replication of findings is crucial in scientific research, and unless Wakefield is willing to come clean in order to allow others to attempt to replicate his work, then it is of dubious value at best.
Source:
MMR researcher attacked. The BBC, June 17, 2002.
Tags: Vaccination
BBC to Broadcast Anti-GM Drama
The BBC generated a bit of controversy in the UK recently with its planned broadcast of a two-part drama called “Fields of Gold” which is offers up a nightmare scenario where genetically modified foods end up threatening the very survival of humanity.
The drama was attacked by Mark Tester, an expert on genetically modified crops who was hired as a scientific advisor for “Fields of Gold.” Tester told The Daily Telegraph that the show contains “ridiculous errors of fact to inflame uninformed anti-GM hysteria.”
The BBC responded to the criticism by noting that this was, after all, a fictional drama. Apparently the BBC forgot about the pre-publicity for the drama which featured the show’s producer saying the goal of the film was “to tap into a very real fear, to make people think about what they eat.”
The co-writers of the drama, Alan Rusbridger and Ronan Bennett, responded to Tester’s criticism by accusing him of being part of an international conspiracy designed to “undermine the truth” about genetically modified crops. Rusbridger is the editor of The Guardian, which has been vehemently anti-GM and was instrumental in publicizing unfounded fears over a genetically modified potato.
The plot of the movie sounds hilarious (I hope it’s eventually possible to see this in the United States). Here’s The Daily Telegraph’s short summary,
It depicts a scientist creating GM wheat with a food blender in his bedroom, to which he adds a gene resistant to the antibiotic Vancomycin, which just happens to turn up in hospital waste. During trials, this gene somehow infects bacteria, creating an antibiotic resistant superbug that kills foxes, birds and old people. Spread by harvest dust, it threatens all humanity.
. . . Judging by what has emerged so far [about the drama], Fields of Gold is Guardian-modified obscurantism masquerading as science fiction.
If that plot summary is accurate, this drama is inept on many levels and worthy of the scorn heaped upon it.
Sources:
BBC refuses to drop ‘alarmist’ GM drama despite protests. Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph (UK), June 1, 2002.
Dramatically modified truth. Daily Telegraph (UK), June 1, 2002.
Is It King Kong? Is it Godzilla? No, it’s a genetically modified editor. Mick Hume, The Times (London), June 3, 2002.
Critic of GM drama denies conspiracy. Tom Leonard, Daily Telegraph (UK), June 3, 2002.
Scientists rebut writer’s claim of GM conspiracy. Mark Henderson, The Times (London), June 3, 2002.
Tags: Genetically Modified Food
Is Hydration Advice All Wet?
An interesting conversation recently took place between CNN MEdical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and CNN anchor Paula Zann about a pressing issue — just how much water should people drink?
Of course we have all been told that we need to drink at least 64 ounces of water each day, but according to Cohen that is simply an urban legend that inexplicably found its way into widespread circulation.
According to Cohen,
This eight eight-ounce glasses a day it turns out, after talking to the USDA, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, people at various universities, they say, you know what, this appears to be kind of a myth. We can’t find a single study that says that that’s what people out to do.
. . .
Let’s look at the water content of some other food and beverages here. For example, milk — 84 percent water. You could get your water there. Watermelon, 85 percent water — you could get your water there. other fruits also have lots of water. Diet Coke, 99 percent water — you could get your water there.
Now I can hear you thinking, well, gee, you know Diet Coke, that has caffeine in it, that can’t be good. We’ve all heard that caffeine is dehydrating. However, we’ve talked to a couple of experts who point to studies that say, you know what, when we look at it, people gut just as hydrated from caffeinated beverages as they do from decaffeinated beverages.
Cohen reports that The National Academy of Sciences is currently looking into just how much water human beings require, and should report their results sometime in 2003. Until then, drink up.
Source:
How much water do we really need? CNN, transcript, May 24, 2002.
Tags: Miscellaneous Health Scares
Consumer Products Safety Commission Asleep at the Wheel Again
Every couple of years the Consumer Products Safety Commission realizes it does not have enough to do and so makes some noise about a horrible safety hazard — children sleeping in their parents’ bed.
Early this month the CPSC put out a press release nothing that from 1991 through 2001, at least 180 children under the age of two died while sleeping in an adult bed. Back in 1999 it issued a similar press release noting that from 1990 through 1997, 515 children under 2 died while sleeping in an adult bed.
Obviously sharing a bed with an adult must be dangerous.
Sure, but not as dangerous as sleeping alone in a crib. As Katie Allison Granju pointed out at her weblog, estimates put the number of deaths of infants in cribs, bassinets and cradles at more than 2,000 annually, compared to the 60 or so infants the CPSC maintains die every year from sleeping with an adult.
The bottom line is that from these numbers we can tell almost nothing about the relative risk of either sleeping method. In order to have the numbers make any sense at all as far as which sleeping method is safer, we would need to have reliable information on how frequently infants sleep in an adult bed vs. how frequently they sleep in a crib, bassinet or cradle.
Given that the CPSC lacks that information, it is completely unconscionable for it to recommend to parents that they never place a sleeping baby in an adult bed. They have absolutely no scientific basis for making that recommendation and the commission should be ashamed of itself for trying to create a safety hysteria over a practice that is as old as humanity itself.
Source:
Commission recommends against children sleeping in adult beds. Laura Lane, WebMD, September 29, 1999.
comments. Katie Granju, Loco Parentis, May 6, 2002.
CPSC, JPMA Launch Campaign About the Hidden Hazards of Placing Babies in Adult Beds. Press Release, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, May 3, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized