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Everything Wrong with Cancer Warning Labels

Everything Wrong with Cancer Warning Labels

“BACON…, HOT COFFEE…, RED MEAT…, COCONUT OIL…
WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?

You’ve may have thought: THEY’RE DELICIOUS. 
WRONG.

According to the World Health Organization’s INTERNATIONAL AGENCY FOR RESEARCH ON CANCER (IARC), all these foods “PROBABLY” or “POSSIBLY” can give you cancer.

Each year, this France-based agency published new studies known as monographs claiming to establish what is carcinogenic. So far, they’ve listed over 500 substances as DEFINITELY or POTENTIALLY carcinogenic, including your morning cup of coffee and the herbicide you use in your garden. In 48 years, they’ve only found one – JUST ONE – that isn’t.

These declarations have a sweeping impact not only on the products on the shelves, and how they’re regulated and taxed, but also the billions of dollars of lawsuits against these products.

CAN YOU SAY PAYDAY?

This is where science is trumped by money and lawyers.

IARC willfully confuses the relationship between “hazard” and “risk”. Hazard is something that can cause harm, risk explains how likely it is that it will. The sun is a hazard, because exposure to it can cause skin conditions. However, to most people the sun is not a risk, because they limit their exposure in summer, or apply sun cream. As with EVERYTHING ELSE, it’s a question of dosage.

For example, in 2016 the Munich Environmental Institute cast doubt on the safety of beer, claiming it can cause cancer. What they left out was that you needed to drink 1000L of beer a day for it to actually be harmful to health. Arguably, after 1000L of beer, the fact that it might be carcinogenic will be the least of your problems.

IARC STUDIES ARE LIKE A BAT SIGNAL TO THOUSANDS OF TORT LAWYER FIRMS.

What these experts conclude, therefore, becomes scientific dogma, regardless of the science.

WHY IS THIS PROBLEMATIC?

Experts at IARC have often been caught colluding with lawyers who stand to benefit from future lawsuits.

In the case of BENZENE and GLYPHOSATE, they have been accused of manipulating the science to arm trial lawyers. Researches have been ringing the alarm on IARC’s corruption of science for years.

That means hundreds of bogus lawsuits, bad public policy and bad information for consumers.

WHO BENEFITS WHEN SCIENCE IS CORRUPTED? 

LET’S UPHOLD SCIENCE RATHER THAN POLITICS. BECAUSE WE DESERVE BETTER

FOR MORE ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS ON SCIENCE AND HEALTH, CLICK HERE.

Il faut rallumer la confiance des Français dans l’innovation scientifique

Les Français doutent des bénéfices de l’innovation et du progrès : il est temps que cela change.

Une étude récente a démontré que les Français sont parmi les plus sceptiques envers les innovations scientifiques et technologiques. Un fait qui a des conséquences sérieuses sur la performance économique, le commerce international et le débat public.

L’étude Fondapol du 19 mai 2019 montre que les Français sont les moins convaincus par l’avantage des innovations. Dans une autre étude Wellcome Global Monitor de 2018, 55% des Français pensent que la science et la technologie sont dangereux pour l’emploi.

Le scepticisme des Français n’est pas dirigé contre la nouvelles fusée de SpaceX, mais à la fois contre l’automatisation, le développement de l’intelligence artificielle ainsi que les innovations agricoles. Vu la croissance démographique mondiale, trouver des solutions pour nourrir la population est pourtant indispensable.

Beaucoup d’ONG et de politiques s’opposent aux néonicotinoïdes, au glyphosate (qu’il est déjà impossible d’acheter en France pour les particuliers, et bientôt pour les professionnels) et aux cultures génétiquement modifiées. Bien souvent, le discours montre un manque flagrant d’information et une certaine nostalgie pour un bon vieux temps fantasmé, d’avant le développement de l’agriculture intensive.

On a tendance à oublier le fait que cette agriculture intensive a éliminé la mortalité infantile par sous-nutrition et qu’elle a enrichi les classes les moins favorisées tout en permettant de réduire graduellement les heures de travail de 60 à 50 heures par semaine.

La plupart de ces avancées technologiques agricoles sont, pourtant, sans danger pour l’homme. Des études nombreuses, dont celles à long terme et avec des milliers de participants, nous l’expliquent depuis longtemps.

L’existence de plusieurs labels, dont les labels bio bien connus et ceux qui indiquent qu’un produit est non-OGM, donne même la possibilité aux consommateurs de choisir de ne pas consommer certains produits. Mais pour les activistes anti-science qui préfèrent tout interdire, ce n’est pas assez.

Risques et dangers, une nuance importante

Au niveau du commerce international, cela pose également un sérieux problème. Seize pays membres de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), dont les Etats-Unis, critiquent les pratiques de l’Union européenne dans le domaine de l’agriculture.

Le reproche porte principalement sur l’approche particulière de l’UE, qui consiste non pas à porter ses interdictions sur les risques mais à adopter une approche hazard-based (“basée sur les dangers”). La différence est notable : le “danger” (hazard) doit être quantifié par le “risque” (risk), donc sur le degré d’exposition au danger.

Nous savons par exemple que le glyphosate présent dans la bière est mauvais pour la santé… si nous en buvons 1000 litres par jour. Le danger est présent mais le risque d’y être exposé est absolument nul. C’est donc une histoire d’excès, pas de risque inhérent.

La poursuite de l’Union européenne et de la France pour la suppression de tout danger est utopique. Si cette politique du “risque zéro” est maintenue, l’Europe signe un arrêt net de son développement technologique. Les effets sont déjà très visibles actuellement.

Il est important de remarquer que parmi les pays signataires de cet appel à l’OMC contre ce genre de politique, il y a également des pays du Mercosur (Amérique du Sud), qui essaient de ratifier un traité de libre-échange avec l’Union européenne.

Les 16 pays signataires affirment que :

“Le choix de nos agriculteurs en matière de technologie est de plus en plus réduit par des obstacles réglementaires qui ne sont pas fondés sur des principes d’analyse des risques convenus à l’échelle internationale et qui ne tiennent pas compte d’autres approches pour atteindre les objectifs réglementaires.”

Les disputes au niveau de l’OMC vont continuer et s’éterniser, surtout si l’Union européenne et ses pays membres continuent de restreindre ces innovations agricoles.

Il est temps de se réconcilier avec le progrès

Il faudrait rallumer la confiance des Français envers l’innovation… et particulièrement l’innovation agricole. Cela signifie également d’avoir le courage d’affronter des activistes anti-science qui vont toujours argumenter avec véhémence contre chaque innovation.

Les technologies du génie génétique peuvent pourtant avoir un impact énorme sur la réduction du nombre de décès dus à des maladies telles que la dengue, la fièvre jaune et le virus Zika. Il est peu probable que les citoyens français soient prêts à accepter la prolifération de telles maladies juste pour plaire aux écologistes.

Pendant que la Chine, l’Inde, le Brésil ou les Etats-Unis innovent dans ce domaine, l’Europe ne peut pas se permettre de s’enfermer dans un conservatisme restrictif. Dans le domaine du nucléaire, ou dans celui de l’aviation avec Airbus, la France a su montrer que le mot “innovation” s’écrit également en français.

Croire au progrès scientifique et technologique est un acte humaniste mais aussi un premier pas vers le succès.

Originally published here

#JunkScience is entering courtrooms at expense of consumers

One of the most notable features of modern politics is how much easier it is today to be ‘involved’ in one way or another. That’s great. I’ve personally spent much of my energy in the past couple of years campaigning for better political education and other policies which do exactly that. Today, you can reach thousands of people through social media and have genuine influence with a single vote being cast for you – or by having any real-life experience in the areas you criticize, writes Matt Gillow.

One of the dark sides to that, however, is that much is commented on instantaneously – and people are encouraged to think with their gut in a split-second. That’s what gets retweets. All too often, lawmakers are basing their judgement on emotion and how social media will react, rather than cold, hard evidence and scientific fact.

The recent European Court of Justice ruling, which obliged the European Food Safety Authority to release a wealth of commercially sensitive data on the pesticide glyphosate, is the perfect example of split-second decision making which fails to pay heed to the evidence. Whilst encouraging greater transparency for consumers to make decisions is a good thing, the ruling raises intellectual property issues, acquiesces to lobbyists, and ignores the fact that many companies – which produce and sell products with pesticides like glyphosate – actually voluntarily release much of the information requested anyway. To top it all off – the ruling is based on junk science espoused by lobbyists and demonises safe products – to the detriment of the consumer.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer was instrumental in the verdict by adding glyphosate to a list of things considered carcinogenic. IARC’s list of carcinogenic products include chemicals found in carrots, celery, lettuce, jasmine tea and aloe vera – to name a few. The US House Committee on Space, Science and Technology, which has stated the IARC finding on glyphosate is an “affront to scientific integrity that bred distrust and confusion,” requested that (now former) IARC Director Christopher Wild appear before the Committee. Wild refused to testify, and his successor, Elizabete Weiderpass, has not responded.

The fundamental problem is that IARC misrepresents the relationship between hazard and risk. Risk is the hazard in question, paired with the degree of exposure to that hazard. In a practical example: a road is a hazard to pedestrians because while crossing it, you can get hit. However, identifying the real risk implies knowing whether people actually cross this street, and depends on the level of care they take while doing so.

For the agency, the best risk management process is to remove all hazards, even if their exposure doesn’t make them risky. Yes, residues of glyphosate is found in beer, but for beer to become a risk factor in relationship to glyphosate, you’d have to drink 1,000 litres a day. We’ll take it that in that particular case, it still won’t be the pesticide that will be your biggest concern.

According to science blogger The Riskmonger – Scientists working with toxic tort law firms are compelling IARC to produce monographs for the purpose of increasing their lucrative opportunities as litigation consultants. Collusion between tort lawyers and agencies such as the IARC for lucrative payouts is not only disconcerting and corrupt – but sets a horribly dangerous precedent. Any scientific innovation could soon fall victim of this procedure.

So not only has IARC become a front for junk science and peddling of bad news, but it has become a tool for trial lawyers seeking cancer findings by IARC which they then leverage in US courtrooms into multi-million dollar verdicts. In the case of school groundskeeper Dwayne Johnson vs. Monsanto, the judge ended up setting punitive damages at $39 million. By confusing hazard and risk, IARC has declared herbicides as carcinogenic when they are not.

The fact of the matter is that consumers are being peddled lies by junk science organisations, and crooked get-rich-quick litigation consultants are getting payouts off the back of dodgy opinions from IARC – with scientific research that is not backed up by their peers.

Junk science and split-second judgements based on a headline are infiltrating and harming commerce and courtrooms – and harming the consumer and taxpayer at the same time. But a move away from evidence-based policy making isn’t confined to science. In politics, legislators are increasingly voting on sentiment instead instead of taking a scientific approach.

Soundbites have infiltrated policy-making. In order to protect ordinary people and improve their daily lives – it’s absolutely essential that we make a return to evidence-based policy making when it comes to science. Instead, politicians, commentators and activists are pandering to their support base and their ideological tribes. People deserve better than policy-makers refusing to look past the headlines.

Read more here

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