A Brief Note on Simple Logic and Taking Responsibility . . .

I have a couple of seemingly unrelated concepts to share with you.  For most of you, the relationship will become obvious as soon as I reveal them.  But many people have not put the two together, evidencing an almost pathological aversion to simple logic.  Unless they just haven't thought of it before.  (Our logical capabilities may have atrophied in the spoon-fed information age.)  So just for the fun of it, let's assume that the latter is the case;  here comes the sharing.

(Yes, I know.  I have a weird sense of fun.)


First, if you are a science and medicine follower - or perhaps if there's some childhood leukemia in your family - you probably already know that childhood leukemia was sort of a leader in cancer research for much of the last half of the 20th century, and that it brought us the multi-drug chemotherapy approach.  Initially chemo drugs were given one after the other in succession; it was eventually (and recklessly) discovered that, used in concert, their effects were not merely cumulative but synergistic.  One drug did a little, two drugs did twice as much, but three . . . Three didn't just do three times as much.  Three seemed to blow cancer off the map.

Even today, fifty years later, the synergistic effects continue to be understood, accepted, and exploited in cancer treatment.

Still, today we struggle with a lack of research to back claims that "better living through chemistry" has not really improved the human condition so much.  (This is the second concept.) True, we have better sanitation and so our former plagues - cholera, for example - are rarely thought of.  But at the same time, we're bombarded daily with so many chemicals we'd be hard-pressed to list our personal exposures even for one day.  It's a conundrum for causation and determining the carcinogenity of ordinary substances.  The occasional testing that is done only considers what is a safe exposure level for an average adult male, not for children, and not in the context of ordinary exposure - as in, in combination with myriad other substances.

The synergy of chemicals doesn't even enter the equation, in spite of the fact that the chemotherapy regimens we follow today are premised on the very concept.

The pathological denial is rampant in the field of chemistry.  Someone claims that the burgeoning movement toward "proving safe" and away from "not found to be unsafe" is based on junk science or no science at all.  He publishes an editorial complaining that, by way of example, the DDT ban harms Africa so that Americans can be all pro-Earth without regard for its inhabitants.  Those "neurotoxins," he says, are only toxic to insects.  Not people. 

Well, I take issue with his characterization of the issue as a race issue.  That's some major crapola if ever there was any.  At least for me, if malaria is still killing all of those people in Africa, then by all means - spray some DDT.  Unless there's a better solution.  Like those medicines that we all take when we travel to malaria-infested sites.  Those mosquito nets over the beds aren't just part of the ambiance! 

Furthermore, in America, the pollution created by various toxic substances impacts poor communities far more than it does wealthy ones.  And African-American neighborhoods are more heavily impacted.  So take your racism theory and shove it where the sun don't shine.

And why do I have to hate people to care about the Earth?  What is that???  The Earth's health and mine are inextricably linked.

[Did I mention that the guy has been the director of the American Council on Science and Health for about 12 years?  It's interesting to note that the ACSH doesn't disclose its funding sources and has not since the early 1990s, but when it last reported, its funding came from a veritable who's who of chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, including Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Merck, Pfizer, and Bristol-Meyers.  Not that that means they are biased, but . . . well, they could be.  The ACSH bases its work on the notion that food scares and other hypes need to be quashed without sound scientific backing.  Of course that sounds well and good - who wants a bunch of unscientific acusations coming between us and our potato chips? - but the idea that the EPA should not become involved because substances have not been proven harmful (this from the ACHS mouthpiece in an anti-regulation statement) flies in the face of everything we as parents believe - we believe in erring on the side of caution.  Not industry.]

(Incidentally, there's a group called Physicians for Social Responsibility, sort of the counterweight to the ACHS, which advocates for the cautious approach - the so-called Precautionary Principle that's followed in virtually every other industrialized country.  PSR was founded in the early 1960s in response to nuclear weapons testing in the western United States.  At that time, caution took a backseat to the intoxicating progress of nuclear physics.  Nowadays, PSR is just as involved in toxic substances as it is with nuclear testing.)

Oh my gosh I'm just full of digressions.  Does anyone remember when Ann Coulter touted the benefits of radiation exposure in relation to the nuclear reactors going haywire in post-disaster Japan a few months back?  I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it here before.  Google it; even Bill O'Reilly couldn't believe his ears.  Now that's some junk science.

So back to erring on the side of caution:  It's why we vaccinate our kids (some of us, anyway!)  We're cautious. 

Oddly, it's also why some of us don't vaccinate, isn't it?  We're cautious.

We've all seen the "devil-may-care" parent portrayed on the silver screen; it's not a favorable image.  It's usually in the context of a protagonist struggling to move beyond his sorry childhood, to leave behind his crazy and usually nonconformist parent.  Before I became one (a parent, not a crazy nonconformist) myself, I could identify with the crazy character.  Not so much now.  I'm more like the compulsive Lysol-carrying mom (although I don't personally believe in using Lysol.  But you've seen the type.)

So the next time someone tells you not to worry . . . you tell them why you're not wrong to worry.  There are so many unknowns, and there are so many exposures that we can easily avoid with a little effort.  It's worth trying.  Because science already knows that combinations of chemicals yield different results than single exposures - remember the leukemia example - and science knows very little about the harmful potential of most chemicals we're exposed to every day, even in isolation from other exposures.  We parents lack the wherewithal to figure the stuff out for ourselves.

So laugh at me all you wanna, Mr. junk-science-debunker-smartypants-guy . . . I'm being cautious.  Seems like a smart strategy, while all of you spin the existing science, toss stumbling blocks in the way of new science, offer huge donations to politicians that might "support" your views . . .

Caution, my friends, is the only reasonable course of action.

Following is a list of senators serving on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, where the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 (S. 847) is apparently stalled.  If you're a voter in one of their states, please give them a call; you can find their number at http://www.congress.org/.  Here they are:  Boxer, CA; Inhofe, OK; Alexander, TN;  Barrasso, WY;  Baucus, MT; Boozman, AR; Cardin, MD; Carper, DE; Crapo, ID; Gillibrand, NY; Johanns, NE; Lautenberg, NJ; Merkley, OR;  Sanders, VT; Sessions, AL; Udall, NM; Vitter, LA; Whitehouse, RI.  The Toxic Substances Control Act has not been amended at all, to my knowledge, since its original passage in 1976.  The courts have not been a great conduit for enforcing it.  The legislature has tried repeatedly to undercut its enforcing agency (the EPA.) And industry is devoted to not only protecting its interests legislatively, but by limiting our information (labeling issues) and funding "junk science" spin doctors (see above, ACSH; also see Koch brothers, funding anti-climate change lobbies.)

If you're not registered to vote, please do so.  Immediately.  No one cares if you're not going to vote, for crying out loud.

All of this talk of legislation and executive agencies tends to conjure a term offensive to pretty much every American alive.  And the term is "Big Government."  (Cue forboding music, please.) 

A word on "Big Government."

It is my opinion that for many Americans, government truly is seen as an overbearing, greedy, inefficient, and disloyal monstrosity of a operation, out-of-touch with its citizens, working for someone else.  Someone besides us.  And if this view is held by many, then it's no wonder:  it's sorta true.  But the part we've forgotten is that we are in charge of that government, and I won't give you the "hire an employee and never check up on his work" analogy again but still . . . this is ON US.  We are up to the task!  Once upon a time, a small band of Americans (at that time, English colonists) got together and decided that it was time to throw off the yoke of a mother country that no longer served its citizens' interests, that in fact was detrimental to its citizens' interests.  The subjects of England had no recourse.  Am I advocating an overthrow?  Hell, no!  I'm not completely nuts.  I am advocating, however, that we step up to the plate and accept responsibility for this monstrosity that we have created, or at least allowed to be created as we busied ourselves accumulating worthless trinkets and the vestiges of success, AKA "the American Dream."  (In reality, the American Dream was once about more than just "stuff."  That's a fairly recent bastardization of a once-inspirational ideal.) 

We, unlike the American revolutionaries, have recourse.  And we have been derelict in our patriotic duties.  Our house is a mess; where are the children? 

This is our mess.  Our responsibility. 

So let's get started. 

Instructions: 
1) Pull head out of sand.
2) Stand up.   Warning:  persons who have had head in sand for extended periods of time must exercise caution to avoid injury to self and others in implementing this step. 
3) Look around you. 

See?  It's a big mess, that's true.  But opportunities to change the course abound. 

Own your voice and use it often.  Use it loudly.  This is your children's inheritance.

And while you're at it, put your logic to some good use, as well.   I will continue to be skeptical of anyone who suggests that we need more science in order to prove what science has already proved, has already acted upon, has already formulated numerous other theories upon.  What pharmaceutical companies have earned millions upon.  I hope you'll consider skepticism, as well.  (It's tied up in that logic thing.)