Margaret Wente on Understanding Risk
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 06.11.08
The Globe and Mail, which thinks it is Canada's New York Times, finally removed the fence around its editorial content, so that people under 30 or outside of the country can finally learn that it exists. Their Maureen Dowd is Margaret Wente, who occasionally gets it right but sometimes is spectacularly wrong, as in her recent article "Yellow duckies and other killers.". It isn't just the errors, which are legion, but it is the entire idea of the article, that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the concept of risk.
Let's start with the errors, like in the first line:
"It's hard to be a good mother these days. Deadly perils lurk everywhere. Take that yellow bathtub ducky, contaminated with a dangerous substance known as BPA."
Sorry, Peggy, BPA is in hard plastics like polycarbonates. The rubber ducky is soft and squishy because it is made with phthalates, a plasticizer for PVCs, or vinyls. But that is OK, they are both gender-benders, endocrine disruptors, that mess with your kid's hormones. You can read about them here:
How to Green Your Kids' Toys
Into the Mouths of Babes: Green to Grow Bottles
It goes downhill from there. She writes:"a walk in the park really does rank higher on the risk-o-meter than plastic baby bottles, plastic bath toys, plastic water bottles, and other products deemed a health hazard by the current round of chemophobia. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health, an independent group devoted to accuracy in health reporting. She points out that both BPA and phthalates have been studied intensively for decades. There are no studies - none - that show any link between these substances and harm to people. The basis for the claims of danger are all from studies done on rats, and they don't predict human risk."
She does not explain that the American Council on Science and Health, which started with a strong stance against tobacco, now, according to Sourcewatch, "takes a generally apologetic stance regarding virtually every other health and environmental hazard produced by modern industry." Or that even a former director calls Elizabeth Whelan a "junk food queen" for her defense of companies who make products with low nutritional value.
But in the end, the most important and most dangerous paragraph is the last; after a description of how moms are programmed to protect their kids from sabre-tooth tigers,
Today, almost all those dangers are gone - eradicated by what's generally known as progress. But maternal vigilance remains as strong as ever. So now we fix on the invisible - toxic spores from mould, death-rays from the sun, or poisons in the manmade objects all around us. We forget how negligent our own parents were. They gave us naked sunbaths and let us suck on plastic duckies and roll around on pesticide-drenched lawns. It's astonishing how ignorant they were, and how many of us managed to grow up.
1) How many of your contemporaries are dying of skin cancer from too much sun, Peg? How many kids drowned because they were not wearing life jackets? How do you know what caused the cancers that are killing so many others of our generation? How do you know it wasn't that pesticide-drenched lawn? And don't let's forget where we learned to smoke, and how we travelled around in sealed up cars while both parents lit up? I'm sorry, the astonishing thing is how many of us have died needlessly.
2) How many girls are hitting puberty early? How many kids are morbidly obese? How many young men have low sperm counts or enlarged breasts? How do you take for granted that all these hormonal changes are not a result of the chemical bath we tossed out kids into? Whatever happened to the precautionary principle? Enough about us, what about them?
No, sometimes an article can be phoned in and not be taken seriously; sometimes it can have a few errors, and sometimes it can be astonishingly, dangerously wrong. ::Globe and Mail
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uhm. excuse me?
perhaps you should change the title of this post to "an american meta-commenting on Canadian content - and getting it wrong."
I'm not a huge Wente fan, but, gimme a break!
I really like how you highlight the last sentence in the quoted last paragraph, completly out of context. Its called sarcasm. irony even. (ever watched letterman?)
Wente isnt pointing out the lack of danger in manufactured toxins etc, and she isn't advocating to stop thinking about the issue behind such warnings.
What she IS highlighting is that, unlike our cousins to the south, Canada is not so litigious a nation that we need to sign a writ of understanding when we accept a plastic bag at a grocery story, such that we waive the store, store employee, manufacturer and government's liability when our child is stupid enough to choke to death on the damn thing.
Wentes point is simply this: "ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN PEOPLE" and figure this stuff out for yourself - don't demand to be mollycoddled by ridiculous preventative measures (eg, warnings and recalls) that wouldnt be necessary at all if consumers didn't demand the most for the least... *sigh*
i would go on, but... I really do think that as an American, you are missing some fundamental social context for her article.
regardless, in the future, if you are going to try and shoot down someones writing, please make certain you understand what they are writing about.
LA: Um, I might point out that it says that the post was written by me, Lloyd Alter, in Toronto, Canada. And I have no idea where you get that she is talking about american litigiousness, she is saying that the kids are allright and they really are not.
Was Will Brooke even reading the same article? Alter covers my precise feelings in his response.
me thinks Will should follow his own advice :)
I agree, Give me a break.
Everyone reading this blog is "green", but even for me, this response to Ms. Wente's editorial is over the top.
We all grew up in this environement, and most of us turned out OK. Everyone who recognizes this fact, and then reads this response will roll their eyes. Even when preaching to the choir of Treehugger, this doesn't pass the sniff test.
We will never make progress against the non-believers of ecology, evolution, and conservation by bashing their personal views and opinions when there are some valid points. We must recongize them and argue civilly against them.
We don't know all of the things you rail against cause cancer. Truth be told, more people are dying of cancer because we are living longer. The chemicals and pesticides are probably contributing, but not the sole or even the main reason.
Don't belittle her comments and give her a reason to summarilly dismiss you, but acknowledge her argument and respond with the best response - I don't know for sure that these substances harm us, but I know they don't help us, so why take the risk when there are alternatives.
Well written Lloyd.
When ever someone quotes this:
"The basis for the claims of danger are all from studies done on rats, and they don't predict human risk."
I cringe, and usually disregard anything else they have to say. It smacks of the "you can't disprove religion so it must be true" arguments of the right.
Note: It turns out that this turned into more of a rant than previously expected, so I ask for your forgiveness.
I think that it is important that studies are done on certain substances to see if they are harmful or not, but I don't think they should be obsessed about.
Granted, there are things that I think should be taken into consideration, such as pesiticides and other things, but this whole protecting-the-children is getting really out of hand in my opinion.
Doesn't anyone miss the days when the playground didn't have soft plastic corners and bouncy rubber floors? What about the days when if you fell, you actually, OMGZ got hurt? Kids need to get hurt and they need to get sick. Being a kid means learning about what your body can withstand and about your immune system getting strong. If a kid falls off of something and breaks his arm, he'll know to be more careful! And all of these anti-bacterial cleaning products really get on my nerves. Not only are they probably not green, they're, contrary to popular belief, not healthy. If kids don't get sick, they won't have any immunity and become sick more often as they grow older because they never got the chance to be exposed to germs (and I won't even get into supergerms right now).
Also, when it comes to the testing on rats thing, it doesn't actually prove harm onto people. You know, they can grow human skin and organs now, and can be more acurately tested on than a different speices. As similar as we are to rodents, not everything is going to be the same (not to mention these tests are cruel, disgusting, and often times unnecessary, and we more or less treat them like how the Nazis treated their prisioners). So I'm sorry, but you can't possibly say that the quote, "The basis for the claims of danger are all from studies done on rats, and they don't predict human risk," is anything like "you can't disprove religion so it must be true." The reason why testing on rats doesn't prove whether something is harmful or harmless, or helpful or whatever to humans is because, well, rat not equal to human.
And cancer has been around forever, long before we discovered the wonders of mercrury or pesticides. It's just that no one ever talked about it (as my mother told me, it was considered a "dirty disease"). And yes, I do believe that man-made
substances such as BPV should be studied (not on animals, by the way), and taken off the market for more than one reason, but goodness.
I get so angry when I watch TV now because I'll be flipping through the channels and I'll come across Nickelodeon or another kids channel and I freak out and start screaming at anyone near me, "WHY ARE CHILDREN BEING TREATED LIKE IDIOTS?" When I was a kid, not-so-long-ago, I don't remember being treated like a moron by my favorite Saturday morning cartoons. My mother always treated me with respect and never acted like I wasn't capable of something. I look at parents today who pamper their children and clean everything with anti-bacterial Clorox so they don't get sick and practically wrap them in bubble wrap before they get dropped off at school because holy crap they might hit their head on the bus when the parent's aren't looking. I'm so sick of being warned that my coffee is going to be hot or told that I shoudn't eat a frozen pizza before cooking it.
I'm only 20 years old, and I can already tell how messed up my generation (born mid-eighties to present) is going to be because parents are so over-protective. Look at how many kids are in therapy and look at all the drugs their shoving in teen's faces. Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Abilify. Look at the the teen suicide rate. Not only should we be looking the dangers of what's in our waterbottles, but look at how society is being treated, espcially towards children.
When my little cousins tell me they're bored, I don't tell them to go play with their super-safe-gaureenteed-not-to-hurt-them-in-any-way toys but who ever can climb up that tree the highest gets a firecracker. Kids need some physical pain and they need to learn to be independent of their parents in order to grow up mentally and emotionally strong. Hell, my mother is one of the most independent people I know and her parents basically told her if it wasn't raining you're going to play outside. Emotional and mental strength, in my opinion is more important than physical strength, but they go hand-in-hand.
I don't think children should be treated like idiots and they should be given the choice to make their own choices and given the chance to do some dumb things and make some mistakes so they learn. And maybe one of these days, we won't need to have a warning on our coffee cups.
TreeHuggers may be interested in reading a couple old articles by Wente which are extremely pro-car and anti-transit:
Will buck-a-litre gas come between me and my SUV? You've gotta be kidding
(I wonder how $1.35/litre gas is treating her today?)
The war against the car will never succeed
She's the right-wing newspaper version of Don Cherry (Rush Limbaugh in a Herb Tarlek wardrobe, for Americans).
@ Seanan
I'm confused, first you say that performing experiments on rats is equivilent to treating them like holocoast victims then you say that they aren't equal to humans at all... seems a lil contradictory.
The reason rats make good study subjects, btw, is that their blood and our blood is remarkably similar and reacts to various substances in identical ways. Does this mean I support the torture of innocent creatures for we can find out it a poison is, well, poisonous? Nope, cause ya know, that's kinda stupid.
I agree with you, kids do need to go play outside and be kids and get hurt and learn, etc. We shouldn't protect them from that sort of thing, cause they don't need protecting from it (a couple broken arms never did me any harm... long term anyway). But we do need to protect them from poisons that will long term weaken their bodies.
Ms Wente was basically saying that we don't need to worry about these poisons. Mr Alter was saying she's a moron for saying that. I'd have to agree with Mr Alter. I dunno about you, but poison never really agreed with me.
For the "give me a break-ers" :
I highly suggest you read the following books:
Our Stolen Future, by Theo Colburn
Their Product is Doubt, by David Michaels
Toxic Deception, by Fagin et al
The Secret History on the War on Cancer, by Derva Davis
Then, you can come back and apologize for jumping all over Lloyd. It's easy to do. I've done it before in reference to some of his posts. But you really ought to have an informed opinion first.
Thanks for commenting Lloyd.
(Just to clarify: for those of us out west in the draconian tracts of campbell-land, Toronto is ~= USA. ;-)
again, let me say i am NOT a fan of wente!
And i do appreciate that decisions and actions should be taken to minimize the exposure of citizens and consumers to toxic substances. I think it is the case that canadian society has determined that to be something that we would like in place...
But that does not negate the fact that I believe that you have misconstrued ms. wente's article, and have spun it in such a way that it serves as a strawman and foil for your own arguments, which, while interesting, are not stronger or more attractive by their use in this manner.
The root of this 'complaint' is that I do not think that citizens or consumers should be or need to be reliant upon government or industry for their own protection. Removing the decision making processes from the hands of individuals simply reinforces the "society of entitlement" that we have begun enshrining here in Canada.
I say again: people must learn to figure it out for themselves.
Yes, it is up to us a SOCIETY, to decide upon and encourage the implementation of preventative measures for those not capable of learning/deciding for themselves (presuming that that is a social desire). But that decision can be executed through either market pressure (don't buy the crap to start with), or legislation IF and only IF the citizens in said society make the decision to demand the enforcement of such regulation. (but again, this must be an ACTIVE decision on the part of the citizens, and such enactment conveys certain limitations on the activities and rights of those citizens - basically you are now committed to a legislative process of refinement of the protection measure, and all the piffle and red-tape that is included with such, and the individual action of again - not buying the crap to start with)
But i will vehemently disagree that:
1.) ignorance is an excuse that demands the enactment of such legislation (the paucity of information and the blatant simplicity of "if its too good a deal to be true, it probably isnt a good deal" can be appreciated by an 8 year old)
2.) that citizens or consumers have ANY inherent "right" to such protection; rights are only ever the result of the thorough execution of responsibilities. It is your responsibility as rational individual to FIGURE IT OUT. If you waive that responsibility, then you also waive the rights associated with it! It is very very simple.
I will reemphasize this last, as it is something that is sorely missing from contemporary discussions: Rights are only granted through the execution of responsibilities. If you do not carry out your intellectual responsibility, you have no "right" to cry foul. So again, for the sound-bite: FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.
Unscientific hysteria: cancer rates (apart from lung cancer which is being driven up by women smoking) are falling in the U.S. They only appear to be rising because the population is aging.
BPA is weakly estrogenic. But as the European Union states in its 2006 risk assessment, it loses all estrogenic capacity if it is orally ingested. It only functions as an endocrine disruptor if it is injected - this is why the research activist groups such as treehugger cite has been rejected by the precautionary-principle wielding European Union (it raised the tolerable daily intake because it found BPA safer than previously thought), the Japanese government, and an independent analysis by NSF international conducted by Calvin Willhite of California's EPA. The some concern raised by the National Toxicology Program in the U.S. cannot be dismissed, but the fact is the NTP dismissed most of the risks attributed to BPA on sites like this.
Even the very latest studies contradict the idea that BPA is an enemy of the people. A study by EPA scientists published online in December 2007 in the pre-eminent toxicological journal Toxicological Sciences found that gestational and lactational exposure to ethinyl estradiol, a sex hormone used in the contraceptive pill did produce low dose effects in rats, such as decreased sperm counts, while similar low-dose exposures to BPA had no effects whatsoever.
As for phthalates, there may be a slight effect on health, but even the Guardian's bad science columnist, Dr. Ben Goldacre thinks the danger has been overhyped by the American media. And recently, one of the the 2001 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, William Knowles, denounced the scare-mongering over the class of chemicals as unjustified by the science. Given that Knowles won for a contribution that will be critical to creation of green chemistry, shouldn't his position be accorded some respect? Some weight of expertise? After all, there is no-one equivalent to his stature in the scientific community claiming that phthalates are dangerous.
The problem with Treehugger is that there is no scientific debate. Any source who claims a risk from these chemicals is presumed to be infallible and any who protests that they are not risky is denounced as a tool of industry or whatever. The case against the case against BPA is simple: it rests on poor research, methodologically flawed and statistically underpowered. The European and US risk assessments explain, on scientific grounds, why they rejected many studies on BPA. Why not challenge that scientific reasoning?
As for the poster who recommend Derva Davis as a source of the truth about cancer, her book was panned, panned even by the New York Review of Books - hardly a bastion of pro-corporate rightwing agitprop.
Trevor Butterworth
Editor, www.stats.org
(ps - spare me the attack on STATS sourcing: we've been funded by several conservative foundations; we do not accept industry money; our sister organization CMPA has also accepted conservative funding, as well as funding from the NRDC, the Rockefeller Brothers etc. we are both non-profit, non-partisan associations which welcome funding from any non-industry source on the proviso that we write about what the weight of scientific evidence says and not what you'd like it to say. )