Subject: Conflicting Studies Confuse Doctors (Ferguson)..
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 054028 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers"
To: emfguru
--------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody:
The following is an excellent "thought" message (news commentary)
forwarded by Jim Ferguson . I strongly
recommend it to all....
"...Should this be applied to the EMF/EMR situation," he asks?
**"If a lie is repeated often enough (a la Mueller), it becomes taken
as truth and before we know it nobody listens to any contrary
information..."**
Jim's question is suggested by the "thrust" of the article below.
Indeed, its thought might be applied to either "side" now engaged
in the controversy that is swirling around EMF health risks.
That is not to 'accuse' either side as deliberately lying, but merely
to allow for the fact that some "honest mistakes" may be compelling the
kind of "oft repeated errors" suggested in the article below....
(I also believe that there has been some deliberate lying.....!!!!)
So, let us read the following piece recognizing that either side
may be the "guilty" promoter of "misinformation."
I have assumed that from the beginning. And, in fact, my own
thinking about this issue LONG AGO went through the exercise suggested
by the article below..... To this day, I often wonder, "How much of the
information I am repeating from the various **science** information
sources (I have TRIED to confine myself to) is misinformation?" Frankly,
I assume that SOME of it must be!! That conclusion is simply a matter of
mathematical probability.....
But, I have not **consciously** forwarded or repeated "misinformation" --
if I had reason to doubt its validity. Still, some of my information
'may' (unknown to me) fall into the category of that discussed below.
And, no doubt, that is equally true of the "other side."
My problem with "the other side" in this EMF saga, however, is that I
have caught them (industry and the government) REPEATEDLY passing
"misinformation" to the public!!! ....And, given the clear 'conflict
of interest' **($$$$$$$ and "national defense" as well as the political
"corruption" openly present)** ... I conclude ... with good reason, I
submit ... that the government industry misinformation is OFTEN
**deliberate**.....!!!!
Usually that misinformation is done with subtlety. Most often it is
done through obfuscation or omission. It also often occurs in the form
of "selective" presentation of the evidence. I call that deliberate
distortion ... and there has been much of it in this EMF saga.
These "problems," from time to time, also entangle the scientists as
well.....!!! And, my **fury** with them ... over their willingness to
'knowingly' **"go along"** with misrepresentations of their work - rather
than **correct the erroneous public reports (as 'loudly' as it was
misrepresented in the first instance)** is the source of my having
built-up (I am told) a substantial number of "enemies."
The way the NCI (Linet) study results were interpreted and presented
to the public, for example ... or ... more recently, in the U.K.,
the headlines which were used to report the "opposite" results of the
childhood/power lines cancer study. The same thing had occurred earlier
in the case of the NAS (National Academy of Science) study about the
same subject.....
In BOTH of the latter cases, the public was given headlines that said
(as a conclusion of the study) "living near the power lines was safe" --
when, in fact, **that conclusion was not contained in either study** and
the data in the studies strongly suggest the opposite.... The distorters
did this, in both cases, by headlining study results that "conclusive"
evidence of harm was lacking.
Yes, "conclusive" evidence is lacking. But, that "begs the question,"
namely: what does the bulk of the evidence (or the weight of the
evidence) "suggest"!!! .... Or point us toward??? Are there ... or
are there not ... substantial risks involved in the case of those
families living near power lines
I submit that ALL the evidence does not "point us toward" a "safe"
verdict in the power line (ELF frequency) EMF case....!!!
**It points, instead, to a "substantial risk" conclusion.....**
(Even though the "calculated" risk factors are low - the "bias" in
those calculations, that is introduced by the ubiquitous presence of
EMF in the surroundings of the population, requires that they mentally
be adjusted upward.....)
I consider that the evidence is more uncertain at this time in the
RF/MW frequency cases, namely the cell phone antennas, or radio/TV
antennas, radars, etc... Though the evidence in these, also,
is not "comforting," and the frequently reassuring headlines of the
industry people in that regard is surely "dishonest" ... in terms
of what little we DO know..... I believe that much of the industry
"propaganda" is aimed at **discouraging further research** -- when,
in fact, the opposite is what is called for....
And those are the messages, Jim, that I am repeating and repeating
and repeating..... To that extent, "I" may be guilty of the error
suggested in the following piece. But, when I compare "my" actions
to the actions of industry and the government in this matter ...
"my" conscience is clear.....
If industry and the government were being **straightforward** with
the information they were disseminating to the public on this EMF
matter, then I doubt that I ever would have started EMF-L in the
first place. **It was the OBVIOUS disparity between "facts" and "what
was being reported" in the flow of information, which (as an "insider")
I began to see early-on, that motivated me -- and nothing else.....!!!**
So, I do recommend the "thought" in the following piece to all of my
EMF-L readers.... Let us read it ... accepting that WE, ALSO, may
be guilty..... But we are **TRYING** not to be.....
**Can the "other side" say the same ... in good conscience.....????**
Cheerio.....
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
roy@emfguru.com
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
NEW!!! Website... http://emfguru.com
...................People are more important than profits.................
Missed opportunity...
$$$$$ We could have changed the corrupted system!! $$$$$
McCain !!
>From the Associated Press
Friday April 21 1:14 PM ET
Conflicting Studies Confuse Doctors
By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor
BOSTON (AP) - This time it is fiber, which contrary to the collective
wisdom of the brightest minds in medicine apparently does not ward off
colon cancer after all.
The specifics change, but the pattern is the same: Over and over, the
conventional medical wisdom collapses under the weight of new
evidence.
Remember when salt was evil? When eggs were the soul of dietary
wickedness? When estrogen seemed like an iron shield against heart
disease?
Now it is pretty clear that salt is not an important cause of high
blood pressure. Most people probably can eat an egg for breakfast
without triggering a heart attack. And estrogen? No one really knows
how that will turn out, but there is doubt about the long-accepted
assumption that it keeps the heart working smoothly after menopause.
So how does this happen? Why do health rules fall apart after they are
chiseled in stone? And how do they get to be rules in the first place?
Many health professionals say it comes down to the willingness of all
involved - the scientists, the news media and the public - to draw
firm conclusions from a stew of often poorly conducted, contradictory
and incomplete observations.
``One of the problems is that strong recommendations have often been
made on very weak data,'' says Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard
School of Public Health. ``It may have been the best guess at the
moment. But often the recommendations are repeated so many times that
people forget they were rough guesses in the first place and come to
think they are hard facts.''
This is not to say everything is wrong or likely to be overturned
tomorrow. For instance, scientists feel absolutely certain that
smoking is bad.
Many are reasonably sure that obesity is harmful over the long haul.
And they are comfortable recommending that people avoid saturated fat
and eat lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, even though the
exact benefits of some of these aren't entirely clear.
Willett says one reason for the today-it's-good-for-you,
tomorrow-it's-not phenomenon is the well-intended ``missionary zeal''
of scientists who believe their own work and happily repeat the
seemingly solid bottom line without going into the complexity and
uncertainty of the whole business.
Another essential player in this process, scientists like to point
out, is the news media.
``You get the two-sentence synopsis that turns a complicated issue
into a black or white, a yes or no,'' says Lynn L. Moore, an
epidemiologist at Boston University School of Medicine. ``That's not a
great service.''
Dr. Thomas Pearson of the University of Rochester notes that some
scientists seem bent on encouraging the boldest headlines for their
research, and get plenty of help from the reporters who interview
them.
``The probing question is, `What does this mean?' Reporters don't want
the usual blah-blah answer, which is, `We really need more
research,''' Pearson says. ``Between science and the press, we have
confused a lot of people.''
The fact is, science is a messy process. No single study, no matter
how large or careful, is likely to settle an important health
question.
Sorting out the influence of genes, food, pollutants, living habits
and all the rest requires drawing together information from many
different scientific approaches. These include experiments in lab
dishes, tests on inbred rats, observations of large groups of people
and human experiments.
Data from all of these kinds of science went into the rise and fall of
the idea that fiber prevents colon cancer.
The theory began in the 1970s. Scientists noticed that poor people in
rural Africa get much less colon cancer than do better-off Westerners.
Of course, the differences between these two populations are too
numerous to count, but an obvious one was the Africans' higher
consumption of fiber.
Over time, many lines of evidence seemed to support the theory. For
instance, it was shown that people who immigrate to places where colon
cancer is common take on a higher risk as they adopt the eating habits
of their new home. In the lab, experiments showed that animals fed
cancer-causing toxins seem to be protected by high-fiber diets.
Furthermore, the idea made sense. Fiber makes the stools bulkier and
perhaps more likely to dilute cancer-causing substances. Fiber also
makes these bad things flow more quickly through the digestive system.
The data seemed convincing enough for health agencies to recommend
high-fiber foods as one way of preventing colon cancer, the
second-leading cancer killer, even though the evidence was conflicting
at best.
Finally, two large federally financed studies put the theory to the
test by putting people on low-fat, high-fiber diets. The meticulously
run experiments found no evidence this lowers the risk of polyps,
which are the first stage of colon cancer.
Willett's team came to the same conclusion by an entirely different
method. The researchers followed the eating habits of 88,757 nurses
for 16 years and found no hint of an effect of fiber on colon cancer.
``When we published it last year, it was heresy to say the data don't
support a major benefit of fiber in reducing colon cancer,'' Willett
says. ``Now we know that if there is a benefit, it's not very large,
because it is not just one study showing this.''
_________________________________________________________________
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.emfguru.com