Today’s dose of health scaremongering
It hardly bears mentioning that The Huffington Post remains one of the least reliable sources of decent, scientifically-literate reporting on health and medicine, but this piece by natural diet guru John Robbins is nearly beyond belief. Inspired by vague, unconfirmed reports that a handful of Chinese babies have grown breasts after consuming infant formula, Robbins builds a meandering, tissue-thin argument that, as best I can reconstruct it, follows like so:
- Chinese babies are growing breasts
- Hormones in milk production are to blame
- Here are links to my books and website
- Something weird happened in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s
- Hormones are used in US milk production
- High levels of certain hormones are associated with certain cancers
- Monsanto is SO FUCKING EVIL
- Women should breastfeed their babies and restrict themselves to European cheese
Robbins’ article has been promoted widely (and with depressingly uncritical reception) on all the social media sites over the past day or so (e.g.), which means that if you’re a young parent, in all likelihood someone you know will be pestering you about this by the end of the week. There are so many weak ligaments in the argument, though, it’s hard to know where to begin twisting. For starters, when Robbins insists that “the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula” in China is responsible for the instances of breast growth, he’s engaging in what’s politely known in the trade as “making shit up.” In fact, there’s no evidence of anything at the moment — no evidence that the reports from China are valid, no evidence that the milk formula was contaminated (because sample testing has yet to occur), and no evidence that what we’re actually talking about aren’t in fact cases of benign premature thelarche. But so far as John Robbins is concerned, bovine growth hormones — used to enhance milk production — are the obvious culprit.
To buttress his hypothesis, Robbins reminds his readers that something similar happened in Puerto Rico during the early 1980s. To wit:
There were four-year-old girls with fully developed breasts. There were three-year old girls with pubic hair and vaginal bleeding. There were one-year-old girls who had not yet begun to walk but whose breasts were growing. And it wasn’t just the females. Young boys were also affected. Many had to have surgery to deal with breasts that had become grossly swollen.
What he’s describing here was, in fact, a massive, freak epidemic of premature sexual development that was thought to be the result of estrogen contamination in the Puerto Rican food supply as well as in medicines and creams that contained high levels of the hormone. The Puerto Rican episode has become boilerplate in the organic/natural food literature (thanks in no small part to Robbins himself, who mentions it in most of his books), but it requires some qualification. While Robbins cites the initial study describing the phenomenon, he fails to mention that it was most likely caused by the use of diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen drug that was conclusively linked with vaginal cancer and was fairly soon withdrawn from use in both medicine and agriculture. By the late 1980s, DES and other synthetic estrogens were no longer turning up in food sample testing. This would be what we might call “an important detail.”
But since Robbins isn’t concerned with distinguishing this week’s reports from China from the 25-year-old anomalies in Puerto Rico, it’s not surprising that he isn’t willing to distinguish between different kinds of hormones. And why should he? Most Americans aren’t endocrinologists, but most Americans have absorbed panicky warnings about hormones in their food, and people like John Robbins are in the business of selling books to panicky non-endocrinologists who happen to loathe gigantic, scary corporations like Monsanto. And Monsanto, we’re reminded, makes the recombinant bovine growth hormone (Posilac) that is supposedly going to kill us all, or turn us into brain-nibbling zombies, or whatever other apocalyptic scenarios actual science has so far failed to bear out. So when Robbins spends the rest of his article, for example, warning readers — falsely — that Monsanto’s own data show that retail milk supplies are teeming with hormones like IGF-1, he’s banking on the fact that his readers (a) don’t know how to use PubMed; (b) won’t understand that rBGH and IGF-1 are proteins that break down in digestion, while estradiol and other sex hormones are steroids that remain active in the body after ingestion; and (c) the human body produces all these scary hormones (IGF-1 included) in vastly greater quantities than we could ever derive from normal patterns of consumption. Even worse, Robbins elides the distinction between cause and correlation, making the strong claim that high levels of IGF-1 pose a “risk” for causing cancer — a claim that is, so far as I can tell, not supported by the research and is in fact contradicted by the very same Lancet article he cites in defense of his increasingly weird argument.
So what’s the point of it all? Well, Robbins tosses all of this together like a pig’s dinner and concludes that prolonged breastfeeding and European dairy products are the only way to avoid the horrifying infant sexual development that may or may not have taken place in a handful of central Chinese households; the horrifying epidemic of early puberty that struck Puerto Rico due to a completely unrelated public health anomaly a quarter century ago; and the wrath of cancers that probably aren’t caused by the hormone that doesn’t actually exist at greater levels in Monsanto Milk. And that’s basically it.
To echo a thought that Rob has expressed in a slightly different context, I’d be willing to develop arguments three times as shitty for a mere fraction of what John Robbins earns writing nonsense like this. And since I’m not actually a scientist or a medical doctor, I’ve already got the proper credentials to write for The Huffington Post!
Well said.
The HuffPoo has evolved over the years into some bizarre dysfunctional hybrid of news aggregator, People Magazine, The National Enquiror, and home for celebrity columnists. They seem to be especially fond of quack medicine and health stories.
The good news out of all of this is that, if you live another 20-25 years, as you approach retirement you can write a book about the history of crackpot medical theories and homeopathy in the late-20th and early-21st century.
Well, this is actually true. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that they’re creating a zombie unicorn army.
I would applaud efforts by Monsanto to create a zombie unicorn army because it would be quantitatively less evil than the shit they are actually doing.
Such as patenting traditional crops grown by indigenous communities in Mexico for thousands of years and then charging them in court under NAFTA with patent infringement and trying to force them to pay Monsanto for the right to use their own seeds.
Yes. Don’t they also produce GMOs such that the seeds require proprietary fertilizer and pesticides?
My personal favorite is Monsanto’s suit against a farmer who unintentionally started growing some patented crops as a result of seeds from elsewhere drifting (by winds) onto his land. Because patent infringement does not require intent, dontcha know.
Actually, as I recall, his grain was cross pollinated by someone else’s crops (most cereals pollinate by wind), transferring Monsanto’s patented genes to his crop.
As I further recall, that was his defense. I have a vague memory that Monsanto’s counterclaim was that, broadly, he was lying through his teeth about where the seeds came from.
[117] A variety of possible sources were suggested, including cross field breeding by wind or insects, seed blown from passing trucks, or dropping from farm equipment, or swaths blown from neighbours’ fields. All of these sources, it is urged, could be potential contributors to cross-breeding of Schmeiser’s own canola or to deposit of seeds on his land without his consent. Mr. Borstmayer, who farmed on the same grid road but further north from Bruno than Mr. Schmeiser’s fields numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4, testified that in the winter of 1996-97 a bag of Roundup Ready canola seed had fallen from his truck in Bruno and broken open, and some seed was lost before he put the broken bag back on his truck to be hauled past Schmeiser’s fields to his own. Further, after harvesting his 1997 crop he trucked it to the elevator on the grid road to Bruno, past Schmeiser’s fields, with at least two loads in an old truck with a loose tarp. He believes that on those journeys he lost some seed.
[118] It may be that some Roundup Ready seed was carried to Mr. Schmeiser’s field without his knowledge. Some such seed might have survived the winter to germinate in the spring of 1998. However, I am persuaded by evidence of Dr. Keith Downey, an expert witness appearing for the plaintiffs, that none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser’s crop. His view was supported in part by evidence of Dr. Barry Hertz, a mechanical engineer, whose evidence scientifically demonstrated the limited distance that canola seed blown from trucks in the road way could be expected to spread. I am persuaded on the basis of Dr. Downey’s evidence that on a balance of probabilities none of the suggested possible sources of contamination of Schmeiser’s crop was the basis for the substantial level of Roundup Ready canola growing in field number 2 in 1997.
[119] Yet the source of the Roundup resistant canola in the defendants’ 1997 crop is really not significant for the resolution of the issue of infringement which relates to the 1998 crop. It is clear from Mr. Schmeiser himself that he retained seed grown in 1996 in field number 1 to be his seed for the 1997 crop. In 1997 he was aware that the crop in field number 2 showed a very high level of tolerance to Roundup herbicide and seed from that field was harvested, and retained for seed for 1998.
[120] I find that in 1998 Mr. Schmeiser planted canola seed saved from his 1997 crop in his field number 2 which seed he knew or ought to have known was Roundup tolerant, and that seed was the primary source for seeding and for the defendants’ crops in all nine fields of canola in 1998.
There actually are legitimate questions about the safety of rBGH, and I know a few researchers working on the subject. It is a hormone (hence the “H” in the name) and might just have some effect on consumers of milk. That said, Robbins is doing what Robbins does best, and he’ll get paid for it.
Monsanto is very, very evil. Check out what’s going on with the spread of pesticide resistance from their “Roundup Ready” seeds. HuffPo’s unfortunate affinity for woo does not get Monsanto out of the Bad Guy classification.
True, but criticism of Monsanto should remain on point. Monsanto’s attempts to limit consumer protections regarding rBGH ( i.e. http://eatlocalkc.typepad.com/eatlocalkc/2008/02/monsanto-tries.html ) woul dbe on point. Trying to conflate the potential risk of rBGH with a completely separate steroid banned 25 years ago just creates a nice strawman to discredit legitimate opposition.
From what I’ve read, the greatest danger for rBGH/rBST is to the cows themselves. There, the data seem pretty clear that it’s not good for them.
Thirding the “Monsanto is evil” claim.
Also, I’m not much on cheese, but I have many foodie friends who hate the USDA’s stance on unpasteurized milk cheeses. As they put it, in Europe cheese is alive; here it’s dead.
Plus, there are good reasons for breast-feeding, no?
None of which means you aren’t 100% right about this article. Just goes to show that you can make a bad argument that includes some true claims. Not that anyone needs reminding of that truism.
Or as the FDA might put it, European cheese is more than capable of giving someone Listeria, while here it can’t. For you and me, Listeria’s probably not so bad, but to certain populations, it’s a game ender. Responsible adults make their own choices and all that, to be sure. And I’m sure there’s germier/nastier things you can do. Did you know, for example, that honey for infants is really, really bad? Probably not, unless you’re a pediatrician or very, very well informed parent. My point is simply that I think our philosophy here is that it’s easier to not have to be a microbiologist in order to make risk/benefit assessments about whether the food you eat will make you sick.
I hope you will get the chance someday to enlighten the poor benighted public health authorities in France as to the superior knowledge and cost-benefit calculations of the USDA. When you do, would you do us the favor of posting their reply? Thanks.
Or to cut the snark for a minute, if you were to say that both US and European public health policies in re cheese have complicated relations with their respective agricultural traditions / economic interests, I’d be happy to agree. But to put it in terms of superior scientific knowledge on the part of the super-duper modern Americans? Please.
Or in other words, using your example, why don’t we ban honey the way we ban unpasteurized cheese? Is it the science or the political economy?
Don’t be too hard on the political economy.
That’s a systematic risk of progressivism.
You create an FDA, and you will be successful in standardizing safety and quality to a degree, but the process becomes one of political economics, and people cease to rely on experts, rather relying on non-experts who take expert opinion (and lobbyists) into consideration.
Actually, I meant the exact opposite. Given a product that a) is potentially harmful to certain groups and b) *not* widely known to be potentially harmful, the Powers That Be seem to have decided that it’s better to make it less available than it would be if they didn’t intervene. This seems to reflect a philosophy of the regulators. Whether you agree or disagree (I personally have no particular opinion), I’m not sure how this observation is all that controversial.
I clearly meant that you were implying superior knowledge on the part of the American regulators vs their French counterparts, not the knowledge quality high or low of the American public.
My point is simply that I think our philosophy here is that it’s easier to not have to be a microbiologist in order to make risk/benefit assessments about whether the food you eat will make you sick.
You know modern society has kind of figured that out. In fact, all societies have kinda figured that out. Its called the division of labor.
From the very beginning, humans were confronted with the fact that it is easier if they didn’t have to do everything themselves, so all sorts of social roles sprung up biologically and culturally.
Today I can also say that it’s easier to not have to be a mechanic in order to make risk/benefit assessments about whether putting leaded in your unleaded engine will harm it.
Since we can’t all be mechanics and microbiologists, we have people who specialize in being mechanics and microbiologists, while we specialize in other things.
So while I admit it is easier to not have to be a microbiologist to know whether your diet could make you sick, I am having a hard time figuring out why it isn’t easiest to ask a microbiologist?
I agree in a sort of way. But there’s a big transaction cost in just “asking microbiologists. Which ones? Those working for the USDA? For the French Ministry of Health? For Monsanto? For universities that rent them out to Monsanto?
I’m completely in favor of having microbiologists work for us in government agencies and having them have input into the regulatory practices that control the food supply. It’s just that we need multiple layers of oversight to prevent regulatory capture by food companies. And I remain unconvinced that US cheese policy is purely scientific, whatever that would mean.
I disagree at this point that there is a big transaction cost.
If there is anything professionals really enjoy doing, its providing their opinion, and through the internet opinion is dispersed with very little cost.
It could be true, however, (and I think this is what you are getting at) that we may have swung in the opposite direction, where information overload has made it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff, raising transaction costs again.
Ultimately, like most questions like this, I have to say “I don’t know where the correct balance is”, and also like most questions like this, I really don’t trust an agency like the FDA to determine that for me, especially when I tend to not assign much cost to sorting out bullshit.
Sure, but we need to have an FDA to distrust, if you see what I’m saying. Or better put, I believe that we are a “we” (I’m a non-Thatcherite) and I realize that not all of us have the time and training to surf the web and interpret scientific articles, even popularized ones. So even if the FDA is paternalistic in the bad sense when it comes to us college-educated types, it’s paternalistic in the good sense (and there is a good sense) for many other people.
Actually, if we are to continue with this metaphor of limited utility, government agencies are paternalistic in the good sense for us college-educated types for all but the tiny, tiny areas of pseudo-expertise we’re able to create for ourselves outside the really small area of true expertise. But “paternalism in the good sense” isn’t really a good metaphor.
Do you think the FDA should be in the business of banning and scheduling products, or should they be in the business of recommending products?
Your argument seems to be for FDA has a consumer representative and clearing house, rather than their current role.
I also have a relatively minor quibble.
I tend to think of paternalism as “protecting someone from his/herself”.
In that sense, I don’t believe there is a really good sort of paternalism.
If you include in your definition of “paternalism” a role of protecting someone from market failings where they aren’t able to fully look out for themselves, then I would agree there could be a “good paternalism”.
If you distrust the FDA (and there’s good reason to do so, in some cases), then it’s good to have an underlying mechanism to determine which instances you should distrust them. I go with the old Marxian question: “Cui bono?”
If we’re talking about the FDA waving rBGH/rBST through because they’ve got too cozy a relationship with Monsanto, then those benefitting are Monsanto and whichever FDA employee that’s going to get a cushy job at Monsanto. If we’re talking about pasteurization–well, no one is making any extra money off of heating milk enough to kill off the various pathogens that it can harbor (and they are numereous–don’t fool yourself). There is no “pasteurization industry” to profit from this.
DocAmazing,
There are a couple points to be drawn from this:
1. It is hard for me to fathom a situation where there is no industry to benefit from FDA activity. If there is no industry who is economically benefited or harmed by the FDA, what exactly is the FDA doing? It seems to me that, if there is no industry that can gain by endangering consumers, then FDA would have a hard time finding anything to do.
2. The single most important point I believe that keeps me from being a liberal, or keeps liberals from being a left-leaning libertarian like me, is the discounting of ratcheting effects in government. Even if we find a market that does not stand to corrupt government regulation (and thereby greatly diminish the chances the government will provide a workable solution to market failings), simply creating the infrastructure and precedent for regulation also creates an avenue for corruption in comparable markets.
As far as that goes, Gabriel Kolko’s revisionist history of the progressive era is eye-opening in the amount of work big industry interests put into co-opting the progressive regulatory movement.
I don’t offer this up as a black and white argument, just as an appeal for consideration.
@ Brad at 12:11: protecting them not from market failings but from predatory corporations And / or small-time snake oil salesmen. You could say that they stay in business is because of market failings (not enough info to judge them or they produce disinformation / lie) but that seems a kind of circumlocution.
the reason they stay in business …
RE “market failings”: Maybe that’s not really a circumlocution for predatory corps and /or snake oil grifters, but it defines “market” as providing perfect information w/ no costs of acquiring that information. And we don’t have those kind of markets here in the real world, and the kind of real markets we do have aren’t continuous with those ideal markets. IOW, you can’t just build in a few squiggles into your ideal market model and get to the real world, whose markets have discontinuities, singularities, etc. Now I forget exactly where I’ve read this argument (I think it’s Mirowski’s _Machine Dreams_ — or is it Stiglitz, _Freefall_?), so don’t be too mad at me if the terms aren’t precise. We’re friends now!
It’s in Chapter 9 of Freefall.
DocAmazing, I don’t think anyone here or in France is arguing for mass consumption of unpasteurized milk. (Maybe some people do, for all I know.) I’m just relaying the complaints of my foodie friends about French cheese made from such. It wouldn’t be a big market if it were allowed, but I guess Velveeta wouldn’t like the general idea of people getting exposed to another kind of cheese entirely.
Yes, protecting people from snake oil salesman, basically making sure people are not taken in by people selling unsafe or fraudulent products is the proper role for the FDA, but that can be addressed in two ways:
1. The current manner, by which it makes a strict list of what you can and cannot have, and when you can have it.
This is what I would call bad paternalism. This is domineering, extremely prone to corruption, and amounts to a stifling of behavior and outcomes.
2. An alternative manner, by which it forms the role of researcher, advisor, and advocate to ensure all parties to a medical transaction can and should be amply informed.
This is what I could call “good paternalism”. It is still prone to corruption and would still require considerable oversight, but instead of being stifling to behavior, it helps to defend against market failings that lead people towards behavior that isn’t optimal.
Also, as a side note, snake oil salesmen wouldn’t count as a market failing. However, prohibitive information costs leading to asymmetries existing between snake oil salesmen and their prospective customers would count.
I also agree that you can’t “just build in a few squiggles into your ideal market model and get to the real world”. But if you are going to regulate markets, you are going to have to model them.
You’re being so mean to Huffington’s Post. Don’t all the lewd and lascivious commercial virus-embedded photos of oiled-up surgery-augmented naked women make up for the other harm they do? Oh, wait…
John Robbins and Huffington Post can’t hold a candle to lewrockwell.com and Bill Sardi:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi-arch.html
He basically alternates between creationist arguments based on a complete lack of understanding of biology in general and arguments against vaccines based on a complete lack of understanding of biology in general.
Every once in a while, he shoots out a gold bug article, too, just for good measure.
Indeed, Brad, good call. Though I believe the HuffPo has featured Deepak Chopra on atheists in the past.
Really though, I think it’s bad form to 1.) Start a ‘I’ll find a nuttier wingnut on the internet’ contest (that’s a game no one wins) and 2.) start out with a creationist libertarian goldbug (that’s like running up the score).
You are probably correct on all points, but I had two alternative reasons for posting this:
1. Humor purposes
2. Show I’m not entirely in the tank for libertarians (I got that reputation pretty quick with some folks on here).
for nuttier than anybody who can actually type, it’s conservapedia or nothing.
[...] Today's dose of health scaremongering : Lawyers, Guns & Money Ultimately, like most questions like this, I have to say “I don't know where the correct balance is” and also like most questions like this, I really don't trust an agency like the FDA to determine that for me, especially when I tend to not assign John Robbins and Huffington Post can't hold a candle to and Bill Sardi //www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi-arch.html. He basically alternates between creationist arguments based on a complete lack of . [...]