Chicago Trib

Hiding the real picture: 2 Web sites expose facts advocates won't tell you

Dennis Byrne. Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area public affairs consultant. April 30, 2001

Sorry, I have bad news. The chances that you will die this year are 1 in 120.

But I have good news. The number of people who have died from genetically modified corn in taco shells is zero. Zip. Nada. Rien.

That might surprise you from all the buzzing the media have done about the dangers of genetically engineered corn. In case you can't keep straight everything that "puts you at risk" these days, I'm referring to Starlink, a genetically modified corn approved for animal feed, but not for human consumption. The feed hit the fan when it showed up in some commercial taco shells.

As James Freeman, editor of TechnoPolitics.com, put it: "So far, biological science cannot identify any threat [to humans] at all, but because no one has proven that Starlink can never harm anyone anywhere, the government had withheld its approval for human consumption."

Yet the search for taco shell victims continues.

I came upon this web site (www.technopolitics.com) while contemplating the frenzied rush to make this a perfectly safe planet.

I was prompted to contemplate this by readers, some of them frenzied, who objected to my suggestion last week that environmental policy should be built on science, not knee-jerk politics. It's what I liked about President Bush's environmental approach. Predictably, in some views, that made me something less than human--but probably not deserving of the same protections reserved for snail darters.

Still, I found some other interesting statistics. Afraid to travel in Europe, thanks to mad cow disease? TechnoPolitics' "risk index" points out that a European's chance of dying of the disease is 1 in 15 million. I've long argued that debate about health and environmental policies always should provide such risk ratings, so the public (and politicians, it is hoped) can make informed decisions about where to put our scarce resources.

For example, how effective are U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations compared with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules? TechnoPolitics' risk index tells us that the cost of saving a single life using HHS mammography rules is $320,000. The cost of saving one life using EPA solid waste rules is $36 billion. Which is not to say that we should eliminate solid waste rules, but it raises some legitimate questions about cost-effectiveness.

Here's another place to look for help: the Statistical Assessment Service. Called STATS (www.stats.org), it describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan organization that examines how scientific, quantitative and social research is presented by the media, with the admirable, but perhaps unobtainable, goal of helping journalists convey the material more accurately and effectively.

There we will find such interesting stuff as a Princeton Survey Research poll that asked 1,200 adults, "Did you vote in the 2000 presidential election?" Seventy-two percent said no, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. The actual voter turnout was 51 percent. Mass amnesia?

Some stuff is funny, such as the worst news story lead, this month's being the breathless warning coming from "The Guardian": "Scientists are preparing to start trials of the world's first genetically modified insect, an unnatural born killer moth that will fly over cotton fields, passing a deadly gene on to its pestilent kin." Shouldn't that be "unnatural hatched?" STATS asks, tongue in cheek.

Actually, that's not so funny when you think of the confusion and distrust caused by the junk science and junk reporting raining down on the public. Consider the timely STATS piece on the criticism of Bush's review of regulations for arsenic in drinking water imposed at the last minute by President Bill Clinton. "Arsenic and Old Laws" notes that the EPA estimates the reduction of arsenic to 10 parts per billion from 50 ppb "would prevent only three deaths from bladder cancer per year. A reduction to 5 ppb would prevent five deaths.

"That means that the country would be spending between $50 million and $300 million per life saved. If the water industry's [cost] figures can believed, it might even be cheaper to buy bottled water for everyone affected than to institute the new standard."

Last week, a guest on WTTW-TV's Chicago Tonight show said Europeans were so, so mad at Bush for rejecting the Kyoto protocol. True. British pols said America's carbon dioxide emissions would kill millions around the world and equated Bush's decision to "launching a nuclear attack." But Iain Murray, a British science writer at STATS, noted that because North America is a huge "carbon sink" whose vegetation sucks in great quantities of carbon dioxide, we actually use up more of the gas than we produce. Europe, in turn, generates more than it consumes. America absorbs .4 tons of carbon per person per year, while the average European puts out about 2.5 tons per year, he said.

Under the proposed treaty, the North American carbon sink would increase to about 400 millions tons per year (from 100 million tons), while Western Europe would continue exporting 860 million tons annually.

This, of course, isn't the entire story, nor does it prove that carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't be reduced. But it suggests that it would be nice for the public to see facts from all angles before the hyperventilating and villain-creating commences.

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2001

Answers

OG Thanks for the post. Both links are excellent! Let me see if I can provide the html links for others.

stats

technopolitics

-- Anonymous, May 01, 2001