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1. 

   Colin Wright Posted 7:41 pm
   16 Aug 2007

   Keeping scientists shackled ...

   It's shameful that when scientists (such as the courageous Professor vom Saal) start to speak out on the public's behalf that that is supposed to hurt their credibility!

   Here's an example from our local paper, where the government has recently whitewashed the dangers from polycarbonate drinking bottles. The quote is from an industry spokesperson:

   He dismissed the report from the 38 scientists, saying that bisphenol A researchers bring a bias to the analysis and that some have taken advocacy positions opposing the chemical.

   Yet over 100 peer-reviewed papers have illustrated the negative health effects of bis A! Check out the story, then throw out your Nalgene bottles.

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2. 

   GreenMom Posted 1:19 am
   17 Aug 2007

   Why the swipes at toxicologists?

   Endocrine disruptors are indeed a big issue, but I'm not sure I understand her seemingly personal beef with toxicologists.  Where's the evidence for that kind of attack?  

   She should know as well as anyone that when science is suppressed, in government or anywhere, it usually isn't the doing of the scientists themselves.  She should also know the vagaries of funding and should understand that research flows to where the dollars are available -- again, no reason to point fingers at the scientists themselves.

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3. 

   GreenEngineer Posted 1:15 am
   21 Aug 2007

   view from a scientist

   I asked a friend of mine, who is a graduate student in behavior neurendicrinology (studying rodents) what she thought of the article.  Here's what she said:

   
   This article does a pretty good job of dealing with a scary topic where not much is known.  In other words, endocrine disruptors are so universally present that it is nearly impossible to know what to blame on them.  The few studies that have been done paint a scary picture, but nobody knows quite what they can cause.  Rise in obsesity?  Diabetes?  For all the things that are on the rise in modern society there are 10 possible explanations and people fighting over which one is the real one.  But there will be many components, and it will take a long time to figure them out.  I won't be the least bit surprised when they figure out ED is responsible for parts of many modern problems, but I don't really know which ones it will be (besides the already demonstrated roles in reproductive changes).

   I think one of the things that's hard with endocrine disruptors is it's not clear where one is getting most exposed.  City water?  Plastic packaging? Air quality? Chemicals in food? I've already stopped drinking out of plastic bottles since that's a known source, but I'm not really sure where most people get exposed.  If I did, I'd probably pay more attention to that thing.
   

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4. 

   siksika Posted 3:50 am
   30 Aug 2007

   theo colborn and toxicology

   I'd speculate that Colborn's frustration with toxicologists is not particularly personal, but that her beef with toxicology is primarily about both the assumption that "the dose makes the poison" (a precept that looks for greater impacts correlated with larger-magnitude exposures) and the risk assessment model on which much of toxicology operates. The work of several people in the ED world indicates that dose is not only NOT the only factor -- and, indeed, sometimes small dosages seem paradoxically to cause effects that larger doses do not -- but that effects can begin prenatally and unfold at various developmental moments. These discoveries represent an alternative reality to the traditional view of toxicology -- that a substance can be identified, isolated, and causally either linked or not to an outcome -- and suggest lenses through which toxicology does not typically view data. These kinds of phenomena turn the risk assessment model on its head.

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5. 

   NonprofitWatch Posted 4:07 am
   30 Aug 2007

   I thought E.D. stood for

   
   going soft on polluters

   someone from within Environmental Defense shared that with me at the time that they dropped "Fund" from their name

   ;)

   bernardo issel - http://www.NonprofitWatch.org - bernardo (at) NonprofitWatch.org

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6. 

   Questionauthority Posted 1:27 am
   04 Sep 2007

   The 11th Hour / Theo Colborn

   I last spoke with Theo in the parking lot of the local grocery store in our hometown, her former hometown, in Colorado.  She is a courageous person who started late in life trying to make a difference. Good for you Theo!  Don't forget her first book, "Our Stolen Future", with the forward written by Al Gore.

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