David M. Lawrence’s Posts

• Premature Pontification

  Jumping to conclusions in health matters may have adverse side effects 15

  Posted 7 months ago

  Without any evidence that the swine flu virus that emerged in Mexico has been present in nearby large-scale pig-raising operations, we have nothing to support the hypothesis that the current outbreak started there.

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David M. Lawrence’s Recent Comments

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  Maria, what does this have to do with my comments about the reportage blaming the H1N1 epidemic on the Granjas Carroll operations in Veracruz?  If the coverage turns out to be wrong, as it now appears, does that do journalism's credibility or the environmental movement's credibility any good?

  This discussion would have been worthwhile if it had been focused on what I have written rather than a lengthy diatribe about what I have not.

  Feel free to have the last word.

  On Jumping to conclusions in health matters may have adverse side effects posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago 15 Responses

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  Hmmm.  I referred to Tom Philpott's reporting as hysterical elsewhere, and he sounds like a guy, so I don't think there is any gender-bias in my well established English usage of the term.

  Are you reading what I have written?  Frankly, your responses are very hysterical, given the lengh, aggressiveness, and irrelevance of what you accuse me of saying to what I have actually said.  Your skills at projection -- in the psychological sense of the term -- do not boost your personal credibility on the issue.  If you accuse me of saying things I haven't said, how can anyone trust anything else you accuse someone of doing?

  My two main points deal with credibility and in basing public health policy on accurate data.  In the first case, if you make allegations that don't stick, you lose credibility. If you repeatedly do so, you look like a complete crackpot and no one other than those equally deluded as you pays attention.

  In your case, you keep treating me as a defender of industrial agriculture.  I am not.  I keep writing that I am not.  I argue, however, that it should be criticized for what it has done -- not what it has not.  My problem with the reporting that tries to pin the blame for this H1N1 flu outbreak on the Granjas Carroll operations -- when the data currently available suggests they are not -- does not advance the cause of cleaning up industrial agriculture.  Instead, it hurts the cause, because those made, and continue making, those allegations have proven themselves to be anything but reliable sources.

  By continuing to treat me as some kind of pariah for not following your party line, you give your cause as much credibility as George Bush gave U.S. foreign policy with his repeated claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

  The other point is that, in a disease outbreak such as this, too much time wasted on false leads may distract authorities from avenues of investigation that enable them to quickly track down the source of and contain a deadly outbreak.  This outbreak seems to be petering out -- and I hope the current trend holds -- but in the future misdirected effort can lead to many more deaths than necessary in the future.

  Calm, cold, dispassionate investigation is the best way to ensure that unnecessary deaths do not occur.  If this attitude seems deserving of such an unbalanced response as yours, so be it.  But I suspect most rational people get the point.

  On Jumping to conclusions in health matters may have adverse side effects posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago 15 Responses

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  Well, Maria, shouting down those who aren't ideologically pure is a sure way to make the world a better place. Especially when you shout them down with "evidence" that is later proven to be false.  The masses who aren't as well informed as you soon learn to tune you out because you've demonstrated, in the limited sample of their experience, that you don't know what you're talking about.

  It appears you have misunderstood my point. If you want to evangelize about the perils of industrial agriculture, by all means do so.  But you will reap more converts if you drop the hysteria and if you base the argument on solid, proven facts.  If the Granjas Carroll operation is not the source of this particular influenza outbreak -- and evidence is leaning that way at the moment -- you have done your cause a significant disservice.  You will have discarded any credibility on this issue, and if you're wrong in this matter, why should anyone pay attention to you in others?

  Another thing to be recognized is that no human activity is 100 percent safe, 100 percent non-toxic, and 100 percent non-polluting.  Yes, we should minimize our environmental footprint to the greatest extent possible, but the only way to reduce our footprint to zero is to go extinct.  Even then it would take millennia for evidence of our existence to disappear.

  Agriculture, which has made the tremendous growth in human population over the past few thousand years possible, has some adverse effects.  One of them is serving as a source for epidemic diseases.  Many of the scourges that have plagued humanity in the past originated as some kind of pathogenic jump from one host species to another.  The closeness of humans and domesticated animals made such jumps more likely. The fact that such jumps still happens today should come as no surprise.

  Now, if these jumps occur more frequently now than in the past, we have a problem.  At this point however, a far smaller percentage of the human population takes ill and dies from epidemic diseases than in the past 10,000 years or so. I'm not sure we can make push the "industrial agriculture"="demise of civilization" too far without looking rather adrift from reality -- and, therefore, not very credible.

  If you want to persuade the masses, facts work best.  Any falsehood, whether intentional or otherwise, rebounds to the detriment of whatever cause one espouses.

  Personally, I'd like to see industrial agriculture clean up its act, but I know I'd have a hell of a time inspiring others to work for change in the system if I often make high-profile, hysterical, and ultimately disproven charges against it.

  Dave

  On Jumping to conclusions in health matters may have adverse side effects posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago 15 Responses