NIEHS/NTP chief Linda Birnbaum comes out to play again with JunkScience.com.
For necessary background first read: JunkScience forces federal toxics chief into nonsensical defense of EPA’s illegal human experiments.
Below is Birnbaum’s new response to me:
Here’s mine right back at her:
As to Birnbaum’s complaint that I posted all this on JunkScience.com, keep in mind that she is a top government official using her government e-mail. She is creating FOIA-able public records as she sends e-mail. If what she’s saying is true, why be angry or embarrassed?
I have long been somewhat suspicious of the quality of some research(?). Decades ago, there was an artificial sweetener, or group of sweeteners called cyclamates (sp.?). Even I could tell that the experiment was questionable. Massive doses were injected into lab. rats, not fed, and the conclusion was that cyclamates caused cancer and the sweetener was banned. The problem was that the results were not repeatable. However, those who were on high did not try to find out what went wrong and did not lift the ban.
It’s stuff like PM 2.5 that really illustrate how much EPA is reaching to expand their reach now that they’ve “accomplished” everything originally envisioned. I’ve tried to explain that to some true-believers, but they just don’t see it that way. Maybe Trump’s “skinny budget” will help weed-out this behavior amongst the career higher-ups at EPA. But I doubt it.
I see this entire line of discussion as attempting to lift the wool from the EPAs eyes about their own actions. They are gripping tightly to their belief that they are helping people survive longer. They miss the obvious side effects of their rulings.
The lawsuit was meant to slap the EPA hard and say “Look dumbshits, if you believe that PM2.5 is deadly and kills, why did you run experiments exposing people directly to it without notifying them! You believe that PM2.5 is one of the more deadly things on earth then you wielded it like a knife.”
Michael Fumento is also guilty of the behavior seen at the EPA. Michael Fumento is mostly on the junkscience.com side of the argument, but he still thinks that there is statistical power in things like the Harvard Nurses Study.
I don’t think Milloy is actually expecting anyone at the EPA (at the top mind you, there are people lower down that get it) to get it.
What you see in individuals may, or may not be a attributable and significant pathophysiologic consequence of exposure to a(ny) noxious agent. For epidemiological studies to be grounded in truth, the effect they propose should be present in observations or measurements in individuals. In other words, the method works best when it works from the ground up.
Medical science has not offered, beyond woolly nonspecific cause elicitation pathways, a plausible biologic mechanism for PM2.5 to cause damage.
Without these two elements, Hill’s criteria are not satisfied. Sure, there can still be some effect of PM2.5 exposure but if it is so hard to measure, it is likely very small.