Or maybe anybodies science
A couple of years ago a friend gave me a lift home and we were chatting. In a casual way I mentioned the problem of global warming and she said, “oh there are two sides to that one and the science is far from settled”. Further discussion revealed that the whole global warming debate was either a left wing manufactured scare or a money making scheme by cynical un-named parties.
Two books that plot similar territory and are refreshing antidotes to this line of “anti-political-correctness” are:Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway and Heat by George Monbiot. Google both and you will get lots of reviews and discussions, sadly a lot more than we got in our mainstream print and other media in Australia which get their oxygen from conflict, heat rather than light. In short there were a couple of atom bomb scientists who were employed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to discredit the new information emerging about the link between smoking and cancer signalled by the Surgeon General of the USA. Armed with $50 million (in the 1950s!!) they spread the love to universities they chose to back research projects that they specified and put out journals that looked like scientific journals to publish their 'results' and to spread the word. They were the best scientists that money could buy. The same group that emerged from the tobacco wars were enlisted to argue against acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, passive smoking dangers and the anthropomorphic damage to the environment caused by carbon dioxide. Science in contast, has a clear method,based on experiment, published results in peer assessed journals and repeatability of the experiment. Readers may recall the fuss about cold fusion which seemed to herald a new age of costless energy. The 'scientists' who made the claim were shot down in orderly fashion when their results could not be reproduced in any other lab. The circus that we are all a part of in the political arena has tragedy written all over it. Our government's attempt to bring in a far too modest CPRS is being opposed in text book fashion directly from the playbook outlined in the two books mentioned by interests so cynical to not be worth naming here. |
The perversion of science theme appears in another book, The China Study, T. Colin Campbell, a very different territory.
"After a long career in research and policy-making, I have decided to step 'out of the system'. I have decided to disclose why Americans are so confused," said Dr. Campbell. "As a taxpayer who foots the bill for research and health policy in America, you deserve to know that many of the common notions you have been told about food, health and disease are wrong." Campbell was a farm boy growing up on a dairy farm. As a bio-medical researcher he was asked to investigate why children in the Philippines were getting disproportionate occurences of liver cancer. He found dioxin in their food chain which led him to ask about the relationship of diet to wellness and in turn a major study on this subject. The title of the book refers to the voluminous data that he was able to incorporate from a specific study in China that looked at thousands of communities and correlated diet, lifestyle and disease. Across different continents the startling facts were a diet high in animal products including milk correlated with a high incidence of cancer, stroke, heart attack and diabetes and that a diet based on whole plants (rather than refined and processed plants) had a statistically significant positive outcome. These were results Campbell was not looking for but over thirty years of research they have been proven over and over again. The power of the cattle growers in the US and the dairy men have effectively blocked much discussion of his findings in the US where much of the research is funded by these groups who even control publication and public discussion. I mentioned this to a surgeon friend in Melbourne who assured me that Australia was just as directed by the same interest groups and that independent research was hard to fund. |
My friend mentioned at the beginning of this piece is not a bad person. Indeed she is well read and engaged but also the victim of a strategy that clearly works to her and our disadvantage.
I read The China Study and Merchants of Doubt on my Ipad using The Kindle for Mac which allows Ipad users to download from the Kindle Amazon store.
While restrictions on the Apple Ibooks store remain Amazon is a good source of material. There are increasingly Australian and other sources for downloads. See the howto section of this site for more information on where to access downloads and old fashioned paper books.
I read The China Study and Merchants of Doubt on my Ipad using The Kindle for Mac which allows Ipad users to download from the Kindle Amazon store.
While restrictions on the Apple Ibooks store remain Amazon is a good source of material. There are increasingly Australian and other sources for downloads. See the howto section of this site for more information on where to access downloads and old fashioned paper books.
Film update
Forks Over Knives is a film based on the ideas in the book, The China Study. Fascinating viewing and it brings in the work of a surgeon who also came to the same conclusions from a medical and clinical viewpoint.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Forks over Knives
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Lee Fulkerson
Produced byJohn Corry
Written byLee Fulkerson
Starring Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. T. Colin Campbell
Music by Ramón Balcázar
Cinematography John Orfanopoulos
Editing by Brian Crance
Michael Fahey
John Orfanopoulos
Distributed byMonica Beach Media
Release date(s)
Running time 90 minutes
CountryUnited States
Language English
Forks over Knives is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Lee Fulkerson, an American independent filmmaker. The film examines the "profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods,"[1] principally by tracing the careers and research of American physician Caldwell Esselstyn and professor of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell.[2]
Additionally, in the fashion of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, the filmmaker switches to the plant-based nutrition plan advocated by the film and reports on the diet's effect on his own physiological well-being. The title of the film refers to the choice of plant-based nutrition in the diet, thought by skeptics to be a radical change, over the alternative ofcoronary artery bypass surgery, presented by the interviewees as being the more radical of the two options.
The film gives an overview of the 20-year China-Cornell-Oxford Project that led to Professor Campbell's findings, outlined in his book, The China Study (2005), that a number of diseases can be linked to the Western diet of processed and animal-based foods. Among the diseases the film links to the Western diet are coronary disease,diabetes, and cancer.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Forks over Knives
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Lee Fulkerson
Produced byJohn Corry
Written byLee Fulkerson
Starring Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. T. Colin Campbell
Music by Ramón Balcázar
Cinematography John Orfanopoulos
Editing by Brian Crance
Michael Fahey
John Orfanopoulos
Distributed byMonica Beach Media
Release date(s)
- May 6, 2011
Running time 90 minutes
CountryUnited States
Language English
Forks over Knives is a 2011 American documentary film directed by Lee Fulkerson, an American independent filmmaker. The film examines the "profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods,"[1] principally by tracing the careers and research of American physician Caldwell Esselstyn and professor of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell.[2]
Additionally, in the fashion of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, the filmmaker switches to the plant-based nutrition plan advocated by the film and reports on the diet's effect on his own physiological well-being. The title of the film refers to the choice of plant-based nutrition in the diet, thought by skeptics to be a radical change, over the alternative ofcoronary artery bypass surgery, presented by the interviewees as being the more radical of the two options.
The film gives an overview of the 20-year China-Cornell-Oxford Project that led to Professor Campbell's findings, outlined in his book, The China Study (2005), that a number of diseases can be linked to the Western diet of processed and animal-based foods. Among the diseases the film links to the Western diet are coronary disease,diabetes, and cancer.