Last night on Bill Moyers’ Journal, a report about Bisphenol A (BPA) by the PBS investigative journalism outfit Exposé was aired, complete with a kickin’ eighties guitar intro that makes you feel like you’re right there chasing down the bad guys with Crockett and Tubbs. The bad guys in question aren’t peddlers of narcotics but of every day household goods made of plastic containing BPA and their products are all perfectly legal in spite of a growing number of studies suggesting links between the chemical in question and a number of endocrinological maladies.

The story on Moyer’s show recapitulated the efforts of science journalists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007 to sift through the research on BPA and determine where the evidence actually pointed. What they found is disturbingly familiar:

Of the 258 studies reviewed by the Journal Sentinel, 168 studies looked at low-dose effects of bisphenol A.

The vast majority – 132 studies- found health problems at low doses, including hyperactivity, diabetes and genital deformities. All but one of those studies were conducted by non-industry scientists. Nearly three-fourthsof the studies that found the chemical had no harmful effects were funded by industry.

Shockingly, the lion’s share of “scientific” inquiry concluding that bisphenol A is perfectly safe has been funded by the very industries that depend on the chemical for their products. Now, the question remains, given the significant quantity of data in hundreds of studies about it, how did the National Toxicology Program panel on BPA assess the risks of the chemical in its report that year?

The panel said it considered more than 700 studies by university scientists, government researchers and industry-funded chemists. It picked the work it felt was best and threw out the rest.

The Journal Sentinel found that panel members gave more weight to industry-funded studies and more leeway to industry-funded researchers.

• The panel rejected academic studies that found harm – citing inadequate methods. But the panel accepted industry-funded studies using the same methods that concluded the chemical does not pose risks.

• The panel missed dozens of studies publicly available that the Journal Sentinel found online using a medical research Internet search engine. The studies the panel considered were chosen, in part, by a consultant with links to firms that made bisphenol A.

• More and more university researchers and foreign governments are finding that bisphenol A can do serious damage in small doses. But the panel rejected studies mostly submitted by university and international government scientists that looked at the impact at these levels.

• The panel accepted a Korean study translated by the chemical industry’s trade group that found bisphenol A to be safe. It also accepted two studies that were not subjected to any peer review – the gold standard of scientific credibility. Both studies were funded by General Electric Co., which made bisphenol A until it sold its plastics division earlier this year.

[...]

Panel chairman Robert Chapin, a toxicologist who works for Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical giant, defended his group’s work.

“We didn’t flippin’ care who does the study,” said Chapin, who worked as a government scientist for 18 years before joining Pfizer.

If the studies followed good laboratory practices and were backed with strong data, they were accepted, Chapin said.

Of course, pressure has mounted since then and NTP has revised its conclusions in a report published last month, as Americanus has previously reported. Still, the industrial-regulatory nexus of faux enforcement and revolving doors is growing quite tiresome, especially in a case where people’s health and perhaps even lives are at stake.

Yesterday, Reilly White posted an excellent piece of writing detailing the excesses of the latest incarnation of a Depression Era agricultural policy that masks corporate welfare in the guise of aid to “small farmers.” I refer, of course, to the Farm Bill. Yesterday, the House passed this legislation by a vote of 318-106 and the Senate followed suit today, passing the bill by an 81-15 margin. All three presidential candidates wisely made themselves scarce from the Senate floor, dodging a politically difficult decision. President Bush is expected to veto the bill but, given the margins of victory in each House, it will be easily overturned and enacted into law sans Bush’s approval.

Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance today. As of 2006, almost thirty-seven million Americans lived at or below the federal poverty line, to say nothing of the millions more who struggle to survive with incomes that don’t meet the technical definition of “poverty.” Nationally, we are $9 trillion in debt and our major entitlement programs are facing critical shortfalls over the next thirty to forty years. Yet, we still see fit to lavish $307 billion of unnecessary aid on farmers who are now earning record profits from high commodity prices and we do so with overwhelming political support. Excuse the cliché, but where’s the outrage?

The mythical American Farmer comes again to the forefront of American policy, as Congress debates the $300 billion annual Farm Bill. The premise of the bill reads pretty well for a defense of a depression-era farmer out of a Steinbeck novel – pity, then, that there really aren’t many of them left

Today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion section points out some important points about this year’s debate

“This year farm income is expected to reach an all-time high of $92.3 billion, an increase of 56% in two years, making growers perhaps the most undeserving recipients in American history.”

With agricultural and commodity prices skyrocketing, it becomes particularly difficult to justify such exorbitant agricultural subsidies. But then again, that’s not the point – the subsidies are expected to keep American farmers farming (because that’s what we do in America).

However, the architecture of subsidy policy dates from the 1930’s, when 25% of Americans were farmers; now, just 2% of Americans are so employed, and the vast majority of agricultural products are produced at large or corporate farms. Viewed in that sense, it’s already failed to preserve the identity of the small farmer anyway. But the piece goes further

“A bigger scam is the new income limit to qualify for subsidies. Mr. Bush sought a $200,000 annual income cap, but Congress can’t bring itself to go below $750,000.”

Fascinating. Seemingly under the radar of most Americans, the Government is effectively doling out farm subsidies to some of the wealthiest members of its society – and mind you, Congress apparently exceeds even the President’s lofty concepts of wealth.

But that’s not even the largest problem – we continue to annoy the rest of the developing world (including our friend in NAFTA) with our protective agriculture policies, which have the adverse effect of pricing developing agricultural economies out of the market – ironic considering the competitive advantage they would maintain in a free trade environment.

But regardless, this is getting out of hand – add impetus for biofuels, rising fuel costs, and the highest commodity prices seen in decades, and you’ve got the equivalent of giving Exxon a welfare check and a tax break. Oh wait, we already do that too.

Complicating this, any congressman with rural constituents recognizes that voting against the bill gets them six cyanide pills and a game of Russian Roulette closer to political suicide. And, who can resist that well-paid farm lobbyist with that winning smile and near-earnest appreciation of working folk?

]]> http://americanus.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/subsidize-this/feed/ 0 rufuscoltraine http://americanus.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/hiatus-and-a-radio-show/ http://americanus.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/hiatus-and-a-radio-show/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:16:15 +0000 Shaun http://americanus.wordpress.com/?p=64 ]]>

As a courtesy to Americanus’ readers, I wanted to point out that posts may be rather sparse this week as I am currently swamped with papers, research, exams and other ivory tower nonsense while Reilly White is currently traveling on business.  If there is time, perhaps one of us will sneak in a new post here and there, but the pace will be less than frenetic.  However, once the current storm passes, Americanus will be back in action.

Until then, I’ll leave you with an excellent edition of NPR’s Justice Talking focused on the legal and policy aspects of mental health in America.  It’s fascinating treatment of an important and often overlooked issue in American public policy.

Today the New York Times published the first in a series of articles examining aspects of the U.S. justice system in comparative context and the first facet singled out for inspection is an ugly one: incarceration. The fact is that both in absolute terms and in proportion to our population, the United States is the largest jailer in the world. There are more than 2,300,000 Americans serving time in prison, or 751 prisoners per 100,000 Americans (the piece notes that if you exclude children, one percent of all U.S. adults are imprisoned). This compares to 151 per 100,000 in Britain, 108 per 100,000 in Canada, and 91 per 100,000 in France.

What accounts for this punitive excess? The Times article cites a panoply of causes that include jailing large numbers of drug offenders, 500,000 of whom are behind bars, mandatory minimums and other sentencing guidelines lengthening the duration of jail time, and good old fashioned democracy.

This last point may seem counterintuitive, but when judges and prosecutors must face reelection, they need a record to run on and that means getting convictions (State’s Attorney Buckley from Richard Wright’s Native Son comes to mind…). There is also the small matter that felons are counted toward the population of the place where their prison is located, not their original place of residence, when it comes time to draw Congressional districts and calculate the allocation of federal funds. Essentially, they are free residents (housed by the state or federal government) who cannot vote but bring in dollars and electoral clout for the locals to enjoy, creating a perverse incentive to “keep them around for a while”, so to speak.

Of course, there are a number of opinions as to whether this elaborate, common law gulag has the intended effect of lowering crime rates. Certainly, some impact on public safety in undeniable given the enormity of the project, but is this really an efficient means of solving the problem? The Times reports that Canada’s crime rates mirror our own, yet the prison population has remained relatively stable, suggesting the link between the two variables may be more tenuous than believed. Moreover, the nearly 70% rate of recidivism begs the question whether lower crime rates are a permanent phenomenon or the result of simply holding offenders for longer periods of time at vast public expense (see below).

Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics

What the article does not explore are the vast racial disparities that blight this already regrettable system. It mentions them only to dismiss them as insignificant to the larger trends of incarceration rates because other, less punitive societies like Britain also jail more minorities than other people. Still, the fact that an African-American is five times as likely to be imprisoned as a Caucasian in the United States strikes me as…important? Outrageous, perhaps? Hopefully a future article will cover this aspect of the justice system in some depth.

This morning’s New York Times cites a Canadian government source stating that a “toxic” label will be appended (bureaucratically speaking) to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical widely used in plastics and a suspected hormonal disruptor.  As we mentioned yesterday, America’s National Toxicology Program recently issued a report raising concerns about the chemical compound’s health impacts.   But, unlike our northern neighbors, the U.S. doesn’t consider “likely endocrine disruptor” sufficient grounds to regulate a substance contained in plastic baby bottles.  Once a cohort of babies has been tracked over the course of their lives and the suspected developmental pathologies associated are with BPA demonstrated with a high degree of statistical confidence, then we can do something.  (Be on the look out for a ban between 2040 and 2050.)

What I found most interesting about the Times piece was a statement from a researcher who remains skeptical of the findings:

But [Michael D. Shelby] said that research strongly suggested that polycarbonate food and beverage containers and food cans were the main source of human exposure to B.P.A. When asked if people should stop using them, Dr. Shelby replied: “That becomes kind of a personal choice. These are certainly two things people can get around.”

Ah, yes, here we come to the “rational choice” fallacy that underlies so much of modern economic theory.  Why regulate a potentially hazardous substance in consumer products when the consumer his or herself, properly informed of the issue, can make a choice not to buy the product?  Aside from the fact that this assumes that every consumer who purchases plastic products is well versed enough in the science of hormonal development to judge the risks of using said items, when was the last time you bought something with a label reading: “Contains bisphenol A?”  Perhaps I missed that on my Nalgene bottle.

I’m not saying that the average consumer is an incompetent fool who must be guided at every turn by a nurturing “nanny state.”  However, given the complexity of these issues and the amount of time it would take to keep oneself abreast of all the hazards and problems of all the products on the market today, it is entirely unrealistic to believe that consumer choice is the answer problems of product safety.  Certainly it would be ideal if people could know all the facts and choose for themselves in every case, but it’s not going to happen.  That being said, I would venture to assert that in some cases, government regulation, rather than markets, may be the efficient solution where consumer safety is concerned.

As I picked up a copy of The Boston Globe this afternoon, I was is in for a horrific surprise when I came across this on page one: