Four Hoaxes

Now you may select four different equestrians than the ones I chose and that, of course, is your privilege just as you should feel free to throw rocks at mine.

Nor can I defend mine as being of apocalyptic significance but it’s just that they all came up this week and I found the cool picture above. So, let’s take ‘em in historical order.

First there was DDT which was first synthesized back in 1887 but didn’t start to be used as an insecticide until 1939. It was used extensively in World War II in the Asian war theaters and afterwards around the world. After that it saved countless millions of human lives from such scourges as malaria and typhus.

Then came 1962 when one Rachel Carson wrote a book entitled, “The Silent Spring”. This opined that the product was killing birds as well as bugs and a dour future waited. The resulting clamor resulted in DDT being banned in the US in 1972. Fortunately, for the world at large, not every country followed our premature lead including India and China. But, in the meantime, another countless number perished from afflictions we had licked.

However, eventually, even we woke up and so quietly it is being used again with the Obama regime’s complicity because, just like lower tax rates, it works.

And, despite dire predictions, the American Bald Eagle still soars and increases its population as we speak.

Next came Saccharin which first saw light of day in 1878 and it provided a cheap alternative to expensive sugar at a time when the huddled masses on both sides of the Atlantic craved it.

Then, in 1970, a few researchers fed some lab rats a lot of saccharin over a long period of time. And I mean a lot over a long time. On December 21, 2000, the FDA repealed the eventual ban because of lack of good science and so it’s now OK to drink Tab again.

Now we come to my favorite, Global Warming or as the proponents now like to call it “Climate Change”. It’s interesting to look at just why liberals wanted the name changed.

Try these facts. The polar bears are not drowning; in fact their population is increasing. Perhaps that’s because the average temperature across this planet has not increased one whit over the last decade. Don’t take my word for it, ask NOAA. And for those in Lake Havasu or those from across the pond, that’s the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. That’s what they do as well as predict hurricanes that don’t happen. So “Warmings” are out but liberals are not going to give up this gravy train that easily, hence the name change.

It would be foolish of me to try to pretend that the climate of planet Earth does not change over time for how would I explain the fact that there used to be palm trees in Greenland and the land masses of North America and Europe used to be covered with ice. So the question of change is a non sequitur but what causes it is something else altogether. Of course, for the last few years the phrase “Man-made” has been thrown in as well and so one is forced to asked what human action caused the glaciers to retreat some 10,000 years ago.

Then in 2010, the entire house of cards came tumbling down with the revelations that “scientists” from the University of East Anglia in England and elsewhere had been “fudging” the conclusions and worse yet, when challenged, revealed that the raw data from which they had drawn their spurious pronouncements had been mysteriously destroyed.

I will not go into more detail here as I’ve written about this scandal in previous posts and, anyway, you can do your own research should you so desire but I can’t resist a final footnote on the Global Warming issue without pointing you to the countless thousands of people in the US and Europe who were trapped for days in airports a couple of weeks ago.

And last but, by no means least; we come to the MMR scandal. The acronym stands for Measles, Mumps and Rubella, the latter being better known to non-medicos as German Measles. This vaccination has been used in over 60 countries and in more than 500 million individuals, mainly children, since the 1970s and it has saved countless lives.

Then, in 1998, a “researcher” named Andrew Wakefield published a paper in England claiming that an MMR shot could produce autism in young children. Many worried parents believed the claim and withheld the vaccine from their children in spite of urging by pediatricians around the world. This resulted in many infant deaths not to mention the heartache inflicted on parents of an autistic child who blamed themselves for their offspring's condition.

In 2010, Wakefield's research on just 12 children was found by the British General Medical Council to have been "dishonest" and the esteemed medical journal “Lancet” fully retracted the original paper. The research was declared fraudulent in 2011 by the British Medical Journal and several subsequent peer-reviewed studies have failed to show any association between the vaccine and autism.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the UK National Health Service and the Cochrane Library review have all concluded that there is no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

What makes researchers and others who should know better do these things? Is there a single golden thread running through all four of these shams? I think not.

With some it may just be bad science. With others it may be some kind of political agenda or some predetermined prejudice. Or it could be money or a desire for fame.

One thing only is certain. No claim should be taken at face value.

Question, Question and Question some more.