Why Do We Fear the Harmless While Irrationally Putting Ourselves in Harm's Way? | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why Do We Fear the Harmless While Irrationally Putting Ourselves in Harm's Way? | Patrick J. Michaels | Cato Institute: Commentary: "It doesn't help that our science journals appear to be increasingly lax about peer review. Andrew Wakefield's completely fraudulent study—since withdrawn by The Lancet—claimed (with a remarkably small sample size) that thiomersal-containing vaccines for measles cause autism. In retrospect, it should never have seen the light of day, and the potential harm it has caused is yet unknown."

"Yet BPA is now blamed—via the most primitive associational analysis—for obesity, impotence, early puberty, and you-name-it. In fact, fat people do have more BPA in their blood, perhaps because they eat more, which is why they weigh more.

Here the story gets better. Many plants produce estrogen-like substances that do the same thing as BPA, only the amount ingested is orders of magnitude greater than BPA."

"R-22, a chlorofluorocarbon that will probably leak out, taking to the sky, with the very slight chance that it will be wafted upward by a thunderstorm so powerful that it penetrates the stratosphere, depositing it where catalyzes the destruction of springtime ozone, especially over Antarctica." "Which creates a greater risk—a few percent of increasing ultraviolet radiation (that is equivalent to moving from Washington DC to Richmond, Virginia) or removing (at least) 90% of your clothes and lying in the sun on purpose?"