Idiotic OPs like this are why you’ve lost credibility on the board. People on your side are embarassed by your antics, people on the other side use you to dismiss actual criticisms. You should change your handle to Strawman or Unjustified Outrage.
The EPA is not exposing anyone to additional risk. The question is what the effect of current exposure is having on children and how that exposure is coming about.
In other words, people are using already approved chemicals in the home. They are currently considered relatively safe if used as directed. The EPA is double checking this. They already have the baseline data for a certain area, so they are using this as the location of the experiment. In return for monitoring their children’s habits and behavior, parents are being paid for the trouble. Sort of like how people who volunteer for psychological experiments get paid, or like how people volunteering for the AIDS vaccine are being paid. Pretty SOP.
Now, maybe, as fessie says, this is a bad study just used as a delaying tactic. That would be a legitimate Pit thread, I suppose. But that’s not what you’re arguing. Your argument is stupid and uninformed.
Wow, Reeder, you really are the biggest fucking idiot on the boards aren’t you? Welcome back! The place hasn’t been nearly as fun with you gone, we’ve had to resort to, you know, facts and stuff. Those are so boring when compared to outraged knee jerking, especially outraged knee jerking without any cause.
I’ve got no dog in your fight, Weirddave, but there is a reason why you’re wrong.
Imagine they did exposure studies on wealthy children, say children of Senators and Congressmen. Or celebrities. Journalists? How do you think those results would be treated? I can tell you that if they used OUR family and one of my kids’ badges turned funny colors – well, that would be the end of the study & the beginning of the bad press.
Plus there’s a huge distance factor when you pick poor, uneducated, minority families as your sample group - people can say to themselves “Well, that’s not me. Those dumb people don’t know how to read the warning labels, I never spray X near my baby.”
What they ought to look into is the chemical loads of children who are presenting problems - ADD, autism, cancer, and low IQ for example - and compare that to children who aren’t. Or they could look at asthma rates on the south side of Chicago - duh! Could it be the dirty air y’spose?
That’s a no-brainer. Morons like reeder would line up in this forum to howl with outrage that the government was allocating precious testing funds to benefit the elite when it is the poor who are at higher risk and who should have been the beneficiaries of the study.
No, I’m completely right. Reeder started a thread claiming that the EPA was going to poison poor children with chemicals to see how they’d react, which is about as far from the truth as one can get. Why do you suppose he did this? Offhand, I’d say just so he could use this line:
Calling Reeder a moron or an idiot is met with howls of protest claiming defamation from the National Association for the Advancement of Dumbasses.
Why the hell are people picking on Reeder in this thread? What are you all on, auto pilot or something? The fucking jackbooted thugs at the Environmental Pillaging Agency are abusing people who are politically helpless. And this is okay by you?
Could you tell me how the poor’s plight would be any different if the Environmental Pillaging Agency chose NOT to do this study? Or if doing this study never occured to them?
Gotta side w/Liberal on this. This study has been criticized roundly, to the point where it’s on hold pending review. Here’s a quote from The Republican criticizing the study:
This is from Science (bolding mine):
And here’s a quote from EWG’s web page:
The Bush Administration’s environmental record is abysmal. This is more of the same.
Yes, but Fessie that the study is worthless is a much different claim than the EPA is deliberately exposing kids to chemicals to test the effects, like those infamous Syphillis experiments, which is what Reeder and Liberal are implying.
The chemicals are there. The exposure is there. What the EPA wants to do is observe (or ignore) their effects, if any.
You’ve got a much different and better beef against the study. I suggest you start a new thread if you want to pursue this argument, perhaps in GD. This thread, ironically, is contaminated.
Hey, I agree with you that the Bush Administration’s environmental record is abysmal. One of the reasons I voted against the guy. And you’ve provided enough evidence that this study is a sham that I believe you. And I certainly believe that they should tell the parents if their child is exposed to high levels of toxicity.
Here’s the question though, are these children going to be at higher risk during the study than if the study had never been done at all? Are the researchers going to be exposing the children to chemicals that were never in the environment in the first place? Are the parents actually being paid to poison their children? Fessie, if you had opened a Pit thread with the above post as the OP, you would likely find most people agreeing with you and condemning the EPA study. That’s not what Reeder is doing though.
One could speculate that Dow and Monsanto are helping to fund this study so that they can benefit from videotaped evidence that people are using pesticides improperly - not covering food preparation/cooking surfaces, not using long-sleeved clothing or other protective measures, not washing after using pesticides etc. Then they’ll have ammo to advance the argument that further controls on pesticide sales and use are unwarranted because it’s the consumer at fault, regardless of whether it’s reasonable to place so much of the onus on consumers rather than on the innate hazards posed by the chemicals.
Too bad this debate started out with such an inane premise.
I read some speculation, really WAGs, that poor parents might be compelled to initiate pesticide use in order to participate – which would be what Reeder has suggested. Nobody’s proven it, but the incentive exists. Do poor people have the money to spend on pesticides in sufficient quantity to make it worth studying?
The other thing that I find ridiculous is that anyone with children under 3 or 4 would be using pesticides. Period. The risks from children finding and ingesting such materials accidentally are, to me, a much bigger problem than a few bugs. The cure is much worse than the disease! And if you can’t live w/Florida’s bugs, don’t live in Florida.
If I had more time I’d consider opening a new thread, but Sesame Street is just about over & my Mommy day about to begin.