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diseases associated with our prolonged life span. We have hard data to show
that eating vegetables and fruits will prolong our life span and an affluent
lifestyle. Chemophobia and stigmatization of biotechnology, and science
in general, will not eliminate our problems. In fact, we have to muster all of
our resources to combat the newly emerging diseases that truly threaten our
existence.
Society s lack of discrimination between important and relatively harmless
food safety issues has resulted in an unnatural obsession for protecting the
public against minor, but easily measurable and thus pseudoquantifiable,
threats. This is costly and does not significantly reduce actual hazards. The
inability to distinguish serious hazards from those of little concern results in
a confused populace that begins to ignore real threats to public health.
Alternatively, a food and chemical phobia based in paranoia rather than true
science evolves. Any real attempt at communicating risks becomes futile.
Although we may feel assured that this approach will protect us from all harm,
it will prevent us from enjoying the benefits of these products that, in the long
run, may be our best approach for promoting health. Life does not come with
a money-back guarantee. We often must accept small risks to avoid the
more serious consequences that might affect us if we become complacent and
forget that death and disease, for most, are a result of nature and not a cre-
ation of man.
There are social, political, ethical, and moral issues concerning quality of
life, as well as the limits to which the human population should be allowed to
grow, that must be addressed. These should be faced squarely and not cloaked
in unrelated fears of pesticide-induced cancer epidemics. If one believes that
population growth must be stopped before we exceed the carrying capacity of
the earth, that technology should not be used to extend this carrying capaci-
ty, or that other byproducts of technology are destroying the ecosystem, then
158 CHAPTER 11
these must be debated and addressed on their own merits. The answer is not
to ban pesticides on the false premise that they cause disease or pull the plug
on agriculture so that limitations on food supply will stunt population. If one
truly believes that smaller farms better support the social fabric of society and
that the use of a drug, such as BST, works against this goal, then the argument
should be made on those grounds and not on the false claim of a threat to
human health. If one is morally opposed to genetic engineering, then this is
the argument to be taken.
It was not the purpose of this book to solve these problems. Rather it was
to illustrate how science can easily be misused when taken out of context. I ll
end this book as I did the essay that prompted it:
Well, I must go poison my children with apples and tomatoes (just
kidding). I ll continue to buy fruits and vegetables from the grocery
store since I know that in the long run, it s probably my kid s best
chance to avoid cancer and serious health problems.
So stop worrying! Eat those veggies and drink that milk. Science and tech-
nology have greatly improved the safety of our food supply. Bon Appetit!
Appendix
A
Toxicology Primer
Most of the material and debates presented in this book depend on knowl-
edge of some areas of science, such as toxicology or chemistry, that are very
technical and well beyond the intended scope of this book. However, an
understanding of some basic concepts of toxicology is essential to assess the
safety of these chemicals. At high doses many pesticides are indeed poisons.
As fully explained in Chapter 2, dose makes all the difference. In addition,
each pesticide is an individual entity and may have unique properties you may
have come across in other readings. However, often these are not representa-
tive of all members of that class; the clearest example I used to show this was
DDT. Similarly, just because some pesticides, as discussed in Chapter 10, were
also used as chemical warfare agents , doesn t mean that your can of flea spray
can be used to terrorize New York! This level of guilt by association has
about as much validity as many of the arguments linking diverse groups of
chemicals under the single umbrella of toxic pesticides.
This appendix serves as a brief technical supplement to the toxicology
introduced in the text. It is by no means intended to be comprehensive but
rather is designed to provide a more in-depth introduction to some technical
material covered in the text. Secondly, it introduces the reader to specific pes-
ticides and their known toxicology. Critical concepts are defined where need-
ed and the fundamentals of the toxicology of each class of pesticides are
introduced with as little technical jargon as I believe is safe. The interested
reader is urged to consult either listed textbooks or the citations from the orig-
inal literature used to write this for further details. My goal is to make available
some information on the process of setting tolerances and on high-dose and acute
pesticide toxicology so the main text of the book is not unduly burdened by technical
159
160 APPENDIX A
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