Science? (part 1)

As my only reader knows, I have long had a love/hate relationship with science. Science, as a genre, is a wonderful source of the kind of random information that my brain loves to tuck away and bring out to gloat over and play with again and again. My Viking hoard. Science, as a discipline, intensely annoys me because it seems to be so constrained by “rules” of rigour and correctness but so dishonest in not admitting that it has been so wrong so often while insisting that it is the only acceptable source of knowledge.

Why am I angry at Science right now? The lastest earth-shaking, ground-breaking news in women’s health is that Hormone Replacement Therapy increases the incidence of ovarian cancer. Science has proven that there is a statistically significant blah, blah, blah. Of course the “practioners” who have been supplying these cancer causing substances to their clients on the basis that there was no science to show thay were harmful, are explaining away the risks by using statistics to show that if 10,000 women took the drugs for a year then there would be relatively few extra deaths because this is not a VERY common type of cancer. One anticipates that these pseudo-scientists who are now denying the findings of science are going to next tell us that we are more at risk pushing a supermarket trolley across the carpark than getting ovarian cancer because of HRT.

Am I being unfair to criticise science because doctors, drug companies and politicians misuse it? No way. Science adores being used because that makes it useful and brings in the money for it to do more science. Science claims itself to be objective and value-neutral but come on, nothing done by man is objective or value-neutral and science has always served the best paymaster.

You may be thinking, “Isn’t this old news? Didn’t we hear about the risks of HRT some years ago?” Well, you are half right. We heard about the relationship between HRT and breast cancer. Actually, the incidence of breast cancer has fallen since that relationship was “discovered” and now statistics from the UK are showing that there is a clear, direct, statistically significant relationship between the reduction in the number of women taking HRT and the reduction in the rate of breast cancer. It is always good when reality proves the science.

So, why is this relationship with ovarian cancer even an issue? Surely only women who really need HRT for life-saving reasons would still be taking it? Actually it is still widely prescribed for “quality-of-life” saving reasons. Why put up with “it” if you don’t have to? “It” being a range of things like hot flashes, dry skin, wrinkles, grumpiness, heart disease and otsteoporosis, some serious some trivial but all supposedly best treated with HRT.

Again, why is this Science’s problem? Aren’t women responsible for making their own choices and if they think that wrinkles are worse than an increased cancer risk, isn’t it their choice? The thing is, doctors don’t take the time to explain to women that science is value-neutral and doesn’t care if they are in the percentage who DO get cancer because, after all someone has to be in that group just as others are in the group that DON’T get cancer. Guess what the women are thinking? “The doctor wouldn’t give this to me if it wasn’t good for me. Scientists wouldn’t have created it if it would harm me.” Innocent self-interest shuts out the possiblility of thinking, “Were the people who created, produced and marketed this product motivated by my well-being?”

Am I being a little unfair here? After all there are well-meaning doctors who believe that women don’t have to “suffer” menopause. Time for some feminist outrage. Menopause is not a disease. Yes, there is a small number of women who experience such severe changes that they feel that life is not worth living. HRT may be their best option for now but will they still feel that way when they are “living with” terminal cancer? What a choice. Life is full of choices but unfortunately we often personally don’t have much of a range of options to choose from because we are not offered the full range of theoretically possible options. As an information scavenger I know that my doctors have given me a fraction of the readily available information about my own medication. I also know that they have tried to persuade me into options that are now thought to be harmful and have not told me about alternatives because they are more expensive or not funded in NZ. As a health services consumer I have to make my choices based on label-reading just as I do as a grocery shopper (though in NZ,  prescribed medication comes packaged with way less information than a can of beans). I would love to be able to rely on an “expert”, a doctor or scientist who would just do what was best for me, so my heart goes out to all those women throughout history who thought they could do just that and ended up dead statistics.

What is the alternative to science? Isn’t it our best and only valid source of knowledge? I am torn here because there is still the love part of my stormy relationship with science. I believe that science belongs to everyone and is something that people have always “done” and we have moved too far away from an intuitive folk knowledge of science that is based on observation and common sense. Common sense says that menopause is supposed to happen because it always has. Folk knowledge said that the less pleasant effects of menopause could be dealt with using remedies that didn’t have lethal long term consequences and that once women got to the other side they had reached a new stage in life where wrinkles no longer mattered. Imagine how much money we could save if wrinkles didn’t matter and value-neutral” science” could concentrate on cures for cancer instead of fighting the seven signs of aging?

Anyway. back to my current outrage with modern science.  Folk science (otherwise known as commonsense) tells me that scientists should have known that HRT would increase the  incidence of a variety of cancers. How should they have known? Well, they already knew that women who started menstruating early, or finished late were at increased risk of cancer because of a greater number of years of exposure to estrogen. They also knew that breastfeeding reduced the life-time cancer risk because it reduced the exposure to estrogen. My outrage is that scientists didn’t consider these simple facts when they decided that it would be a good idea to try giving women extra estrogen.  I am further outraged that they also didn’t consider that the harmful effects of additional exposure to estrogen would not be evident for most women in the short-term. This is not a little “ooops we couldn’t have predicted that”. Value-neutral be damned. negligent scientists deserve a special place in hell alongside global warming denying politicians.

Too much information for the masses

As a label reader I have been aware for some time that a lot of products that used to be made in New Zealand are now imported from Australia. That would be ok if it was obvious that they were no longer local products.. but of course it is not obvious at all because they have the same old brand names and packaging.

The supermarket megopolies say that people don’t care where their food comes from, only that it is cheap. So why don’t they advertise it as a cheaper imported alternative instead of camouflaging it as the old trusted brands? Sanitarium peanut butter is now made in China. Fair enough maybe since we don’t grow peanuts. On the other hand we expect Sanitarium to be healthy and wholesome and I am not sure that that image would stand for long if consumers knew that the Chinese government is concerned about the levels of soil contamination in 20% of their land. If the Chinese government is concerned about pollution, it must be truly serious! We are not just talking about pesticides here, but heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury. As a South Islander it’s good to know that out weetbix is still made from local wheat, unlike north island weetbix which is made from wheat imported from…China. Well, it would be good to know that if I was sure that ther is not some mega warehouse where all the weetbix boxes from all over NZ get stored and then get randomly shipped out. Sanitarium, could I have my weetbix labelled ” Made from NZ wheat” please?

It sounds like I am China-bashing but it’s just that all the Chinese students I have taught have marvelled at how the sky in NZ is actually blue and they thought that blue sky was a picturebook fiction. The air smells better here too and you can drink water from a tap! I want my food from NZ too, please.

If I was going to hit below the belt, I would point out that the contaminated gluten that killed so many American pets was imported from China. I bet most of the pet owners had no idea that gluten was added to the petfood to increase the protein levels or that someone might add contaminants like melamine just to make a buck. Ever wondered about what might be added to the human food chain for the same reason?

The deceptions around bacon have become better known recently becuase the media have picked up on some of the scams. “Kiwi” bacon is made from imported pork and the manufacturers have explained that there is no deception involved since “Kiwi” is a brand name and does not imply a local product. Premier Bacon “produced in the heart of the Waikato” also imports its pork and explains that “produced” means it is processed in the Waikato and does not imply any involvement with local farmers. This is particulary annoying because apparently the company stopped buying from local suppliers partly because of negative publicity about the unethical treatment of pigs on large scale farms in the area. Come on now, are NZ pigs more deserving of humane treatment and porcine rights than wherever the imported pork is coming from?

So, why isn’t NZ food labelled with country of origin? Well, apparently because it would be bad for our export industry. Yeah, I know we have made a big deal about being clean and green (not always accurately) and yes, that is something that commands a premium on the world market but the politicians think that if we insist on labelling imported products as such then other countries will retaliate and tell their consumers tha NZ lamb is imported from NZ. Duh, I think they already know that!

Back to that compulsive label reading. I have the time and resources to buy find and buy local food so what’s the big deal? It’s that many people can’t afford to pay a premium just to buy local. The last local processor of tinned apricots stopped production last year because imported products were cheaper. Cheaper yes, better no. Now we can only get unripe fruit that has been bleached to remove blemishes. Not my problem really since I don’t eat tinned fruit but lots of people do, especially children and old people. Should they really be dependent on the food safety standards of the cheapest suppliers in the world? Why are we scrambling to be first in the race to the bottom of the food quality trough when we can produce our own high quality food?

I guess the people who make these decisions can afford to make healthy choices for their own families so why bother about everyone else?