The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides all citizens with "equal protection" under the law. But our legal system offers no similar protection for chemicals in the junk science courtroom.
A new, but unpublished, National Cancer Institute study reports that the AIDS drug called AZT, when administered to pregnant mice, caused cancer in the mice offspring; an eight-fold increase in lung cancer and a 17 percent increase in reproductive system tumors.
But an advisory panel of scientists and others from the National Institutes of Health concluded this AZT study raises only "theoretical concerns." And although the panel urged more tests be conducted, they also said pregnant women should continue taking AZT.
How did the panel reach this conclusion?
For the study, researchers fed some pregnant mice very high levels of AZT; they gave other mice lower levels of the drug. They reported no increase in cancer in mice offspring whose mothers had been fed low-levels of AZT. And, currently, there is no evidence of cancer in human children whose mothers have taken AZT.
Makes sense, right? But would the panel have reached a different conclusion if the chemical at issue had been a politically incorrect chemical, rather than a politically protected drug? As an example, remember the pesticide alar?
In that case, researchers reported higher cancer rates in rodents fed tens of thousands of times more alar than any human would ever consume in a lifetime. That finding was enough for the Natural Resources Defense Council (abetted by the television newsmagazine 60 Minutes) to start an apple scare that caused staggering economic losses to Washington state apple growers. Eventually, EPA even banned the use of alar.
Yet there was no evidence showing lower doses of alar are harmful to rodents or that any human cancer can be attributed to alar.
So alar gets labeled a "carcinogen" but AZT raises only "theoretical concerns"? Talk about "unequal protection" on the part of the federal government. Some chemicals clearly need "constitutional" rights.
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