Nelson Otto
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
Mr. Kemna’s LTE of May 22 made a very good analogy between health and climate change experts.
In the 1970s there was a Lipid Hypothesis which was in dispute, George McGovern was following a Pritikin diet and believed everyone should be cutting back on fat and cholesterol, so he decided to hold a Senate committee hearing. The committee’s original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack by reducing their intake of saturated fats and cholesterol. Doctors took issues with the report, citing eight studies with over 5,000 patients that concluded diet has nothing to do with heart attacks. So the McGovern staff decided that those scientists were paid off by the big bad dairy and egg industries. Then the USDA, which was headed by Carol Tucker Foremen, who agreed with the study, got involved to create official guidelines. She consulted Philip Handler the head of the national academy of science. He told her the report was nonsense so she fired him and found a scientist that agreed with her. Scientists quickly learned the lesson, follow the line or lose their funding. Researchers who didn’t lost their careers and were blacklisted. Experts then convinced people to switch to processed vegetable oils, margins that are cholesterol free, after which heart disease went up. During this the Center for Science In The Public Interest, a vegetarian organization used fear-mongering, claiming foods with animal fat were heart attacks on a plate, in a bun etc. CSPI protested and forced fast-food restaurants to switch from saturated fats to trans fat, claiming that trans fat were better for us. Then the same group of experts turned around years later and went after the same fast food restaurants to get rid of trans fat and claiming it was bad. All of this was pushed on the people by those we trusted, the “experts.”
Can you see a reoccurring trend with climate change? Someone comes up with a junk science hypothesis, finds someone in government to support them, holds hearings. Ignores evidence to the contrary. Discredits scientists who disagree by claiming they are in the pocket of big industry, and defunds them. Then form an advocacy group to protest and push their agenda. Wha la, analogy complete, couldn’t agree more the similarities are striking. Some of us have learned the lesson and are telling our politicians “Vote no on the carbon tax.”