So assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science. They are statistical judgment calls (often based on things like giving a much, much higher dose to a rodent and looking for short-term effects).
And the reason that is is because there's no affordable, moral way to give 100,000 farmers [nor consumers] a small dose of a product for 20 years before declaring it safe. So the system guesses, and it guesses wrong, often erring against the side of caution in the US (it's actually quite shocking how many pesticides later get revoked after approval).
Europe takes a more "precautionary principle" approach. In those cases of ambiguity (which is most things approved and not), they err to the side of caution.
Notice how this claim here is again shifting the burden to the victims (their research doesn't meet standard X, allegedly). Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
IMO the FDA should do a better job at helping the populace distinguish between these two:
1) Evidence for the null hypothesis (there are enough studies with sufficient statistical power to determine that product likely does not cause harm at a >95% CI).
2) There is no evidence that it is unsafe. (nor that it is safe).
The problem is #2 sounds a lot stronger and often better than #1 when put into English. There must be some easy to understand way to do it, IE an 'insufficient testing' vs. 'tested' label/website or something.
Because of its high toxicity, the European Union withdrew paraquat from its market in July 2007 [1]
So it's clearly poisonous to humans in high doses, I guess the argument is that perhaps the smaller doses exposed to farmers may not lead to sufficient ingestion to cause harm. The parkinsons seems like pretty clear evidence against that.
> If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't use that information to infer about its safety.
I don't know why you're trying to defend this with counterfactuals/hypotheticals instead of just googling. Feels like you're bending over backward here.
Shouldn't most chemicals be assumed unsafe until proven otherwise? How many chemicals have we produced in a lab that have no harmful effects? Even medicine is bad for you, it's just better than the disease it's meant to treat. I don't know why we'd treat something designed to kill animals as safe for humans without studies showing that it's not harmful. (Well I do know why, but I don't know why voters go along with it.)
And when we're talking about things in this realm, the general saying is "The dose makes the poison"... Water will kill you if you drink enough of it.
And we do have all sorts of studies showing that harm from these substances isn't immediately apparent (they all have safety sheets, and maximum safe exposure levels) . What we're missing, mainly because it's just incredibly hard to ethically source, is long term studies.
So the question you're really asking is "what's your tolerance to risk?". I think it's fine to have different governing bodies take different stances on that scale. What's less fine is failure to act on information because of profit motives.
Long story short - this isn't so simple. You bathe in chemicals all day every day.
I daresay that the issue is less about "chemicals" and more about "new chemicals". If a substance already exists in nature and has been in use for a long time, then it's reasonable to take the position that it is probably within harm limits. If it's a newly synthesised/extracted substance, then it should be subject to reasonable testing.
Also, if a chemical is known to be toxic, then rigorous testing should be performed before allowing it to be widely distributed and used.
> If a substance already exists in nature and has been in use for a long time, then it's reasonable to take the position that it is probably within harm limits.
Reasonable, but wrong.
Simple case: Did you know that occupational sawdust exposure is strongly associated with cancer in the paranasal sinuses and nasal cavity?
There's also some pretty compelling evidence that coronavirus's (so common cold & flu) are associated with dementia/Alzheimer's.
Alcohol increases cancer rate more than some of the "chemicals" people will complain about. So does Bacon. So does sunlight.
All of which have been floating around in Human contact for a LONG time.
Again - we do a pretty good job at filtering out the stuff that's fast acting and harmful. It's just really difficult to tease out information that requires long term monitoring and involves small/moderate increases in risk.
Think about how long it took us to figure out that lead exposure is really nasty. We used lead for thousands of years prior, and it's literally a base element.
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As for
> Also, if a chemical is known to be toxic, then rigorous testing should be performed before allowing it to be widely distributed and used.
No one is arguing otherwise, and normally large and expensive studies are done on short term harm (extensive animal testing). But you tell me how we can reasonably and ethically do longitudinal studies on large groups of humans to determine if a new substance is going to cause small/moderate cancer rate bumps over 50+ years?
This is just genuinely a difficult problem to address, and it's not simply like we can go "wait 50 years and see"! Because usually we're trying to use these things to address existing problems. Ex - pesticides and fertilizers might still be net positives even with the cancer risk - do we avoid them and let people starve today? Or feed everyone now and have a 10% bump in cancer rates 50 years later? There's no golden ticket here.
[Edit] The below comment is inaccurate. The pesticide sprayed for gypsy moths was DDT. I am leaving this comment because it should be known that this was a thing even though it is now off topic.
P̵a̵r̵a̵q̵u̵a̵t̵ DDT is also linked to the polio pandemic. It was sprayed everywhere gypsy moths were found. Great success at killing moths. Also weakened human children to to where a common disease could get into spines and cause paralysis.
Researching this kind of stuff is not for the faint of heart. Its horrible all the way down. Not recommended for the faint of heart.
Paraquat is a herbicide, not an insecticide, so why would it be sprayed for moths? I searched for information linking moths, paraquat, and polio, but couldn't find any. Is this claim a hallucination?
The common name is "spongy moths" now, to avoid a racial epithet.
"In July 2021 the Entomological Society of America decided to remove the name "gypsy moth" from its Common Names of Insects and Related Organisms List as "hurtful to the Romani people", since gypsy is considered an ethnic slur by some Romani people." [1]
um. My uncle died of polio, and I was a medical researcher (phd) for a while.
Polio can cause paralysis just fine on its own, it doesn't need DDT or paraquat to help it.
And you are also right that widespread spraying of DDT lead to all kind of problems (killed all the birds, for one, leading to "Silent Spring"), which one reason it was banned.
another reason is the mosquitos developed resistance.
There's a synthetic opioid called MPPP, which, if inappropriately synthesized (IIRC, using too much heat in one step), yields MPTP, which is non-toxic in and of itself, but has the ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier, where it is then metabolized into MPP+, which is potently neurotoxic to the dopaminergic neurons of the Substantia Nigra, reliably producing a Parkinsonism in those exposed to it (from wikipedia):
>The chloride salt of MPP+ found use in the 1970s as an herbicide under the common name cyperquat.[4][3] Though no longer in use as an herbicide, cyperquat's closely related structural analog paraquat still finds widespread usage, raising some safety concerns.
> Over the last two centuries the pendulum of opinion has swung widely as to whether the cause of PD was due to genetics or environment causes [69]. While MPTP has not yet been found in the native environment, beginning in the 1980s the pendulum swung dramatically in the direction of the environmental hypothesis, spurred not only by the observation that a simple pyridine (MPTP) could induce so many of the features of PD, but also the striking similarity between its toxic metabolite, MPP+ and paraquat (differing only by one methyl group) [70], an herbicide that is used worldwide. Since that time, a large number of studies have shown pesticide exposure is a risk factor for PD [71]. Interesting, this risk is enhanced by the presence of certain genetic variants [72], consistent to the adage that “genetics load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger”.
Actually, surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given the interesting history and a large chunk of HNers being functional drug addicts--albeit not necessarily of opioids), MPPP was discussed here just last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41053383
> What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China"?
Almost everyone who banned it did so because of acute toxicity - it requires careful handling to use safely.
Unfortunately, it was commonly used to commit suicide in many countries. In other countries, it was deaths from accidental ingestion, lung damage from unsafe handling, etc.
I don't know of any country that banned it because of a purported link to Parkinson's.
The other thing you should know is that they use it to help the plants grow, but they use larger amounts to kill the plants at the same time so they can uniformly harvest. So we eat more of this crap than you'd expect, because they are using it beyond expected ways
I think they might refer to the EU approving of paraquat, which was appealed by Sweden and other countries and it was a legal process churning on until 2007 when the presumed link with Parkinson's and other factors led to the decision to ban it.
Chevron clasically has ignored health and safety requirements to the point where there was once the “Chevron Doctrine” which deferred legal interpretations to specialized regulatory agencies which established clearer guidance against murky legislative directives. The Doctrine was recently overturned by the ostensibly rogue SCOTUS as highlighted by the harvard business review:
https://hbr.org/2024/09/the-end-of-the-chevron-doctrine-is-b...
That's a rather rose colored way of framing what Chevron was. It essentially removed the role of the judiciary in settling disputes. In cases where a regulator's action was deemed at least "reasonable", the judiciary was obligated to simply defer to the regulator's interpretation.
And due to widespread regulatory capture, this is hardly some social benefit. The original case Chevron Doctrine was based on [1] essentially came down to the EPA interpreting anti-pollution laws in a way enabling companies to expand pollution-causing constructions with no oversight. The EPA was then sued, and defeated, by an environmental activist group, but then that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court and Chevron Deference was born.
Other examples are the FCC deeming broadband internet as a "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" (which would have meant common-carrier obligations would have applied), and so on. Another one [3] - Congress passed legislation deeming that power plants must use the "best technology available" to "minimize the adverse environmental impact" of their water intakes/processing. The EPA interpretation instead allowed companies to use a cost-benefit analysis and pick cheaper techs. And I could go on. Chevron Deference was an abomination.
> In cases where a regulator's action was deemed at least "reasonable", the judiciary was obligated to simply defer to the regulator's interpretation.
That is the way it _should_ be. Judges are not subject matter experts in all of human endeavors, but they are expected to make rulings over that domain. Relying on experts and career civil servants advice is generally good, unless they’re being unreasonable.
The role of a judge is not to give his own personal opinion on a topic. It's to listen to arguments between two different sides, who each may call upon experts, witnesses, present evidence, and so on. And they will then also argue how the other side's take is invalid or misleading. The role of the judge is to work to objectively determine which side has the law and evidence most on their side.
In cases where a judge is a domain expert, he may well end up even needing to recuse himself as that would generally entail opining on debatable topics one way or the other, which makes him unlikely to be able to effectively perform his role.
unfortunately civil servants are not perfect and not elected. If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their word. They should have to justify their ruling before the court. The judge should defer to them only after finding their decision was good in the first place.
> If they 'take bribes' I don't want a judge to accept their word. They should have to justify their ruling before the court.
If they're taking bribes they should be tried under corruption laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 201
Meanwhile our SC justices can accept all kinds of gifts from industry and make whatever ruling they want without any repercussions. They're in charge of determining their own conflicts of interests and their own ethics violations. Which surprise, they never seem to have any!
Its far easier to remove a regulator, even one of a supposedly independent agency (we'll see how that goes), for doing something obviously corrupt than a Supreme Court judge, as evidenced by the current court.
bribes is in quotes. There are a lot of questionable ways to do things that are not illegal. As the other post said, commonly it is we will give you a good job in a few years.
Even when there is a bribe it is typically hidden in something that looks legal. Buy something you need anyway from my brother-in-law even though you can get a better deal elsewhere. Family charities are a popular way for politicians to do this - most of the money goes to the admins the politician is related to. In countries we think of as corrupt there are typically direct bribes, but in less corrupt countries the question is how can you hide them in ways that are legal - often by doing things that fully moral people are also doing.
The point he's making is that these things are not illegal. They're bribery, but carried out in a way designed to fall within the bounds of the law. Because actually outlawing every single way of bribing somebody is, in general, impossible. And it's difficult to make any progress even plugging the holes that do exist, because the people that could do that are the very ones taking advantage of those holes.
And removing a regulator is extremely difficult. For non-independent regulatory agencies it can only be done by the President (who generally is the same one that appointed him). For independent regulatory agencies it can again only be done by the President but this time only for just cause and in a process that can involve judicial appeal and involvement. Removing a judge, by contrast, is done by congress and requires impeachment/conviction. So rather than one being easier/harder, it's just that the process is different. Regulators are 'controlled' by the executive with judicial oversight, and the judiciary is 'controlled' by the legislative.
It's all a big game of rock, paper, scissors in many ways.
> And removing a regulator is extremely difficult.
This isn't based in reality in the slightest, or you just haven't been paying attention to the Trump administration. It seems like Trump has had little issue replacing a lot of key regulators in a heartbeat. And in a few months after we get the opinion from Trump v. Slaughter it'll probably be stupid simple for the President to remove anyone for any reason anytime regardless of if its an "independent" agency.
Meanwhile we've had Supreme Court justices openly receiving millions of dollars in bribes while deciding cases in favor of those who paid the bribes, and nothing is happening.
You have literally 1 person in the entire world capable of firing somebody, and then that results in a case being heard by the Supreme Court when that person tries to invoke that power, after lower courts immediately said Nope. That is, absolutely by definition, somebody who is extremely difficult to fire. Extremely difficult does not mean impossible.
And you calling something a bribe doesn't make it a bribe in the legal sense, which is the point. For instance big pharma "donated" hundreds of millions of dollars across Congress the President just in the midst of the pandemic. Those beneficiaries, in turn, passed laws and created unprecedented and controversial defacto mandates which directly drove tens of billions of dollars in profits for these "donors." Is this a bribe?
Given your likely ideological perspective, I assume you would vehemently insist it's not. Why?
You're comparing firing someone who serves a statutory term limt at the pleasure of a position that gets changed out every 4-8 years also with statutory term limits compared to trying to fire someone serving for life who takes 218 House members and 67 Senators to fire.
Yes, its far easier for that one person to make that decision to fire someone than have two hundred and eighty five people agree at the same time to fire someone. That person with a term limit will be replaced more often than the person with a lifetime appointment. I don't understand how you're even making that argument otherwise. Incredibly illogical.
And before you say "bUt I dIdn'T SaY tHaT!", yes you did make the argument its just as easy to fire a SC justice as a regulator.
> So rather than one being easier/harder, it's just that the process is different.
The process is different, yes, and that process makes it a hell of a lot harder.
> Given your likely ideological perspective, I assume you would vehemently insist it's not. Why?
Projecting an identity on to me and asking me to defend a position I have not taken. Really arguing in bad faith there. Depending on what exactly you're talking about I probably would say those are essentially bribes. Like a President receiving gold bars to have him change trade policy. Pretty extreme corruption wouldn't you say?
They don't overtly take bribes. It's a mixture of two things. The first is a corporate revolving door. Look at the head of a regulatory agency and he's often a corporate insider - regulatory capture. For instance many regulations that greatly expanded the reach and reduced requirements for GMOs passed under Michael R Taylor [1] as the head of the FDA.
He was a Vice President at Monsanto (and worked as part of their contracted legal team for 7 years prior) and some of his most well known publications involved arguing for an interpretation of a 1958 law, that forbid companies using carcinogens in products, to mean that they could only knowingly allow a 'small amount' of carcinogens. His Wiki page looks like it's been hit by a PR firm. Here [1] is an older version.
So you essentially have Monsanto, by proxy, in charge of the FDA. And this sort of stuff is much more the rule than the exception. Taylor was appointed by Obama. That's not to be partisan and suggest Obama was particularly bad here, but on the contrary I think many people have a positive view of him relative to more recent presidents, yet he continued on with these practices just like literally every other administration in modern history.
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The second thing is indirect payoffs. Massive companies like Monsanto have their tentacles in just about everything in any way remotely related to their domain. If you play ball with them, you're going to find doors and opportunities open for you everywhere. On the other hand if you turn against them they will similarly use all their resources to destroy you so much as possible.
A recent article on here discussed how key research published regarding the safety of Monsanto products was ghostwritten by Monsanto themselves and then handed off to some other 'scientists' to sign their name to it and publish. [2] Once that was indisputably revealed in court (only thanks to the really smart guys doing this literally talking about it, verbatim, in emails), it took some 8 years for the article to be retracted. People just don't want to go against Monsanto.
It was weaponized by both parties to create defacto laws without proper legal procedure. It should’ve been unconstitutional from the beginning as only Congress can make laws. Regulatory agencies are far easier to control, generally contain administration-friendly plants, and are not expected to provide any justification for their decisions. The result is laws that change as the wind blows, confusions, and rights restrictions done by people who should have no business doing so. The “reasonable interpretation” rule allowed Congress to completely defer to them and force citizens to spend tremendous capital getting a case to the Supreme Court.
Chevron’s overturn was objectively a huge win and hardly a “rogue” decision. That editorialization is not a fair representation of the problems it has caused when regulatory agencies begin attempting to regulate constitutional rights. It was overly vague and gave far too much power to people who cannot be trusted with it.
We shouldn’t need Chevron Deference to make laws that protect people from harm done by corporations. Period. If we do, it’s a failure of Congress to do their jobs and a mechanism should be in place to have a “reset button” (like many other countries when they form a government).
Expecting Congress to directly regulate the minutia of industry, medicine or technology is absurd, these are giant categories with their own subfields that need specialized technocratic leadership.
Chevron Deference is used to bypass congressional and court scrutiny. I'm getting downvoted, particularly, because I do not believe people understand the extent of what Chevron Deference provides. I am not surprised. It's not mentioned often, it's often editorialized particularly by leftist media as a great boon to our society, and most people are unaffected by it.
Congress is expected to make laws. End of story. Chevron Deference allows them to reduce their own liability and burden by rubberstamping opinion into law. That is a tremendous problem. Congress' core directive is to protect our rights. Not restrict them. Industry plants have a much easier time infesting regulatory bodies through revolving door policies, regulatory bodies change with every administration, and regulatory bodies are not held to a standard of rigor that approaches 1/10th of the worst quality scientific journal. That is a major problem. The first thing any true tactical politician will do is move his or her favorite industry plants into regulatory bodies. Then, they can give "opinion" that aligns with the view of that person, which is then rubberstamped into law.
If we cannot expect congress to do their job our government has failed it's absolute simplest purpose. There are then much greater problems than whether turtles are choking on can holders.
I trust the scientific expertise of a career bureaucrat holding a PhD more than a congresscritter that brings a snowball onto the Senate floor as "proof" climate change isn't real[1].
To expect anyone to create meaningful regulation on every sector of the economy is absurd, our system is far too complex.
We need regulation if we want to live in a safe & healthy modern society.
Unless you just disagree with the second proposition, it seems your implication is that every congress person should be an expert on every sector of the economy and fiscal policy, and be able to craft meaningful laws, or at least have strong opinions about them. Otherwise, they would just be accepting laws written by other people, just like delegating to the regulator.
Corruption exists in every system. I grew up with clean air and water thanks to the current regulatory system, and have benefited from a safe work culture my whole life. Best I can tell the only guy who has really done anything to stop that is the current President, so kinda a crude characterization to say that they change with every admin.
I never implied congress is expected to be experts on everything. What I do expect is a level of scrutiny much higher than what is considered rigorous by academic standards.
It should not be a hard ask that regulatory bodies produce meaningful, thoughtful, and extensive uneditorialized reports on a subject. These are then given in summary to congress who can use this information to inform regulation.
This strategy is superior for a few reasons:
1. It keeps regulatory bodies honest and when held to the highest possible standard of scrutiny works to prevent a lot of trivial gaming of the system
2. It separates the powers appropriately. Congress can ask anyone to do research and return results. This is not the same as providing an unelected body defacto law writing power.
And on the final point regulation can be good. I think it's dishonest to interpret my position as anti-regulation. Rather, I think regulation is trivially corruptable. Regulatory capture is the mechanism by which the largest wealth-having class maintains their power. Regulatory capture is trivialized through the use of Chevron Deference (see my post above). By cleanly separating the two we reduce the probability of corruption. If a corrupt politician can't inject their stooges to defer to then we have an extra mechanism by which to protect our rights, and protect our health. It then falls on congress to do the right thing. Then it's OUR responsibility to elect people who will do that.
If we allow for the assumption congressmen are not idiots, are capable of reading and referring to experts, and act accordingly then there should be no meaningful difference modulo preventing unelected officials from writing law. If we cannot guarantee that, then it's not corruption, it's a complete failure of the legislative branch of government and the election system. Which I think we both agree here in one way or another that the system has completely failed.
It’s pretty clear that rule making and adjudication are in the preview of the executive branch. Congress and courts can’t possibly make laws and hold trials for every possible minor situation.
Some agencies lean towards proper justification (the EPA, for example, has been generally okay at best about this) other regulatory bodies don't.
While it is not a popular topic here, gun laws, and I am taking a risk with my karma even talking about it, have been subject to some of the most vague and dangerous interpretations by the ATF. In this case we provided congress a way to bypass constitutional scrutiny (pre-bruen) by deferring to the ATF. Two examples are bump stocks, and FRTs, both of which the ATF interpreted as "machine guns", defying their own regulatory definition, and creating felons out of innocent people quite literally overnight. Honest people had their doors literally kicked in. This is a terrifying level of power. It is not the first time the ATF has done this. I would recommend spending time reading the writings of GOA and FPC if you'd like to see how confusing it is for a law abiding gun owner to stay within the lines of the law when Chevron Deference existed. At any point something you lawfully buy, fill out the correct forms, and lawfully own, could be suddenly interpreted with no notification as criminal and thus you INSTANTLY become a felon. There are violations of ex-post-facto, denial of constitutional rights, etc.
Justification is highly subjective and in many cases these regulatory agencies are handed the pen to write and sign their laws.
There is no difference between a regulatory agency writing and passing law, and congress completely deferring all responsibility to them. This is the problem. "Justification" is not held to any standard.
My personal opinion is opinion from a regulatory agency should be held to a higher standard than even the most prestigious academic journal given the consequences. Chevron Deference being used to regulate companies is one thing. Chevron Deference being used to regulate constitutional rights is a consequence, and thus, it is a good thing it is eliminated. Perhaps congress can actually do it's job and demand a higher level of scrutiny, care, and precision from our regulatory agencies.
"Under Chevron, if a judge found that the agency had made a reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous congressional directive, they were obliged to defer to the agency’s interpretation of the law, effectively ending any substantive review of a challenged rule. The repeal of Chevron is a huge blow to regulators, evidenced by the fact that the decision had been cited more than 18,000 times over 40 years."
the Chevron Doctrine is new to me; it appears that the parent comment was not answering "why was it banned internationally" but rather emphasizing weakness in US procedures
> political pressure. Same reason lots of stuff is banned in the EU even when it's safer than other things that aren't banned.
You avoid the question instead of answering it (What caused that "political pressure"? Does such a thing just occur randomly in nature?), following it by an assertion that you don't bother to provide any evidence for.
I believe the EU tends to follow a precautionary principle, namely a substance generally must be shown to be safe before it’s approved. In contrast, the US follows a risk-based approach where a substance can often be used unless it’s shown to be harmful. So it isn't really that many "safe" things in the EU are banned, rather they have not been approved. Pretty sure this is specific to food additives, though may apply to other areas.
What lead it to being "banned in dozens of countries all over the world, including the United Kingdom and China"?