"A is for Alar." I remember the 60 Minutes story about Alar like that used on apple trees caused cancer in lab animals. While we were in high school, a friend of mine in FFA gave a speech about his research into pesticides and scare tactics. Alar was his golden example. To get the results it did, the lab gave the mice so much Alar that a human being would need to eat 14 tons of apples a day for 70* years. In that dosage, 5% of the mice developed tumors. In the group having a half dosage (meaning the equivalent of 7 tons of apples a day for 70 years), none developed cancer.
At that statement, the audience went into shock. Half were trying not to interrupt him by laughing at the dosage required. The other half just gasped.
*This is 20+ years ago. My memory may be off on the exact numbers, but "tons per day" and "years" was definitely in the speech.
I propose a new executive order for various government organizations such as the EPA and FDA. They are to propose no new regulation, ruling, finding or guideline until they have completed an open, replicable, scientific evaluation of all previous rulings, regulations, findings and guidelines. Study summaries are to be written in plain English, at no more than a 10th grade level, and made freely and easily available to the public. Each study is to be reviewed by a panel of thirty randomly selected citizens, who are neither government employees nor receiving welfare benefits, with SAT (combined math & verbal) scores of not less than 1000, or ACT overall scores of not less than 20.
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