Fortune magazine 3/22/04 raised huge questions about this sort of thing in an article called "Why we're losing the war on cancer: and how to win it." They wrote that "the new wonder drugs might make you think we're beating this dreaded scourge. We're not." They argued, however, that over and over such claims of victory have been made. Again: "the percentage of Americans dying from cancer is still what it was in 1970 ... and in 1950." There are, of course, important ways to qualify these statements. (See http://blog.aperio.com/articles/Fortune_Cancer.pd...

Nevertheless, these concerns about changes in scientific paradigms (including methods) are widely discussed. The piece is weak on addressing these concerns. ussed these days (ie. in agriculture, in health, all across the physical and human sciences). In our area (Cedar Rapids-Iowa City) I found, a few years ago, that we have a whopping one Doctor, one afternoon a week (at University of Hospitals - cancer area) directly providing service from this alternative perspective (and my family received immediate concrete help there).

Medicine, given it's traditionally authoritarian nature, seems to be slow to respond to advances beyond "anomalies" (see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) in the dominant paradigm of medicine, of cancer, as clearly and dramatically set forth in the Fortune article.

It all comes down to life and death. We must advance fully into the 21st century.

Great letter. Clearly it's time for a return to some sensible regulation and farm policy.

And yet the comments here seem to show a lack of understanding of the tradition of family farming, the problems of mega industrial farming, or the new sustainable alternative. A key need is that we apply science, as the letter writer insists. This must include the science of ecology, as it applies to disease and the over use of antibiotics (widely used on mega-industrial egg chickens for 4 months, to cover up the failure of the methods) and more generally (as it applies to the speeding and vast destruction of the genetic heritage of domestic farm animals, as developed by the family farm system over 10,000 years, on farms and in back yards, in Mexico, Cuba, and around the world.

I take it you see your answer, (ownership? hijack? some obscure comment someone made in DC?) as showing you really, really, really don't engage in "political spinning," which you then do not see as a "desperate" comment. Ok, I hear what you've said.

The fantasy in which you pretend to respond to things I've actually said is strange. Ok, let's come back to reality. I wrote about a dilemma. Do you understand it? Can you comment about it? Are you willing to go on record with a relevant comment? Or will you make respond without relating to these real world matters (closed mindedmindedness, prejudging). In other words, do you know what racially exploitative writing looks like enough not to engage in it yourself. Do you see how you end up, by your model associating these practices with the GOP?

You're claiming guilt by association, and the context involves activism against racial terrorism. After you acknowledge this context, and frame your answer accordingly, you can begin to talk about evidence.

What's a "lib" and why do you think I am one?

What have I written here or elsewhere that in any way suggests that I have a short memory (ie. related to what you write about Obama and 9/11)?

What are you claiming about what I've written and about remembering what really happened on 9/11? Perhaps it isn't clear, but what I've written above applies to 9/11 as well. Our leaders on both sides of the aisle (and most of the public? and all of the conservatives?) lacked the courage to face the realities. Only one horn of the dilemma of terrorism was grabbed. The neocons had 7 years in power (commander in chief ) after 9/11 and failed, for this very reason. As in economics, they're really bad in foreign policy.

No where have I suggested that Obama does not share this cowardice and incompetence. On the contrary, I opposed his nomination for these and other reasons.

But I t hink you mean something different. Are you arguing that those who grab only one horn have courage?

First she uses the 1-bad-apple argument. Hollywood is wholesome except for Mel Gibson?
For credibility she lists her roles, but not the one of public relations manager. She quotes a small farmer, who, in true PRM form, is used to suggest that there are no health differences between what we know as farming and the livestock factories we rarely see (but see YouTube link below on this point).
Ok, then there's the association with vaccinating your kids. In PR Land rejecting factory farm eggs is like refusing to vaccinate your kids? Basically she's arguing: go with the science, the doctors, not with the 1 study of 12 kids and the playboy model/hollywood actress, metaphorically speaking.
She cites no actual scientific research. Nada. She, herself, just gives PR fluff.
She doesn't mention the issue of contracting, where independent farmers become dependent upon decisions made far away at the corporate headquarters which prevents them (including economically) from using their best judgement. No ordinary consumer is allowed in to see the conditions. (But see the film "Food Inc.," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_yu_ovuT2A).
In contrast to this spin, however, John Ikerd, (after citing 59 studies showing that these kinds of factory farm operations hurt our wealth creation and jobs creation, our environment and communities) directs us to 40 health studies finding problems with factory livestock. So the scientists and doctors don't agree with Farm Bureau PR after all.
So factory livestock problems are part of the system, not just 1 or 2 bad actors.
Farm Bureau, this massive evidence thus shows, is really going with the playboy hollywood actress here, after all, but PR spinning it as down home rural Iowa values.
Meanwhile food safety has been made worse by our submission to WTO and NAFTA governance, where we give up our food sovereignty, resulting in skyrocketing foreign imports which, (with foreign countries here) get an easy ride (http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=788). Both were supported by Farm Bureau, a group downplaying and misrepresenting the realities of licentious, like trade.

I agree that we need to pour more money into regulation, to enforce what laws are left on the books. We must remember, however, that just as factory livestock operations began to take over the livestock industry, the Iowa legislature passed H.F. 519 which gave them nuisance lawsuit protection. Iowa followed the North Carolina model, as if our own hog farmers could't raise hogs better than these factory farms. Wendell Murphy, a key NC billionaire behind changes at the NC legislature, became one of the major owners of factory livestock in Iowa. The big lobbyists poured in. At one point Branstad got $42,000 in campaign money from them.

Meanwhile, we passed free trade legislation (NAFTA and WTO) greatly weakening our food safety legislation. The on farm regulation of these egg factories, for example, the regulation that wasn't done, falls away on imports of factory farm eggs from across the border (they don't need to meet our standards). In general, foreign companies operating in Iowa have weaker standards under these trade operations.

You can know better what you're getting under "buy local," (and can avoid local factory farm eggs) but such campaigns are illegal under WTO, and subject to protest. There's also a push to require small scaled local producers to be regulated as if they were one of these unhealthy factory operations (http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=788).

I think of populists as a diversified grassroots, but these "populists" seem to be saying the same things as talk radio and Fox news, and omitting the same important facts. In part the concerns are authentic, and in part manufactured. And isn't that just her point, to show the glaring discrepancies. There are other huge populist movements. Unlike the Tea Party, they are not idolized on any major news station. Instead they're trashed on the same major news station, as Jon Stewart has dramatically shown, in his coverage of Fox News coverage of the two. In fact, (therefore?) there ideas are mostly unknown. Here at Gazette comments, I've been said to be the most outrageous liberal they've ever seen, not by taking any kind of a political stand (such as liberal, populist, conservative) but just by stating plain facts of what, in real life, socialists, or progressives, or the left, actually believes. No one (among those "populists") seems to know anything about it, even though its all over the web, all over the countryside, and all over our urban neighborhoods.

Yes, corporate dominated government (from corporate election funding to massive lobbying) is terrible government. But that doesn't make government inevitably terrible.