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How the Sugar Industry Tried To Hide Health Effects of Its Product 50 Years Ago (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: About 50 years ago, the sugar industry stopped funding research that began to show something they wanted to hide: that eating lots of sugar is linked to heart disease. A new study exposes the sugar industry's decades-old effort to stifle that critical research. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, recently analyzed historical documents regarding a rat study called Project 259 that was launched in 1968. The study was funded by a sugar industry trade group called the International Sugar Research Foundation, or ISRF, and conducted by W. F. R. Pover at the University of Birmingham. When the preliminary findings from that study began to show that eating lots of sugar might be associated with heart disease, and even bladder cancer, the ISRF pulled the plug on the research. Without additional funding, the study was terminated and the results were never published, according to a study published today in PLOS Biology. The study in question investigated the relationship between sugars and certain blood fats called triglycerides, which increase the risk of heart disease. The preliminary results from the research, called Project 259, suggested that rats on a high-sugar diet, instead of a starch diet, had higher levels of triglycerides. The rats that ate lots of sugar also had higher levels of an enzyme called beta-glucuronidase in their urine, which at the time was thought to be potentially linked to bladder cancer, says study co-author Cristin Kearns, an assistant professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry.
The love of money is the most addictive. Nicotine, heroin, opioids, sex, and all the others pale in comparison.
It makes me wonder if the same universities are doing the same thing today with other "research" - bought and paid for.
Considering how people will beg, borrow, or steal to get some drugs they're addicted to, I think you might have overestimated the addictiveness of money.
I got addicted to Frosted Flakes in the Army. I never had Frosted Flakes as a kid, Mom just wouldn't buy it. When in garrison we'd be given our choice of cereals at the dining facility and I'd just pick what I grew up with, shredded wheat. It started with the day we had field chow and they ran out of shredded wheat. When in the field we didn't have much of a choice, it was often just Frosted Flakes or nothing.
I didn't know what it was at first. I thought I just had a certain enjoyment of field training and sleeping under the stars. I looked forward to breakfast, which is normal since running around in the woods carrying a 50 pound rucksack can make a man tired and hungry. I then found myself eating Frosted Flakes when in garrison. When in the field I'd volunteer for chow duty so I could hide a box of Frosted Flakes for myself since sometimes we'd run out before I could eat, the people serving the food always ate last. Do you understand that? I volunteered for chow duty so I could eat Frosted Flakes!
After my discharge I found myself eating Frosted Flakes every day for breakfast. One bowl at first. Then two. Then three. Some mornings I'd empty the whole box. It got real bad. I had to stop. So I quit cold turkey. It was real hard, I craved Frosted Flakes so bad.
I still catch myself reaching for the Frosted Flakes at the grocery store only to stop myself at the last second. I had to stop going down that aisle. I can't even eat shredded wheat any more since it's next to the Frosted Flakes on the shelf. Now I only dare go as far down the aisle to get some oatmeal for breakfast. Sometimes I absentmindedly go down the aisle and I catch the sight of that tiger on the box calling for me to pick up the box and put it in my cart.
Friends don't let friends eat Frosted Flakes.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Barring some freak side effect like a potato taking up a heavy metal from the soil the ability for a GMO to pose any health risk is non-existent. GMOs don't suddenly gain the ability to produce some crazy chemical structure.
1) Roundup-ready GMOs on average get sprayed with more Roundup than non-resistant plants would, leading to a higher load of pesticides (which get absorbed into the plant), not because the GMO produces them, but because the GMO allows them.
1.a) This overuse leading to Roundup resistance in weeds, then needing even more pesticides, has also been published for a number of years.
2) "BT" GMOs contain genes from Bacillus thuringiensis, expressing an insecticide. B. thur. is used in organic farming (spores and Cry proteins sprayed on crops) because it is deemed mostly safe to the environment, but it seems research of effects on human health is "insufficient". I would think there is a bit of a difference between a topical application that can be washed off, and a systemic production of the insecticide.
I know for a fact that the Sun is the center of our solar system
You are wrong. The barycenter of the solar system is outside the sun.
Please tell me how knowing this means I have no clue how science works.
Science is not about "knowing" things, it is about evidence. The preponderance of the evidence says that climate change is real, and that GMOs are safe. But we don't "know" these things.
The preponderance of evidence... which if all science was done by people of 100% integrity, would indeed be reassuring.
But scientists are very clever, and after they do all the hard and skilled research work, comes time to interpret and report results. And now we are into the realm of funding, and influence, and politics, and so on, where spin and bias may rear their ugly heads. For example, the filing cabinet effect, where evidence which contradicts the preferred hypothesis, simply gets interpreted as mistaken and left in the filing cabinet.
So the preponderance of published evidence, is not really in itself reassuring.
It is odd, because there are many institutions in society which used to be authorities and assumed to be right, and should be trusted, like the police. But eventually, we grew to learn that institutions may have problems, like for example, institutional racism in the police. Now science is generally still held with high regard, as it in a way, ought to be, but it is still something practiced by people, and human nature and bias and survival are still factors, so it would be odd if they did not exert influence over the institution of science as they do over other institutions.
The other weird thing is that people seem to have a hard time holding in mind these two notions at the same time:
1. pre-modern religious fundamentalists who believe their thousand year old book is absolutely true, are indeed irrational and should be criticised.
2. modern science is very successful at producing knowledge, and nevertheless, it is not all the same quality across all fields, and within fields, there are some things which are in fact better understood than others, and the social and political side of human practice does influence things, sometimes a little, or negligibly, and sometimes a lot, and you can't really know either way just basing it on one's preferred views and beliefs -- only time can tell, and sometimes, a lot of time.
And lastly:
3. the details matter, and they matter a lot -- citing consensus on climate change is very vague, as what matters is exactly what effect it will have and how severe it will be, and here you would have to look at how they actually survey the consensus and what exactly people think they are agreeing to and why -- these details matter yet climate change is politically turned into this big us vs them, "scientists vs denialists" claptrap which helps nobody -- that polarisation is deliberate and meant to make people feel bad for being on the "wrong" side -- and if you think that is scientific, then we all know of the famous bridge for sale. it is unfortunate... but many many vested interests in society are all vying for our support.
That is really for me the take home message of these "big science fraud" stories. Humanity has problems with integrity, with "removing the log from one's own eye" to put it one way, or philosophically, the issue of fallibility -- you cannot know if you are right (a fact the CC people try to get around by with saying "well gee you just want to wait while the planet burns" -- which is wrong, it does not mean waiting, but it does mean you include the risks of being wrong in your analysis, especially when unintended consequences rear their ugly head) -- so we must all proceed with humility.
And not to worry this does not put anyone into the fundamentalist 6000-year old Earth idiocy -- for they are the last people to admit their own fallibility.