Scientific Irregularity
Editorial
Copyright 1999 Detroit News
January 23, 1999
Break out the Wonder Bread! After years of gnawing on
intestine-scrubbing
foodstuffs, we're now being told by researchers that fiber does not
prevent
colon
cancer.
The notion that the dining room equivalent of cud could
actually thwart
colorectal disease was first advanced by a
British missionary to explain differences in
cancer rates between the world's rich and poor.
Thus did roughage become the culinary rage -- even the National
Cancer Institute took to preaching the value of a Third World diet.
Evidence to the
contrary was simply ignored.
But in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard
researchers expose
the fiber principle as a fib in reporting
on the largest fiber-cancer study ever conducted. The rate of colon
disease among 88,000 nurses remained
the same regardless of dietary fiber content. (High-fiber diets,
the
researchers contend, remain useful in preventing heart disease.)
Still, the news is particularly hard to swallow for
millions of Americans intent on eliminating
risk from their lives. But the study also stands as a useful
reminder that all the
nostrums foisted upon us by do-gooders of various stripes are best
taken with a
healthy dose of skepticism.
And that goes double for government. The seemingly endless
proscriptions from
regulators more often are products of politics than science. The
social costs
of such mandates ultimately prove far more deleterious than the
threat they
presume to prevent.
Much as we prefer certainty in all we do, science cannot
deliver all the
answers all the time. The scientific method is more tedious than
swift, better
suited to disproving falsehood than determining truth.
In a universe of such infinite complexity, better to live
it up a bit rather
than wallow in fear.
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Steven J. Milloy.
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