Re: [Phys-l] The political/scientific connection

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Again a misread of cause and effect clauses!  I was facetiously proposing
that whatever is making all of us fatter is producing irrationality.  I was
not questioning the link between animals getting fatter and humans also
getting fatter.

Could whatever is causing the irrationality also cause people to misread
what was written?

The misreading is most probably produced by skimming, and being in a hurry!
And human girth is probably also related to the fact that Americans drive
distances that in other countries are done on foot.  Also the prevalence of
cheap high calorie fast food is probably a big factor.  Then possible
chemical influences compound the problem.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> > Maybe we are poisoning ourselves with something that is also producing
> > irrationality!  There is evidence that animal species associated with
> humans  in the US are also growing fatter.  So could it be something in
> the soil or  the air.  This is of course a facetious suggestion, but you
> never know.
> > John M. Clement
> Not sure why John thinks that " something is making domesticated animals
> fatter "
> is a facetious suggestion. It is not.  Not just antibiotics figure in
> animal feed,  hormones
> serve too. Not to mention the hormones provided to enhance milk
> production in dairy cows, so that a new marketing ploy runs like this,
> "No BST  is fed to our dairy herd".
> BST or BGH is bovine somatotropin, a bovine growth hormone.
> Besides the deliberate feed additions, the human sex hormone released to
> water treatment plants via flushed female urine  is not eliminated
> there.  More inadvertantly, there is a class of industrial chemicals
> [bisphenol A], that mimic sex hormones, some of which find use in
> thermal printing paper, such as you might find at a restaurant: best not
> to use a rolled up bill to pick your teeth!
>   Here's a government broadsheet with a few details.
> <http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/FS-027-02/pdf/FS-027-02.pdf>
>
> Brian W
>
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