Ben Goldacre at TEDMED 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKRIoY9aXK8 

The authors of the “meta-analysis” themselves themselves even admitted that they were basing their findings on selective data (and even being selective within that selective data).  The authors also admitted to looking “specifically” at vitamins A, C and E.  Last I checked, there was a whole freaking host of vitamins and minerals in foods, guess they’re just not important.  That’s not to mention micronutrients, or anti-inflammatory properties, or anti-oxidants, or a whole host of other shit that we probably haven’t measured, compared, or even thought of yet.

And they conveniently ignored the of studies referenced here:

http://eatwild.com/healthbenefits.htm

In addition, Mother Earth News collected samples from 14 pastured flocks across the country (some from farmer Joel Salatin) and had them tested at an accredited laboratory.  The results were compared to official US Department of Agriculture data for commercial eggs.  Results showed the pastured eggs contained:

1/3 less cholesterol than commercial eggs
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
7 times more beta carotene
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/2007-10-01/Tests-Reveal-Healthier-Eggs.aspx 
http://www.polyfaceyum.com//index.php?main_page=index&cPath=67&zenid=bdebfvjhaqe7eukelvnc56rtn0 

Guess that didn’t make the cut!  Not “scientific” enough, I suppose.  Oh, I remember them off-the-cuff mentioning how pastured eggs might have a little more omega-3, but that’s all, really.  Great due diligence!

Not at all to mention the fact that “conventional” farming – including heavy pesticide use – destroys soil.  In the United States alone, it’s at a pace of 10x more the replenishing rate:

‘Slow, insidious’ soil erosion threatens human health
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March06/soil.erosion.threat.ssl.html

And all those synthetic pollutants in the atmosphere, in the soil, and being washed into the waterways does affect our health and make us sicker.  So, yes, “organic” foods (though that word covers a broad spectrum of “methods”…the best among actively building/growing the soil) do have more health benefits – especially when you look at the greater picture.

Meanwhile, more pesticide resistant superworms and superweeds!

‘Mounting Evidence’ of Bug-Resistant Corn Seen by EPA
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-04/-mounting-evidence-of-bug-resistant-corn-seen-by-epa.html 

It’s a flawed meta-study (with, apparently, unscrupulous ties to the biotech industry) based on other flawed and selective studies:

5 Ways the Stanford Study Sells Organics Short
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/09/five-ways-stanford-study-underestimates-organic-food

It also helps because reviews look at a broad swath of studies, so it’s not as easy to game “the big picture” by only talking about the studies that happen to agree with your position (which is something I’ve seen Nature News do multiple times, although I haven’t read this specific link). 

Coverage of this study sucks a lot. But your idea that review papers are less valid than individual studies is bunk. 

I know. I know. It’s the synthetic chemicals and I’m being a semantic pedant. However, I think the laziness of the phrasing is part of the larger problem of viewing all of this in black and white.

-written by a giant chemical bag filled with other chemicals in various states.

Processes in most bacteria are very different from us, so it was relatively easy to find antibiotics that single them out

But we’re not really Homo sapiens / primates / mammals so much as we’re ecosystems consisting of a Homo Sapiens structure containing a whole lot of microorganisms whose interactions are not entirely understood.

No, they freakin developed polling and random sampling for opinion research! And it Works!

Testing for long-term toxicity and carcinogenicity by opinion polls? What a brilliant idea.

FYI, I have seen people dying of malaria, I also had malaria more than once, and I worked in several countries in Africa and elsewhere where DDT is used. Once, I returned to my hotel room to find it locked, and with a sign that I should wait before going in because it was sprayed with DDT that morning. My luggage was inside, they just put it under the table so ‘it would not get sprayed’.

And now, to troll-rant on my own: I saw even more people dying from malaria (and other f*cking avoidable things) because of resistances to antibiotics and antipaludisms. No way any pesticide will stop the vectors, and treatments will stop the maladies, as long as people are kept illiterate, uniformed, and additional are behaving stupid out of their f*cking own free will.

Oh my, this always gets me overexcited.

The stuff about vaccines causing autism was based on a fraudulent scientific paper, since withdrawn by the publisher.

Potential problems with genetically engineered foods are not in the same class at all.  Selective breeding is recombining existing genes from living organisms.  Genetic engineering is putting novel DNA into an organism, perhaps DNA from a different species entirely.  The first has been vetted by evolution.  The second produces a new organism never before exposed to the pressures of natural selection.  Those are not equivalent, just because the intentionally vague phrase “genetic modification” happens to apply to both.

Even if genetic engineering doesn’t produce a new pest plant or a new disease-causing microorganism, it has social side effects that make it objectionable in context.  Witness Monsanto’s patenting of DNA sequences, and then suing farmers who save and replant the patented seed.  Witness the genetically engineered herbicide-resistant crop plants, which will in turn enable even more chemical application to fields than exists today.

Don’t know if the above qualifies as proper web-wrath or not.  I just want to point out that not everyone who opposes a particular technology, is opposed for purely emotional reasons.  Lots of us are as fact-driven as you say you are.

If something kills bugs/fungi/whatever, what makes you think it wont kill you!

In the case of fungi, usually that I don’t have cell walls and have different metabolic pathways. In the case of insects, that I’m warm-blooded and have different neurotransmitters and receptors.

Chemicals can be very hard to predict, but they aren’t magic. They interact with different natural processes, and with enough work, you can find ones that affect some processes much more than others.

Processes in most bacteria are very different from us, so it was relatively easy to find antibiotics that single them out; in cancer they’re nearly the same, so chemotherapy causes lots of collateral damage. Pesticides are somewhere in the middle…hence the difficulty explained in the article.

I agree, though, the distorting effect companies like Monsanto have on all this is very dangerous. The sooner we can weigh decisions without them pulling over the scales, the better.

And chemical agents can certainly evolve pesticide-resistant bugs that go on to reproduce, which can become an even larger threat to people and crops.  And they have the added benefit of getting into waterways, soil, the atmosphere, etc…

Isn’t the underlying science  of Silent Spring now established to be somewhat spotty?

And doesn’t refraining from spraying plants with pesticides simply cause the plants to produce more of their own natural (and less effective) pesticides internally – ones that are not so easily washed off, and that are chemically similar to synthetic pesticides?

No, they freakin developed polling and random sampling for opinion research!  And it Works!

Jerril, Science…  Science, Jerril.

At least chemical agents don’t reproduce and evolve.

Which, if you aren’t using Roundup (it’s illegal for private citizens here, frex), doesn’t make no never mind. The ragweed can be as Roundup resistant as it wants, I’m still going to be killing it with that little butane torch :P

So, good luck with that. Humans don’t put up with that sort of treatment.

Service guarantees citizenship.

There are other types of baby?

It all depends on your perspective. So yes to locally lift the ban on DDT was the right and pragmatic approach. And yes of course larvae are getting resistant. New questions are waiting for new answers.
“The Mail never stops…”