Pesticides

Pharma companies have taken to combining over-the-counter drugs into the same pill or bottle and charging higher prices. There's little evidence this marketing practice benefits anybody but said pharma companies. There's a new pesticide scare loose in the headlines: the weedkiller paraquat allegedly causes Parkinson's Disease. It's a phony scandal cooked up by activists and trial lawyers.
Politicians are attacking a safe and important class of pesticides – neonicotinoids – with unwarranted bans and restrictions. These policies will be devastating to farmers, costly to consumers, and damaging to the environment.
Reporters like to portray themselves as truth tellers who hold the powerful accountable. In reality, many of them are hired guns who publish propaganda under the guise of doing journalism. The good news is that a growing number of Americans are abandoning the legacy media for better sources of information.
New York State's legislators are about to place drastic restrictions on neonicotinoids ("neonics"), a popular, safe, and effective class of pesticides. They're putting the bogus claims of activists ahead of the welfare of consumers and farmers. Let's hope Governor Hochul will be more sensible and veto the bill.
EPA has a long history of pandering to activists, encouraging them to sue the Agency and then capitulating to their agenda. Their stock in trade is shoddy science and dishonesty, resulting in farmers deprived of safe, effective pesticides.
Once a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising New Age experience, it's now an occasion for environmental activists to prophesy apocalypse, dish antitechnology dirt, and allow passion and zeal to trump reality.
The world's biggest consumer hoax is organic agriculture, which pretends to be what it isn't. And very successfully.
Ants – with their wise farming practices and efficient navigation techniques – could inspire solutions for some human problems. From The Conversation, by Scott Solomon, Associate Teaching Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University
The activist group Friends of the Earth and its cheerleaders at The Guardian say soaring pesticide use is poisoning millions of people and killing thousands. True to form, they have misused the evidence to make their case.
Artificial intelligence may help physicians identify patients at risk for Parkinson's Disease (PD) before symptoms develop, improving health care and possibly zeroing in on potential causes of PD. Restricting access to technology can generate disastrous consequences. Why, then, are 'green' politicians so eager to ban these useful tools?
Some 400,000 people attended Woodstock 99 in Rome, New York. The weekend-long music festival ended in preventable disaster, and it offers an important lesson to policymakers and activists eager to ban important technologies.
"Climate-anxious" college students are pushing to have low-risk pesticides banned from their campuses. Meanwhile, states that have legalized recreational marijuana use are concerned that their new policy may cause more car accidents. We examine the science behind both stories on episode 14 of the Science Dispatch podcast.