Dr. Fred vom Saal of the University of Missouri-Columbia has been promoting endocrine "disruption", drastic changes in our hormones that he claims are caused by trace levels of chemicals, for decades.
Which means he has been promoting homeopathy for decades.
His premise is that there is a magical U-shaped curve for plasticizers like BPA but sometimes his zealotry makes all science look bad, as happened with a recent paper in the favored trade publication of the endocrine disruptor community, which to scientists is far too often the toxicological equivalent of a UFO magazine - Journal of the Endocrine Society.
Based on eight humans, one of which was a study co-author, he has declared that humans might be getting Type 2 diabetes from BPA. Now, lots of people have said crazy stuff because they don't know any better - Greg Glassman, CEO of the Crossfit exercise video empire, funds an anti-science trade group called US Right To Know because they sided with him after he controversially claimed Coca-Cola causes diabetes, which got him scolded by 28 million diabetics worldwide.(1) Glassman seems to have learned his lesson. If a scientifically illiterate exercise video salesman like Glassman can learn, why not Fred vom Saal?
A U-shaped curve is just what it reads like. We know any chemical will be harmful at high enough levels, that is why dose-response is on a curve - "the dose makes the poison" as Paracelsus wrote - and that is why scientists create conservative "safe" levels for exposure. For Dr. vom Saal and his fellow pseudo-homeopaths, the curve is instead a horseshoe or U - they concede that at normal exposures there is no harm, (the bottom of the U) but insist it might have a drastic effect at very, very tiny levels, way over on the left side of the U of exposure. And to make their beliefs even more impossible to disprove, they allege the results may only show up over a long time, in some sort of miracle of "bioaccumulation." If lead can do it, any chemical can, they believe.
That rationale works on people who don't know anything about science but enrages toxicologists, chemists, and rational biologists. But using their closed logical system, the authors of the recent paper suggest (2) BPA can even be creating insulin resistance and thus type 2 diabetes.
(1) Coca-Cola and other products with sugar have saved plenty of diabetics. How many diabetics have ever been saved by watching an overpriced exercise video during a seizure?
(2) Sound far fetched? That's where we are at in the modern anti-science movement. Scientists have beaten back their claims on bees and GMOs, but chemicals in humans are basically radioactive in modern America. While I was laughing that La Croix was being hoisted on its own petard by having the natural community turn on them, scientifically we defended them from ridiculous claims that because the same chemical can be found in two very different products (an insecticide and flavoring) that makes the chemical the same.
Humans are not bananas just because we share 50 percent of our DNA with them.
