Boycott Watch was first to question
the CDC over the tomato salmonella scare and we did it over one simple
question: What is the evidence in the first place? Our questions have yet to be
answered. Hopefully some answers will come out in possible Congressional
hearings in the matter.
As we previously reported,
the scare started with the wife of a deceased cancer patient who was found to
have some salmonella, yet that was never determined to be the absolute cause of
death. Boycott Watch speculates the entire scare may be the result of someone
searching for a reason for a lawsuit in her husband's death. Only time will
tell if a wrongful death lawsuit will be filed, but if that is the case, the
entire jury pool has already been tainted.
Regardless, there are two more mitigating factors we also reported. First, as
more people look for this particular strain of salmonella, the more it will be
found. Second, the more points of testing you add, the greater the likelihood
of a positive result. The fact is that this strain is not normally searched
for, and the more you search for something you have always ignored, the more
you are likely to find it.
The fact is that people
come in contact with salmonella and other bacteria daily. Most of these
infections are destroyed by the body's immune system and those people who get
sick usually get a belly ache or diarrhea.
With this
scare, 851 out of the more than 300 million people in the U.S. have been
diagnosed with the illness, or in other words one out of every 352 thousand
people - a statistical anomaly, not an epidemic. As for the cancer patient, his
defenses may have been weakened by the cancer and treatment, so blaming his
death strictly on salmonella is a stretch.
Most
importantly, tomatoes were targeted because the cancer patient at a tomato, but
surely ate other foods as well. Not one bit of other evidence of tomatoes as
the source has been offered by the CDC, and as a result the CDC has resorted to
a world-wide search of other foods that has still yielded nothing. The greatest
medical research facility in the world is working on the basis of a
non-scientific hunch, costing U.S. taxpayers untold millions of dollars while
the estimated loss to farmers and distributors has grown from $100M to more
than $250M this week.
On a per person basis, that
works out to about $300,000 in business losses per infected person when all
these people really needed are $5 bottles of Pepto-Bismol.
Other coverage can be seen here.
Our
previous reports on this topic:
July 1, 2008:
Boycott
Watch Right Again - CDC Tomato Scare is a Farce
June 3, 2008:
False
Tomato Salmonella Scare Kills the Tomato Industry |
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