Weekend Question 4: What’s the Next Frontier for Junk Science?

ANSWER: Looks like it’s trans fats. The control freaks of the world are making quick progress without the science to back their claims.
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I had no idea about this until I read this editorial at OpinionJournal.com yesterday — yet another reason why WSJ and Opinion Journal are totally indispensable.

It turns out that, like the hysteria over “global warming” and “climate change,” the science relating to the harmfulness of trans fats, which were just banned in New York City last week, is NOT settled:

The Bloomberg Diet
The nanny state reaches into the kitchen.

You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but the science on the dangers of trans fats is still being debated, which helps explain FDA approval of the ingredient. It also explains why the American Heart Association, while no fan of trans fats, was critical of the New York proposal and fears it may backfire if food outlets revert to even less healthy alternatives.

The food nannies insist that trans fats raise cholesterol and cause heart disease. The problem, says Steven Milloy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is that the studies purporting to show this link are inconclusive at best. “People cite lab studies that show transient changes in blood lipids when people consume trans fats, but that’s a long way from heart attacks and heart disease,” says Mr. Milloy.

Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health is one of the nation’s leading trans fat alarmists. Earlier this year he co-authored an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that said trans fats “appear to increase the risk of coronary heart disease more than any other macroingredient.” As evidence the article cited three studies. One showed a statistically insignificant correlation between trans fats and heart disease when other risk factors are considered. The other two studies found a link between very high consumption of trans fats and heart trouble, but statistically the association was weak.

And just as global cooling turned into global warming in the space of roughly 30 years, trans fats went from desirable to being on the outs in less than 20:

Before other cities decide to regulate diets absent a safety issue, they might also consider that some of the same people now pushing for a trans fat ban once recommended the ingredient as a substitute for another health scare: saturated fats. Twenty years ago, Mr. (Michael) Jacobson’s CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) launched a public relations blitz against fast food joints for using palm oil to cook fries. The group claimed victory when restaurants started using partially hydrogenated oil instead. In 1988, a CSPI newsletter declared that “the charges against trans fat just don’t hold up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent.” Today, Mr. Jacobson is claiming trans fats kill 30,000 people a year. We wonder if he feels guilty.

The ultimate goal of these so-called consumer advocates is to persuade the FDA to turn on trans fats, a move that would serve the food industry up as the next entree on the plaintiff bar’s menu.

Although health-based lawsuits relating to food voluntarily purchased and consumed are absurd beyond belief, it would provide some relief if Mr. Jacobson were served up on a silver platter as a part of that process. But while it would fit the nannies’ definition of justice, it would never happen, because he has (conveniently) “seen the light.”

Just once, it would be nice if the climate police, the food police, the almost totally discredited recycling police, and the other control freaks of the world would admit that they are less than certain about the justifications for the laws, rules, and regulations they want to foist on the populace. Alas, that would open up the arenas involved to debate, which is the last thing they’ll tolerate.