Letters

From the December 1997 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Michael Fumento replies: Pages 32 through 34 of my article deal specifically with Richard Wilson's statement about a small risk being substantial if spread over a large population. It's true but irrelevant. The point is that the small risk is hypothetical, was deduced from a handful of studies, and pushes epidemiology well beyond its limits. I noted that studies finding a 50 percent increase in breast cancer associated with induced abortion were pooh-poohed as being too small an increase to mean anything, even as the 5 to 10 percent increase in deaths associated with PM2.5 is thought to be powerful enough to be the basis for hundreds of billions of dollars in new regulations.

Further, as I noted, there are only four studies with a direct measurement of PM2.5 that look at premature mortality. Of these, one is highly flawed but on its face shows a statistically significant association between PM2.5 increases and deaths. Two show no such associations. The fourth shows an association in three cities and none in the other three. In other words, there is no epidemiological evidence that there is the tiniest increase in deaths caused by a rise in PM2.5 matter.

As to toxicological evidence, "Available toxicological studies provide few clues in explaining acute mortality at
low particle concentrations," according to Dr. Mark Utell, a member of the EPA's scientific advisory board. He and Mark Frampton, like Utell an M.D. at the University of Rochester Medical Center, have concluded: "Controlled clinical studies with acidic particles at concentrations greater than twenty times ambient [levels] fail to produce [lung inflammation] in healthy individuals," and "subjects with [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], the group at presumably highest risk [to judge from] the epidemiological data, show no reduction of lung function with similar acute exposures."

Similarly, notes University of British Columbia professor of medicine Dr. Sverre Vedal: "There is no known mechanism whereby exposure to very low concentrations of inhaled particles would produce such severe outcomes as death, even from respiratory disease, and certainly not from cardiovascular disease."

Even the EPA's own staff paper admits, "One of the most notable aspects of the available information on PM is the lack of demonstrable mechanisms that would explain how such relatively low concentrations of ambient PM might cause the health effects reported in the epidemiological literature."

As to nuclear power, I'm all for it. But it is, alas, a dead issue in this country.

Finally, as to the EPA's not proposing remedies, I'd like to know how else to classify these utterly indefensible new regulations that studies from the Reason Public Policy Institute and others have shown are far more likely to cost lives (by draining the economy) than to save any.

Regarding Dr. LaBedz's snippet, the purpose of those 14 pages was to show in myriad ways that no evidence exists that there is anything to worry about in this case--except for worthless, onerous, lifestyle-changing, people-killing new regulations. Why should I be obligated to come up with a solution, governmental or nongovernmental, to a problem the EPA has failed to show even exists? As to my "career," I have done a great deal of writing warning about social and health problems, including my new book on the obesity epidemic, The Fat of the Land. But the fact is, virtually all major environmental problems are already improving, leaving the EPA and the activist groups feeling they have to grossly exaggerate what's left. In so doing, they distract us from the social and health problems that are all too real.

Gun Rights and Wrongs

T. Markus Funk's review of Don Kates and Gary Kleck's excellent The Great American Gun Debate ("Straight Shooters," August/September) is a valuable and well-written summary of the case for the social utility of private gun ownership, and of the ideological, data-be-damned bias against guns by the country's journalistic elite. Those of us who travel outside the country frequently know that this bias is not limited to America. I am an American by birth who was raised in Canada, and my frequent travels to the country of my youth serve as constant reminders of this.

My only complaint with Kates and Kleck's generally fine book, and with Funk's praiseworthy review of it, is that it gives short shrift to the most important justification for the freedom to own a gun. That reason is theoretical and deontological, not consequential. Citizens have a natural right to self-defense. Guns are great equalizers which enable physically weak citizens to more effectively stand up to bullies (including bullying governments). One citizen's natural right to self-defense is simply not dependent on another's misuse of his guns. Our Constitution enshrined the right to keep and bear arms for these reasons of natural right. By abandoning them, gun-rights defenders play into the hands of the public policy elite, which scorns natural right and natural law.

Michael I. Krauss
Professor of Law
George Mason University
Arlington, VA

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