NATURE KNOWS BEST

is one of the principles promoted by social engineer Barry Com-moner, another member of the sorry crowd that would make science the handmaiden of politics and ideology.

The other important essay that I would like to recommend this month is one that explodes that glib myth. It is not directly con-cerned with energy, but with science vs. pseudo-science, which is no less the subject of this newsletter, as its bannerhead shows.

It is the American Council on Science and Health's Does Nature know best? Carcinogens in American Food, originally written by Dr Wm. R. Havender and updated by Dr L.T. Flynn. It reveals the stunning discrepancy between the natural carcinogens in American food and those that have been added by man in processing it, only the latter being regulated by the EPA and other government agen-cies. As I have done with radon over the past years, the authors warn that the purpose of the booklet is not to frighten people, but to put the risks in perspective, that is, to show the gross inconsis-tency of which the bureaucrats are guilty when they regulate what is essentially a scientific matter.

The discrepancy between what the EPA ordains as the safe limit for natural radon as against nuclear plants is a "mere" factor of 40; but here the priests in Congress and the medicine men in the bureaucracy are playing with factors of thousands and millions. For example, aflatoxin BI, which frequently grows on peanuts, corn and other grains (and is not, of course, regulated) is a cool one million times more potent as a carcinogen than saccharine; i.e., one gram of the former will produce the same incidence of tumors in rats as one metric tonne of the latter.

Rats is what the Washington priests and medicine men measure everything by; but even so, the notorious Delaney amendment bears no relation to the risks involved. The booklet explains how a scien-tific measure of the carcinogenic (and mutagenic) potency of a food substance can be established and how it is used in science, though evidently not in politics. What I find particularly good in this booklet is that it is not, as one often finds in such subjects, a catalog of substances that might better be kept on magnetic tape than in one's brain: it is a well explained and logically reasoned essay.

For example, the authors give a reason why plants produce these carcinogenic toxins in the first place. (They are "natural pesticides" and kill harmful insects more quickly than cancer would; the car-cinogenity to mammals is merely an accidental by-product.)

The countermeasure against these natural toxins in food, inciden-tally, is a very varied diet, so that no single substance accumulates in the body (as it does in a rat when it is given nothing but peanuts).

The booklet is available for $2 from the ACS&H, 47 Maple St., Summit, NJ 07901, and I recommend it very highly.