alt Hacker NewsSo assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science. They are statistical judgment calls (often based on things like giving a much, much higher dose to a rodent and looking for short-term effects).
And the reason that is is because there's no affordable, moral way to give 100,000 farmers [nor consumers] a small dose of a product for 20 years before declaring it safe. So the system guesses, and it guesses wrong, often erring against the side of caution in the US (it's actually quite shocking how many pesticides later get revoked after approval).
Europe takes a more "precautionary principle" approach. In those cases of ambiguity (which is most things approved and not), they err to the side of caution.
Notice how this claim here is again shifting the burden to the victims (their research doesn't meet standard X, allegedly). Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
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Shouldn't most chemicals be assumed unsafe until proven otherwise? How many chemicals have we produced in a lab that have no harmful effects? Even medicine is bad for you, it's just better than the disease it's meant to treat. I don't know why we'd treat something designed to kill animals as safe for humans without studies showing that it's not harmful. (Well I do know why, but I don't know why voters go along with it.)
> assessments of safety of a chemical aren't hard science
These are still data. I'm curious for the contexts that lead other countries to actively ban the substance.
If it simply hasn't been approved in other countries, one can't use that information to infer about its safety.
The US is very capitalist and consumer based. They error on the side of “does it make money?” Or “will I lose money?”
IMO the FDA should do a better job at helping the populace distinguish between these two:
1) Evidence for the null hypothesis (there are enough studies with sufficient statistical power to determine that product likely does not cause harm at a >95% CI).
2) There is no evidence that it is unsafe. (nor that it is safe).
The problem is #2 sounds a lot stronger and often better than #1 when put into English. There must be some easy to understand way to do it, IE an 'insufficient testing' vs. 'tested' label/website or something.