Dr Jill Stein is a perennial candidate: she has run for many offices, including Massachusetts governor andfor President in 2012, and has never won any election, beyond a representative to the Lexington, MA Town Meeting (this is a low bar, indeed). Nor has she any experience in government. She runs under the banner of the Green Party, which is a minor party which an attendee described in the New York Times as “kind of small and disorganized and, honestly, just weird.”
Now Jill Stein is trained as a physician and graduated from Harvard Medical School, where she presumably had to study science in both her undergraduate and graduate curriculum. However, she retired from medical practice in 2005 and seems to have been ignoring science ever since. Her anti-science statements are both alarming and somewhere between ridiculous and just plain dumb.
WiFi Signals? Really?
For example, she recently said that it is dangerous to expose kids to WiFi signals! There is, of course, not s shred of evidence for such a claim, and as Bob Park explained so eloquently some years ago, microwaves are too low energy to break any chemical bonds, so they can’t really cause any harm. This sort of statement is simply pandering to the fears of the uninformed, and a cheap way to troll for votes, in much the same way Trump has been doing.
Bees
But it gets far worse. Her platform says she will
Ban neonicotinoids and other pesticides that threaten the survival of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
There is no evidence that neonicotinoids have any effect on the population of bees. The USDA says that the three major causes of colony collapse are then Varroa destructor mite, the Israeli acute paralysis virus, and the movement of colonies to use in pollination. Neonicotinoids, like any insecticide can kill any insects, but they were developed to be safer than any prior insecticide. For most major crops, they pose no real harm to bees. The exceptions are cotton and citrus. And, of course, there is no bee population problem, the population has been growing steadily for some years.
The Precautionary Principle
Stein says we should uphold and expand the Precautionary Principle, which says that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm, in the absence of scientific consensus, the burden of proof that it is not harmful lies with those proposing the action. The problem with the principle as stated is that the level of risk is no longer considered, and that such policies are likely to block innovation.
Support organic and regenerative agriculture
Sorry Jill, organic farming is a prescientific technique based on the naturalistic fallacy, and having yields 50%-80% of conventional agriculture. It is essentially a marketing term. Thus, purchasing organic produce is the purview only of wealthy white people. There is not enough land to expand organic’s low yield techniques and still feed our growing populace; it cannot feed the world. Further, there is substantial evidence that organic has a higher carbon footprint (because of composting of manure, as well as more tilling) and is less sustainable because of its likelihood of polluting the ground water. No-till farming using low impact herbicides is much more the technique of the future. Organic farming still uses pesticides, just different ones that they have to spray more often because they are ineffective, and organic crops are nutritionally equivalent to conventional ones.
Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe.
A compromise GMO labeling bill has been signed into law. However, it tells us nothing useful, because “GMOs” are not an ingredient, but a breeding process. There is nothing in the food to distinguish from crops grown without biotechnology. And while proving something safe is not an actual scientific possibility, the level of risk of GM crops has been studied for over 20 years and every major scientific organization including her American Medical Association, the National Academies of Science, and the European Food Safety Association have declare that GM crops pose no more harm than conventional crops. GM crops as well as all pesticides undergo years of government mandated testing before they can be released.
She also made the crazy assertion in an E-mail quoted by Dan Arel that
“…evidence is now showing that once these foods reach our digestive tract, they can affect our very DNA. “
What utter nonsense. You eat genes every day in every single food, but somehow these magic genes affect your DNA? This was ridiculed by my colleague Laya Katiraee, comparing it to a boa constrictor eating a rat and creating a hybrid “rat-strictor.” And Stein surely learned this in medical school.
But Stein goes farther than standing for meaningless labeling. She has been expressing the entire spectrum of anti-GMO activist misinformation for years. Here she is speaking at a March Against Monsanto event in 2013 and mouthing the same misinformation.
Stein seems to support homeopathy
Homeopathy is a pseudo-scientific practice where medicines are diluted so many millions of times that not a single molecule of the medicine remains. It is that solution that is used to “treat patients.” The Green Party Platform supports homeopathy as well as naturopathy, herbal medicines and other quack treatments.
How does Stein stand on those? With an evasive round-de-lay of accusations against corporations:
The Green Party platform here takes an admittedly simple position on a complex issue, and should be improved.
I agree that just because something’s untested – as much of the world of alternative medicine is – doesn’t mean it’s safe. But by the same token, being “tested” and “reviewed” by agencies directly tied to big pharma and the chemical industry is problematic as well. There’s no shortage of snake oil being sold there. Ultimately, we need research and licensing establishments that are protected from corrupting conflicts of interest. And their purview should not be limited by arbitrary definitions of what is “natural.”
Would you buy a used car from someone that evades the point like that?
Pandering to the Anti-vaccine unscientific left
In Stein’s Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) she said vaccines were important but that she was suspicious of those in the US,
Still, vaccines should be treated like any medical procedure–each one needs to be tested and regulated by parties that do not have a financial interest in them. In an age when industry lobbyists and CEOs are routinely appointed to key regulatory positions through the notorious revolving door, it’s no wonder many Americans don’t trust the FDA to be an unbiased source of sound advice.
This is pseudo-scientific paranoia. She is saying that the entire FDA is corrupted by industry lobbyists, when in fact, nearly all of them are from academic backgrounds. All she is doing is trying to gain the support of the anti-vaccination crazies who refuse to accept the fact the vaccines are safe and are not harmful.
Of course, she also brings up the anti-GMO anti-science movement’s favorite “Manchurian candidate” bogeyman, Michael Taylor:
A Monsanto lobbyists and CEO like Michael Taylor, former high-ranking DEA official, should not decide what food is safe for you to eat.
Of course, Michael Taylor was never a lobbyist nor a CEO. He was a consultant to Monsanto for 18 months, who left because he disagreed with their policies, and now is an FDA commissioner. If issues come up that he worked on while in industry, he recuses himself, as he should. Here’s the whole story.
Stein’s anti-vaccine stance has also been criticized by Dave Weigel in the Washington Post and by Emily Willingham in Forbes where they note that as a doctor she should be educated enough not to criticize recommended vaccine schedules or traces of organic mercury used as a preservative.
Willingham notes that “ …I’m never, ever going to get on board with a party that claims an environmental mission but fronts someone who compromises scientific evidence and public health for the sake of pandering.”
And Amanda Marcotte, writing in Salon criticizes her pandering as well as noting that Dr Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia concludes, “I think she’s anti-vax.” And while Kim LaCapria, writing in Snopes believes that Stein is not anti-vax based on her press-releases, many, including Dr David Gorski in his Science Blogs, have concluded that she is engaged in “left wing anti vaccine dog whistles.”
This is exactly the sort of dancing around the truth that we continually accuse Donald Trump of doing, and for that reason, neither is qualified to be President. In fact, Trump has said that he really likes the Green Party, because he figures that Green Party (Stein) voters would otherwise vote for Hillary. Dan Arel confirms my views in his column in Patheos.com. He won’t vote for Stein and neither should you.
Food Science Institute 