NY Times:
E.P.A. Halts Florida Test on Pesticides. “A recruiting flier for the program, called the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and ‘spraying pesticides inside your home routinely.’”
There’s a lot of outrage over this, as written here (and other sources). But in reading the actual documents, this is an attempt to measure effects of pesticide use on children in normal households. The government isn’t spraying pesticides in homes. They’re merely monitoring families with young children who routinely use pesticides. I see fellow online left-leaners carelessly throwing about the descriptor “Mengele” without reading the actual study information.
Realistically, with a cash and bling reward such as this, mostly low-income families will respond ... and they seem to be, from news reports, the ones marketed to ... so the selection process should be opened up to public scrutiny. But the howls in the media are so at odds with the actual study information itself, I can’t tell which way is up on this one.
Read the actual site itself, then read the news reports.
[Of late, it seems even my favorite sources of news are getting so ideological (on whichever side), I must postpone posting until hitting as close to the actual source of information as possible. I almost took this one at face value, and howled outrage myself. The media are making us work very hard to find facts these days.]
