How many Prius owners are Vegetarians?

Thanks for pointing out that there are always conflicting studies. If you check out this link:
http://vitacorp.icthus.net/articles/new_soy.shtml
you'll see the majority of research shows soy does have significant hormonal impacts on women. Just because you found a study (probably funded by the food industry) that says there is no impact, doesn't mean it's true.

It doesn't look like you looked at this link either:
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/07abstract.htm
This shows abstracts for about 100 mostly academic studies that indicate risks with soy.

The standard that I use to assess risk is common sense and erring on the side of public safety. Other countries that don't allow firms to influence the regulatory process as much as the US warn their citizens about soy. I'd give that more credence than US regulatory positions.

Also, when someone is making billions of dollars on something and claiming it's safe, I tend to be skeptical as my going in position. As you can see on the above link, there are many credible studies saying soy is risky or probably risky. That's enough for me to assume there is PROBABLY a risk (note the emphasis on probably. I'm not saying definitely, just probably. And that's all I need to protect myself and loved ones.)

Re your objection to the idea that things going into the human body should be held to the "guilty until proven innocent" standard. That's a huge issue that I can't fully describe here. But it's also my area of expertise. As you can see on the website (www.GlobalSystemChange.com), I was the head of research for the largest firm in the world analyzing corporate responsibility and sustainability for many years -- Innovest.

Now I'm advising large companies on sustainability. My particular focus is on the systemic drivers of unsustainability (as you can see from the articles on my site). As I said, I can't address the whole "innocent until proven guilty" issue. But let me address one part of it -- measurement.

Our economic system makes the increasingly incorrect assumption that economic growth makes the world a better place. However there are many environmental and social costs of economic growth that don't get accounted for. Economic growth essentially is the roll up of corporate revenues. Corporations are structured to focus primarily on one thing -- financial performance. The CEO is rewarded for shareholder returns, not safety of the public over the mid to long-term.

Companies clearly provide great value to society. They wouldn't be in business if they didn't. However, they have large negative impacts which they are often not held responsible for. This means in a competitive market, they often cannot mitigate impacts and remain in business. In other words, our flawed economic and political systems create a situation where being in business and acting in a fully responsible and sustainable manner are mutually exclusive.

Chemical, GMO and nanotech companies make products that were not in the environment when life, including humans, was evolving. Through the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) many of these substances disperse into the land, air and water, then accumulate in humans, often causing cancer, reproductive problems and other illnesses. Once these substances are dispersed in nature, it is often impossible to recall them if there is a problem. Since there are nearly an infinite number of possible interactions in nature, from a statistical perspective, it is virtually guaranteed that there will be problems. We already see many of them.

Since we know that many of these substances (including GMO soy) will accumulate in humans and were not around when the human body was evolving, the precautionary (and logical) position is that they should be tested for safety. The testing should be done, not by the firm that made them, since they have a large commercial incentive to find them safe. Instead, it should be done by an independent, third-party. However, it nearly never is. Essentially none of the GMO and nano materials being used today are tested for safety by independent third parties. Less than 5,000 (possibly less than 1,000) of the more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals in use are tested for safety by independent third-parties. The main reason these substances are not independently safety tested is the ability of firms to influence the regulatory process.

In other words, the whole web of life, including your children, is being used as the test bed for these foreign substances. You say reality dictates testing is too expensive. That is in effect saying, I will accept substances not present when human life evolved (meaning our bodies often don't know what to do with them), developed by profit seeking entities, and safety tested by these same entities (assuming any testing occurs at all, which it often doesn't), to be present in my own and my children's bodies.

I don't think you actually believe this. But it the logical extension of what you're saying. The standard isn't cost of testing. The standard should be public safety at any price. If our society cannot operate in a way that protects our children, then we do not deserve to operate in the way we are now. We have an obligation to protect our children, regardless of the cost.

The good news is that once we adopt this position, we will figure out how to do it practically. Why? Because we are amazingly creative, especially business. The point is, what gets measured, gets managed. If we measure only economic growth, it will take priority over all else, including the well-being of our children. No CEO intends to hurt children or the environment. But they operate in systems that often require that they do this to keep their companies alive.

I know there are no easy answers to this problem. We need to change our systems so that they are more aligned with what's best for society, rather than what's best for firms. Ironically, firms are in an accelerating suicide mode, since the systems they operate in effectively base the well being of firms on imposing growing environmental and social costs on the society that keeps firms alive.

 

Wow, that was convincing. All that article provided was yet another study that shows that soy doesn't have any impact! The introductory paragraph made the claim that most studies show a positive impact. But there were no references. Were those studies double-blind? I'm still looking for the double-blind studies that show that soy has a hormonal effect on post-menopausal women.

I loved this quote from the article:

So now we know how to get soy to have estrogen like effects. Take it with estrogen.

You found the study. You seem to take the position that abstracts that support your position are correct, but the ones that do not are wrong and are probably funded by the evil food industry. Even when you yourself refer to those as "studies that were done by reputable researchers who appeared to reach logical conclusions". Your bias on what you read will of course lead to the inevitable conclusion that you were right all along.

Lastly, you figure that the study was probably funded by the soy industry. Why would the soy industry fund a study to show that soy does not have a positive effect, when there currently is a significant market (however misguided) for soy extracts for post-menopausal women?

I'm still looking for the proof of your central thesis, that soy has a beneficial or any hormonal effect on post-menopausal women. Every single one of the hundred studies you reference above that did a double-blind study on the effect (there were six of them) found exactly no effects: "Phytoestrogen supplements for the treatment of hot flashes: the Isoflavone Clover Extract (ICE) study: a randomized controlled trial", "Effect of soy-derived isoflavones on hot flushes, endometrial thickness, and the pulsatility index of the uterine and cerebral arteries", "A pilot study of the effects of phytoestrogen supplementation on postmenopausal endometrium", "The effect of soy protein isolate on bone metabolism", "Phytoestrogen supplements for the treatment of hot flashes: the Isoflavone Clover Extract (ICE) study: a randomized controlled trial", and "Effect of soy-derived isoflavones on hot flushes, endometrial thickness, and the pulsatility index of the uterine and cerebral arteries". (All were with humans. I left out the one with rats, but that came to the same conclusion.) You really should read the abstracts you reference.

At any price. I see. What if that price is greater than the GDP? As you mentioned there are not only effects of individual food items, but effects of them in combination with each other. I assure you that I can come up with a combinatoric set of tests of substances of concern that exceed the number of protons in the universe. The fact is that it will always be possible to come up with more tests for public safety than we can afford.

No matter what, there will always be decisions based on what you can do with your resources. Should public health care be performed "at any price"? That would be nice, but it's simply not possible, especially as we invent more and more expensive technologies to extend life. "At any price" is a fantasy that only exists in politician speeches and those that get paid the price being discussed. (Might that include people who run companies or do consulting on corporate responsibility? )

I'm certain that you're correct that we don't spend enough on testing of the substances. As I said before, I am all for testing given proper prioritization of the risks. You mentioned 80,000 things of which maybe 5,000 are tested. If you proposed to increase the testing budget by a factor of 16, I'd certainly support that. (Especially if we took the money out of the war coffers.) But "at any price"? No, that is not a rational position that I can support.

 

I don't think the nyprius is rejecting studies based on their conclusions. He is rejecting them based on their funders, on the assumption that for-profit companies will produce studies that are either fraudulent or designed to produce results skewed in their favor.

American Crystal Sugar is the big co-op beet processor where I used to live, in North Dakota. Sugar beets used to be extremely labor intensive. Beets have poor germination, so they must be planted thickly and then thinned. That used to be done by hand. Now it's mostly done by machine. Then they must be weeded. But more and more new herbicides come along that can be used in sugar beets, reducing the need for hand weeding. Beets are broadleaf plants, as are most of the weeds, making older herbicides unusable.

Advocates of GMO are always telling us of the potential benefits of GMO to create crops that could be grown without chemicals. But the reality has been very different: Chemical giant Monsanto is busily breeding GMO plants that are resistant to its own patented herbicides, so that farmers can use more chemicals. Thus GMOs are resulting in increasing, rather than decreasing the load of chemicals applied to crops. For me, this is the more important issue. I'm far less worried about the health effects of the modified genes than I am about the health effects of the exponentially increased amounts of pesticides and herbicides that are used to raise GMO crops, simply because that was the goal of the GMO in the first place.

That's why it's a good idea to try to avoid a diet in which a few basic ingredients dominate. But it's very hard to do.

 

People can usually find studies to support their position. Since this could go on forever, let me simplify my position.

1. There are many studies that indicate soy is risky. You can debate the quality of these studies. But they exist.
2. Soy is a large business. There are many interests who might seek to slant the public's perception on the safety of soy, possibly by funding biased safety tests.
3. 1 and 2 are enough for me to personally decide to avoid soy and suggest that others avoid it too. You're free to do what you want.

Also, you said you don't agree that we should protect our children at any price. I guess that means there is a price at which we should not protect our children. I don't agree.

The emphasis is on protecting children. At any price, means protecting children takes priority over all else. The goal is to protect children. This means we need to be practical and logical. Otherwise, we'll fail at protecting them.

Practical and logical means, if a company wants to develop a new substance never seen on the Earth before and there is a reasonable possibility that it will wind up in human bodies, then it should be independently safety tested. This is the standard. How we apply it is another issue. It sounds like you're saying not hurting the economy is the parameter that should be used to decide what's reasonable testing. Again, I disagree. The economy is meant to serve, not dominate society. The priority is the well being of society, not the economy. There is no economy without society.

Implying that I'm suggesting testing an infinite number of things or incurring testing costs greater than GDP is not useful. I'm a practical business person, as I have been for over 30 years. My goal has always been to get results. These statements imply you think we cannot have a strong economy and protect our children at the same time. I think it's the opposite. We cannot have a strong, enduring economy unless we protect our children.

The issue is how to achieve this. It's hugely complex. There are no easy answers. I believe the only way to do it is through systems thinking and collaboration between business, government and civil society. As you can see in my articles, that's what I'm working on.

 

I'm not sure why adults are not worth protecting, but ok. Anyway, yes, of course there is a price at which we not only should not, but cannot protect our children (or our adults). The monetary value of a human life is a tricky calculation, but insurance companies have to do it all the time. The figures I've seen range from $3M to $10M per life. It doesn't really matter what your opinion or my opinion is on what we should do. The fact is that is that you cannot spend that much on every child, since we simply don't have that much money.

That's an extremely severe upper limit. In fact there are many other things we need to spend our money on to stay alive, besides testing food products.

 

Yes, I agree. There are many other difficult issues. They essentially are all interconnected in obvious and not so obvious ways. That's why progress on one issue is often difficult -- it's hard to make progress on anything if you're looking at it in isolation. For example, experts have been pointing out for years that GNP is an increasingly inadequate indicator of social well being. But we continue to focus mainly on this when discussing how society is doing, in large part because our systems are structured around it.

Many groups have suggested alternatives to GNP. But few measures have widespread adoption. Issues like measurement of social well being, safety testing and many other economic, political and social challenges probably can only be addressed successfully through a systems approach.

One way or the other, we'll get there. It's hard to see the flaws of our systems because we're too close to them. That's why large scale system change usually happens involuntarily (ie: the fall of communism).

The question is, can our society be smart enough to see where our current systems are taking us, and change before we are forced to change. I believe we can. In fact, I would say that's our destiny -- to evolve our systems and larger society into sustainable forms. The opposite view is that our destiny is to crash and burn because the challenges are too hard, human nature will drive it, etc. I think we're smart enough (and well motivated enough) to figure out how to overcome the challenges and become sustainable.

By driving Prius's and adopting Earth-friendly diets, we're part of the solution.