[niky]

Proof of safety is built into the years of blind clinical trials and and research that goes into every medicine that's put on the market. It' s heartbreaking everytime the next "miracle cure" for cancer or HIV ends up flayed to pieces on the floor after exhaustive trials prove them worthless or worse, dangerous.

Proof of safety is also built into regulations for pesticides and regular studies conducted reviewing such... spurred by the massive damage done by DDT back in the days.

Mind you, there IS a lot of junk out there we shouldn't be exposing ourselves to. And it's true that we don't know or understand all the dangers of the chemicals we use everyday... which is why there are dozens of studies carried out on each one.

But let's put this into perspective. We are surrounded by carcinogens. Tobacco is very obviously carcinogenic. The tannins in our tea is carcinogenic. Natural caramel food coloring is carcinogenic. A majority of our food crops possess natural pesticides which are carcinogenic, pesticides which they secrete and store to ward off pests in their multi-million year long battle with insects, mold and fungi. Cooked food may or may not be carcinogenic, based on how you cook it. That lovely char on barbecue? Almost as carcinogenic as smoking. Smoked meats are (obviously) carcinogenic, as is well-cooked but not burned beef. Yipes. Guess we have to go back to eating raw fish. Watch the mercury, though.

Got a chuckle when people start going bananas over high fructose corn syrup. Amazing how giving it a scientific sounding name makes it ripe for alarmism over the big "C" when all it really is is fructose and glucose. Stuff that you get naturally from fruit, already.

Disclaimer, I don't even touch the stuff. A low-sugar or no-sugar diet is definitely good for you. The sugar in my diet comes mostly from fruit... and you shouldn't over-indulge on fruit, either, as it carries the same dangers of obesity and diabetes as refined sugar if eaten in large amounts. Funny thing... most of us health nuts use honey as a sweetener instead, but honey is chemically identical to HFCS except for the added minerals and proteins.

The important difference is the immunological benefits from eating honey from local bees, the antibiotic properties* of honey and the minerals present in honey that you don't get from refined sugar or HFCS. But in terms of actual safety, there's little to no difference.

*one of our students actually did a study on gargling with honey as opposed to mouthwash. It would work, but you'd need to gargle a whole lot of it. Too much, actually. You need to extract the stuff from the beeswax, instead. At home, we use refined propolis wax for salves and ointments. Effective stuff.

The furore over all these cancer scares gets even weirder when you consider some of this stuff isn't even as carcinogenic as sawdust.

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It's less a matter of waiting for proof of harm as it is assessing actual risk. Personally, I'm still on the fence about GM foods, but let's face it. Millions of years of evolution and random mutation, topped by millenia of cultivation, hybridization and breeding mean that our modern crops are as genetically modified as you can get without going straight in with the nano-tweezers and tape. Genetic Modification has the potential to restore lost vigor, disease resistance, hardiness and nutritional value that has been lost over the centuries due to farmers selectively growing for yield without considering the other nasty effects.

It also has the potential to introduce new carcinogens... like... for example, if they splice in genes that make the plants produce natural pesticides from non-cultivated plants.

But that's what testing and validation are for. Unfortunately, as with AGW, since the issue has become so politicized, more attention is given to the one-or-two hackjob studies that raise alarm bells than the dozens of studies that show no significant correlations whatsoever.