A mysterious nonprofit made millions suing companies to put California cancer warnings on coffee

Right, Prop 65 is dumb, and should be abolished. There’s no science to the warning labels. The dose makes the poison.

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But by digging through documents going back to CERT's formation in 2001, Mole uncovered some of its other principals...

The real conspiracy? There’s no way the investigator, who “digs through” documents and “uncovers” hidden facts is actually named Beth Mole.

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Are people in favor of this law? I have always lumped it in with anti-vax and climate denialism.

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Sounds like Professor Smith has found himself a mighty nice tenure-track grift there. His nonprofit hires him to be an “expert witness,” wins court cases, uses $ to fund his research lab. University administration loves every single one of those things. I bet his faculty file looks like some A+ “public impact”.

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Its amazing how many things can be shown to cause cancer by forcing a rat to eat it until it gets cancer. Never mind the doses involved would be equivalent to a person downing dozens of coffees a day, way past the acute caffeine dose would kill them. Prop 65 is a broken law and I’m surprised its only being taken advantage of by this one grifter.

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There was a discussion on the cancer warning label on coffee a while back.

The tl:dr version is anything exposed to dry heat that turns "golden brown and delicious " contains acrylamide. If you put warning labels on everthing then they are utterly meaningless and serve no purpose. I know the Law did not specify a minimal level of risk, but it needs to. Otherwise it is of no use whatsoever.

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What about when it’s not just golden brown but practically burned? I’m thinking of Starbucks and Italian dark roasts in general. (I feel like it’s all BS to be honest but if there’s any truth to that I feel like there must be a distinction there like between eating toast every day and eating burnt toast every day.)

I should probably read that other thread.

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Not at all. Most non-profits run a budget/funding surplus even after paying staff and expenses.

The definitional thing is that these funds are not profit, they are not income for ownership. Instead those funds, and the organization are used for a non business purpose. Usually described as “public interest” purposes. Whether thats fostering an alliance between the Reptiloids and Human governments. Or running a church or school.

Its a different legal entity and a different tax class. There are strict (if often unenforced) rules about how they operate and public disclosure of funds and usage.

Uber does not become a non-profit just because they don’t turn a profit.

Then you should be terrified of grilled food. The levels of acrylamide involved are still well below those squirted into petri dishes full of cells to demonstrate cancer risk ex vivo. If real world exposure levels had a practical impact on cancer risk we’d all be fucked.

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I hear cavemen didn’t live very long. Must have been all that roasting over an open fire that killed them.

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I hear cave men liked their meat sad and gray.

But human lifespan hasn’t increased all that much. Shorter life expectancy in the past is skewed by massive child mortality.

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Newsletter-Cave-1-2

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Science is never 100% there for anything, from an empirical falsificationist viewpoint.

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Christ, what assholes.

Non profits just mean that they don’t make a profit

There are also regulations about where your financial support comes from…a certain percentage has to be from the public, not from private interests; & a certain percentage of that has to be individual donations, not a lump sum from some interested party. If you can’t show that support in your tax returns you lose your non-profit status. Of course if you hire an expensive tax attorney that can all be dealt with…but the principle is that you can’t just take a chunk of your own money to form a non-profit with yourself at the head, & thus avoid taxes.

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This. Prop 65 standards are extremely stringent (*) and honestly coffee obviously was covered by the rules as written. I don’t understand why Starbucks et al. chose to fight this rather than just put the warning label up. It isn’t like anyone would notice – those things are everywhere.

(*) except when they aren’t. “Naturally occurring” carcinogens such as arsenic in some fruits are not included even when the levels are much higher than those same compounds that result from human processing.

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uh-oh.
 

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For that, you need religion.

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How is this not considered a conflict of interest?

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It is! Hence the problem.

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This reaction is critical to tasty meat dishes!

This non-profit truly stinks. New database to search non-profits from all sorts of angles:

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