After all, actual journalism isn’t about challenging people when they say something that isn’t true. It’s about, say, asking some easy questions about golden rice because the person you are interviewing told you that’s what he wants you to do.
9 Likes
I’ll get right on that 
and check back to you in a couple of days when I’m done.
The problem is, the bit about offering it for him to drink doesn’t do that. It’s a cute way to make him look hypocritical, but unfortunately it doesn’t really challenge the statement he made.
1 Like
First: Toxicity is always a matter of dosage.
Water, in sufficient quantities, is deadly poison.
Second: Malort is generally considered safe in shot-glass sized quantities, but you won’t see me drinking it, for I am not an idiot.
2 Likes
If it kills weeds or bugs, you probably should not have it anywhere near you. It probably shouldn’t be within ten miles of a growing child or flowing surface waters.
The things we call pests are very very difficult to kill, or they wouldn’t be pestiferous.
Personally, I control invasive weeds with a propane flamethrower. If I could get one that didn’t use fossil fuels, I would. Fire is cleansing.
If I could go back in time and murder Paracelsus before his stupid aphorism became a meme, I would.
2 Likes
One can read the MSDS here:
http://www.inchem.org/documents/icsc/icsc/eics0160.htm
Most retail formulations also contain rather more surfactant by weight than C3H8NO5P.
Based on the MSDS for C3H8NO5P and what we know about drinking soapy water, it will burn on the way down, you will wish to vomit and feel sick, and you will have diarrhea. Even if the longterm effects were completely benign, you would have to be pretty stupid to drink it.
3 Likes
It inspired him to make a response that indicates he clearly doesn’t even believe his own claim. He didn’t say “I’m not going to drink it, it probably tastes disgusting” or something of the sort, he said he wouldn’t drink a small portion of what he said could safely be consumed because he “wasn’t stupid”- implying that drinking glysophate would in fact be a stupid thing to do. From his behaviour, the “stupidity” here definitely seems to be the health-concern type.
10 Likes
I think insecticides will become much more specific and functional at much lower doses, in the future as there are some interesting insecticides based upon nerve agent research. But right now, sure. It doesn’t help that many farmers think ‘the more the better’ with everything they spread on fields.
And it would be, no matter what the short or long-term health implications were. Even if he were able to drink it with absolutely no visible reaction whatsoever, taking that challenge would be giving that reporter great footage to milk.
Me too - ironic on a couple of levels. One that I’ve been a vegetarian since the mid 1980’s so it is literally impossible for me to have CJD.
Second irony is that Brits (at least of my generation) were raised to donate blood and did so regularly. I would be interested to see how much volume they lost in their donations by excluding this vanishingly-small risk group who like to donate far more than most, even when we moved to Canada or the USA.
1 Like
I really don’t understand this. Moore didn’t just talk about its safety as a pesticide, he said the stuff is so safe for humans that you can drink a quart without harm. Sure, it might be sensible to take that as an exaggeration, but he seems happy not to make that plain. He doesn’t clarify what he meant, he reiterates how safe the stuff is and tries to change the topic.
This stuff is not only non-carcinogenic but potable is what he implied by, you know, literally saying so and then trying to leave it at that. How is asking if someone would drink it not challenging them on that point?
6 Likes
Which no one has disputed. But he provided a specific quantity that he claimed would be perfectly safe (one quart) yet refused to back up that claim by taking even a single sip.
I believe Fluoride is safe when used in low concentrations for drinking water, but I wouldn’t say “you could drink a glass of fluoride with no ill effects.”
7 Likes
Because there’s a lot of difference between “can drink without harm” and “something you’d want to drink”. I mean, he mentioned people drinking it to attempt suicide too… that association doesn’t really lend itself to expecting someone to want to drink it, even if there’s no harm in the end.
It’s compelling to assume he’s a hypocrite who’s afraid of an increased risk of getting cancer in a few decades due to drinking a few sips, though…
2 Likes
Guest: “This compound is completely safe, you could drink a quart of it”
Host: “Here is a glass full, ((which we purchased at retail so it helpfully contains by weight more soap than it does the compound we are talking about.)) Why don’t you drink it?”
Guest: "Because I am not stupid., ((I don’t like giving interviews when I have stomach discomfort and the runs))"
Most bar and dish soaps are considered non-toxic and harmless, even though when you drink them you get uncomfortable side effects.
Most of the farmers that operated that way are dead or have Parkinson’s now. You don’t see their kids using the “dang, I had to use twice as much bug killer to git them flea beetles this year” strategy so much any more. But it was reasonable at the time - Uncle Dupie was selling “better living through chemistry” and with nearly all pesticides you have to use more and more each season or it won’t work. Evolution is inexorable! That’s one of the reasons “dose makes the poison” is a nearly useless dogma.
We control fleas on our cats by giving them lufenuron, which is sold by Novartis under the trade name “Program” (incredibly badly chosen name, that). I highly recommend it, it is fundamentally better than any of the topical poisons. Lufenuron is mixed with cat food four times a year and is taken up into the cat’s bloodstream; any flea that bites the cat is then effectively sterile, because its offspring will not develop an egg tooth. Humans and cats don’t have egg teeth or chitinous exoskeletons (and also I don’t drink my cat’s blood) so it’s not as potentially dangerous as the veterinarian-preferred, higher profit topicals. We’ve been using program on our cats for a couple of decades and we believe there’s been a reduction of ground-dwelling blood-sucking pests on our entire property. Which is good, since there’s been lyme’s and rocky mountain spotted fever in the area historically.
Meanwhile… back on topic… Robert Chesebrough claimed to eat at least one spoonful a day of his white petrolatum product, Vaseline, and he lived to be 96. More recently Wang Chuan-Fu, the CEO of BYD, publicly drank the electrolyte liquid used in the lithium ion battery produced by his company. But Monsanto doesn’t even want to label their products, much less risk drinking them!
3 Likes
If that was truly the reason for his refusal the guest might have appeared far more credible if he’d explained why drinking said substance would be stupid. In the context of a conversation about toxicity it’s reasonable to conclude that it might be stupid to do so because it was unsafe, not because it was unpleasant.
5 Likes
These are all things Moore might have sensibly pointed out as a response, but he didn’t. Instead he repeated that the stuff was safe without further qualification and abandoned the interview. That’s why he looks like a liar, and I’m not sure why it means the reporter was wrong to press him on whether it was actually as potable as all that. Moore couldn’t swallow his own story.
9 Likes
If I said YOU could drink it, and then you challenged ME to drink it, I’d drink it. I might insist on providing it myself, rather than just taking your word for what’s in the glass, but I’d still drink it.
Because otherwise, you know, I’d be a dick.
9 Likes
There would be absolutely nothing wrong with doing that, and I’d love to have seen it. Unfortunately, just saying “well, if it’s not going to hurt you, then drink it right now on camera” is not doing that, and that’s my problem with this bit in a nutshell.
Now you’re taking me too literally, or at least being overly pedantic. The point is that just because drinking a significant quantity won’t kill you, it doesn’t make it pleasant.
“You can eat a lot of salt. You can eat pounds of it.”
“Oh really! Here’s a quarter pound, dig in!”
“What? I’m not an idiot. I’m not stupid.”
1 Like
