Sen. Rand Paul: Air pollution has no connection to asthma

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gXrD9IqKDK83EMDGijuXi-TbWu1A?docId=1c21c09cfa074440941f37609a5d028d

By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a startling claim: Air pollution has no connection to asthma, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul said on the Senate floor.

But Paul, and a chart he used to make his case against the health benefits of a new federal air pollution rule, relied on some creative sourcing and pseudoscience.

Paul's chart was a graph showing air pollution declining in California as the number of people diagnosed with asthma rose. The chart attributed the data to a May 2003 paper by what was then called the California Department of Health Services. But the department never plotted the relationship between those two factors.

The real source was a 2006 paper "Facts Not Fear on Air Pollution" from the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank. The paper, by independent consultant Joel Schwartz, contends that most information on air pollution from environmentalists, regulators, scientists and journalists is exaggerated or wrong. The paper was not subjected to the normal peer-review process demanded for most published science.

[RoccoR5955]

1. Is he supposed to be a doctor?

If he is he's a bovine fecal doctor!

[no_hypocrisy]

8. He's an OB-GYN.

http://ronpaulanswers.com/ron-paul-is-an-obgyn/

He probably hasn't picked up a copy of JAMA or Lancet since he graduated from medical school.

[Owlet]

10. That's his Dad - Ron

Rand is an ophthalmologist - sort of.

"But those medical credentials are in question after a report from The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., found that Paul is not certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology, the most well-known group in the profession. Instead, Paul is certified by the National Board of Ophthalmology, a group he formed in 1997 to protest a policy disagreement with the ABO. His group is not recognized by the American Medical Association."

I haven't been able to find out what the "policy agreement" he had the dispute over. Maybe he flunked the ABO's board exam.

http://www.aolnews.com/2010/06/15/rand-pauls-medical-certification-challenged/

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Thanks. You're right.

[Scuba]

2. And the "board" that gave him is "board certification" agrees. n/t

[snappyturtle]

3. My asthma disagrees. nt

[Blue_Tires]

14. mine, too

i swear to fucking god i really hate these people sometimes...

[snappyturtle]

17. I KNOW pollution is a trigger for me....they can say whatever they want I guess

but I strongly disagree and will never believe otherwise.

[Kolesar]

4. There is some correlation of asthma with "insects in homes", so the coal operators run with that

creeps

[ck4829]

5. Rand Paul should be added to the quack watch lists for that statement

[marmar]

6. I have a feeling that Rand Paul's America would look a lot like Prypiat, Ukraine......

.....(nee USSR), following the Chernobyl disaster.

[TalkingDog]

7. In this case, he's not wrong. But that doesn't mean he's not an idiot.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/what-do-worms-have-to-do-with-as.html

Parasites get a bad rap for a good reason. They cause a litany of diseases with a terrifying host of symptoms. But mounting evidence suggests that they can also prevent disease. And now there’s genetic evidence to suggest that’s true. New research presented here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW) finds that a gene associated with increased risk of asthma is also linked to resistance against a parasitic worm.


/snip

Pollution might damage lungs, but it is not the causal agent in asthma.

[MattBaggins]

12. No he is still a million light years wrong

The claim is not one of primary cause. Pollution is a question of correlation in rise of symptoms and problems of asthma.

[TalkingDog]

16. I get what you are saying, but the rise in asthma is tied to the lack of exposure

to a specific parasite; not exposure to particulates or air pollution.

Third World countries, where exposure to this parasite is common are not without air pollution problems. Theirs tend to be indoor and localized rather than coming from a factory. I can't imagine living in an enclosed home with a wood stove for heating and cooking has less pollutants, can you?

Not defending Paul. I don't give a fig about him. But a rise in pollutants is not the issue. This is not about politics or environmentalism: It's genetics and biology... in other words science.

[WildNovember]

19. Can pollutants produce inflammatory response? Yes, they can and do.

[WildNovember]

18. a study suggesting a link doesn't prove there IS a link, & doesn't prove that link is causal

either. In the study after worm medicine was given, asthma increased in the same generation of people. That doesn't make sense in genetic terms.

A gene for heightened inflammation etc. would be good to keep parasites/foreign bodies/invaders down but that would apply to pollen, pollutants, etc. There's no reason that that asthma would increase if a person didn't have worms that I can see. It doesn't make sense. Also, inflammatory response isn't the only cause of asthma -- bronchial spasm, which can be produced by drugs even in non-asthmatics, can trigger the same set of symptoms.

They also have yet to find this hypothetical gene I see as I read further.

The researchers posit that natural selection might favor mutations that protect against worm infection and that those same mutations might inadvertently increase the risk of other diseases, such as asthma. The researchers haven’t yet found the exact mutation responsible for the worm resistance and asthma susceptibility. To find that, they’ll have to “drill down deeper,” Barnes says. She speculates that the culprit may be a mutation located in a genome region that regulates activity of the IL-33 gene.

Jennifer Ingram, a cell biologist who studies asthma at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says the finding that deworming medication increased the incidence of asthma symptoms is “striking.” She adds that Barnes’s work is important because it points the field toward molecular mechanisms that might contribute to asthma.

I'd think that if they give people deworming medicine & the people get more asthma afterward, the first suspect would be the medicine or some sequellae of its administration, not some hypothetical gene that produces inflammation but not asthma when people have worms but produces asthma when they don't have worms.

it doesn't make sense.

I find that at least one of the two drugs used to treat the parasite in question, in concert with the parasite kill, does trigger heightened immune response at least in the short term:

http://www.ajtmh.org/content/78/4/564.full

[newfie11]

9. what rock has he been under

and hope he crawls back under it soon!

[Javaman]

13. so says the unlicensed dentist.

no one could ever accuse this half wit of thinking.

[ensho]

15. he is not that stupid so he must be getting paid to say that

nt