Exploiting junk science is great for re-election campaign coffers.
Thus, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's first major crusades after she took office was to whip up public health hysteria on Long Island, where some activists have blamed slightly elevated breast cancer rates on everything from pesticides to power lines to planes.
"There's something going on in the environment," Sen. Clinton declared two summers ago. Long Island women, she asserted, were being "plagued" by breast cancer. Never mind that the annual breast cancer case rate in the region -- 117 cases per every 100,000 women -- is just a few percent higher than the national rate of about 114 per 100,000 annually.
Sen. Clinton's politically active constituents heartily and hastily seized the eco-alarmist spotlight. Karen Joy Miller of the Huntington Breast Cancer Action Coalition stated at Sen. Clinton's public hearing on the matter: "The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat all break down our body and cancer can take hold. So I think we need to educate the public on lowering their risk."
Regina Axelrod, a political science professor at Adelphi University, added: "I'm hoping that not only is there awareness, but that federal monies will be used to establish correlations and then, most important, that decisions will be made to ban these carcinogens."
Sentence first, verdict afterward!
Red Queen Hillary and her courtiers' expert conclusions notwithstanding, there is no shred of legitimate scientific evidence connecting breast cancer on Long Island to chemicals or other environmental causes.
Environmental activists in Long Island and elsewhere continue to blame persistent pollutants in drinking water for elevated rates of incidence of breast cancer in some Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. But last year, an $8 million epidemiological study funded by the National Cancer Institute found that exposure to organochlorine compounds, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides including chlordane, DDT and dieldrin, do not increase risk of the disease in women.
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