The Media’s War on Business – and Science – Gets Personal

For several years the hysterical, ratings-seeking media has waged a war on businesses that use bisphenol A (also known as BPA), a chemical found in water bottles, canned foods and even thermal cash-register tape. The media has succeeded in ignoring the science and instead stoked the public’s irrational fears by simply proving that traces of BPA can be found in your food. However, numerous studies by the FDA, CDC, World Health Organization, and European Food Safety Authority have found that BPA is easily and quickly metabolized, with no discernible human harm ever being identified.

With feigned outrage, the hysterical media points out that many studies on the safety of BPA are funded by companies who benefit from its production. But how would the media react if companies didn’t conduct studies on the safety of their products? Like their cohorts on the Left, the media is committed to painting businesses as evil and greedy. One researcher from the University of Missouri smugly told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “They are simply protecting their product.”

Let’s assume greed is the motivator. Sure, a business could make a quick buck from an unsafe product before the FDA steps in, but they could make even more from a safe product they could sell for decades that also protects consumers from diseases like botulism and salmonella contamination, as BPA does. The profit-from-safe-products route also ensures they won’t be getting sued by consumers and fined by regulators.

What is the FDA’s motivation when it identifies BPA as safe? In 2010 in its second report affirming the safety of BPA, the agency’s Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, M.D. said, “The FDA is not saying that it's unsafe to use a baby bottle with BPA. ...FDA does support the use of bottles with BPA because the benefit of nutrition outweighs the potential risk of BPA. ...If we thought it was unsafe, we would be taking strong regulatory action.”

When faced with an independent report that didn’t support their grandstanding against the BPA industry, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put a spin on the FDA’s latest report saying it was an “about face” even though the second report simply affirmed the first.