Morgan Spurlock Watch

PCRM

One of Spurlock's favorite sources in his book is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. After the Center for Science in the Public Interest, PCRM ranks second on his "Acknowledgements" page, and he uses them in both the text and the end notes. He runs an exerpt from a book written by Neal Barnard, the group's founder (p. 93). Barnard also gets a brief appearance in Super Size Me. It's probably safe to say that the group helped out with a good deal of the book's content. See Spurlock's blog here, where he mentions his attendance at PCRM's swanky black-tie fundraising gala.

So what exactly is the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine? They aren't physicans. Less than 5% of the group's membership are actual physicians.

In fact, PCRM is a rather militant animal rights group. Its aim? To end medical research on animals, and to foster public fear of eating cheese and meat with scare campaigns. Through lawsuits, intimidation, and stealth media placement, they're trying to push the vegan lifestyle.

PETA has directed more than $1 million to PCRM over the years. The group has been repeatedly and publicly reprimanded by the American Medical Association for spreading misinformation on the use of animals to test new AIDS treatments. The AMA's president said of PCRM in 1991, "They are neither responsible, nor are they physicians." PCRM has also called for an end to donations to groups like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association because those groups support testing on animals.

Barnard is a psychiatrist. He has no training in nutrition, diet, or internal medicine. Yet for some reason, Spurlock and others take him seriously when he talks about the health effects of meat and cheese consumption. Barnard has lobbied government agencies to put a "biohazzard" warning label on meat and dairy, and once called cheese "morphine on a cracker." He has said, "there is no room for chicken in a healthy diet." And he's an inductee in the "Animal Rights Hall of Fame."

More disturbing, however, are PCRM's ties to animal rights terrorism. Barnard has engaged in several letter-writing campaigns with a guy named Kevin Kjonaas, who has ties to two animal rights terrorist groups, including the Animal Liberation Front. Kjonaas is now on trial on domestic terrorism charges.

Then there's Jerry Vlasak. Vlasak is a former spokesman for PCRM, and author of several of the group's publications.

Vlasak advocates murdering scientists who use animals for healthcare research. That's not an exaggeration of his position. From the Guardian:

A top adviser to Britain's two most powerful animal rights protest groups caused outrage last night by claiming that the assassination of scientists working in biomedical research would save millions of animals' lives.

To the fury of groups working with animals, Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon and prominent figure in the anti-vivisection movement, told The Observer: 'I think violence is part of the struggle against oppression. If something bad happens to these people [animal researchers], it will discourage others. It is inevitable that violence will be used in the struggle and that it will be effective.'

Vlasak, who likens animal experimentation to the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, said he stood by his claim that: 'I don't think you'd have to kill too many [researchers]. I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives. . .

Blogger Brian O'Connor has assembled a few other choice Vlasak quotes:

You can justify, from a political standpoint, any type of violence you want to use." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"I think that violence and nonviolence are not moral principles, they’re tactics." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"If someone is killing, on a regular basis, thousands of animals, and if that person can only be stopped in one way by the use of violence, then it is certainly a morally justifiable solution." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04

"I think we do need to embrace direct action and violent tactics as part of our movement … I don’t think we ought to be criticizing someone, whether we’re criticizing [them] because they’re writing letters, or whether we criticize them because they’re burning down fur stores or vivisection labs. I think we need to include everybody in that circle." — Animal Rights 2002 convention 6/27/02

"[The police] are protecting the circus, they are protecting the meat and dairy industry, they are protecting the vivisection industry and I equate them in my own mind on a moral and ethical level with the -- no different than say guards in a Nazi concentration camp." — at a panel called "Coping with Law Enforcement" at the Animal Rights 2003 LA convention 8/2/03

"I don’t have any doubt in my mind that there will come a time when we will see violence against animal rights abusers." — "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" (Showtime cable network) 4/1/04.

You can listen to audio of Vlasak here. He rather causually (and chillingly) notes that extremist pro-lifers who assassinate abortion doctors "have a good thing going."

I think this bears repeating: this group is second on the list of acknowledgements in Spurlock's book, people without whom, he writes, "this book would not have been possible."

(PCRM info collected from National Council Against Health Fraud, Activist Cash, and Brian O'Connor.)

400,000

Spurlock writes:

Fat is deadly. Obesity-related illnesses will kill around 400,000 Americans this year--almost the same as smoking. (p. 13)

Spurlock comes back to the "400,000" figure, and the "second leading cause of death" idea several times in the book. Both are wrong.

Last April, the CDC released a report confirming what critics of the obesity hysteria have been saying for some time -- that 400,000 figure (revised from a similar 300,000 figure a decade ago) is a gross overestimation. The real number is closer to 100,000. And if you add in the lives saved by the protective effects of mild overweight, the number is closer to 25,000. Meaning that:

(A) The number Spurlock quotes here is off by a factor of fifteen.

(B) Those statistics about how many Americans are "overweight" by government standards don't mean a damned thing. Overweight is actually healthier than what the government says is the "ideal" weight. And overweight is much healthier than what the government calls "underweight."

Predictably, bureaucratic politics and turf wars are now at play. The CDC has been slow to embrace the new study, despite the fact that the agency commissioned it. The reason? The CDC's director was a co-author of the old study. There's some evidence now that the old study's flaws were known before it was ever released, but power politics trumped objections raised by other researchers during the peer-review process.

The New York Times, Forbes, Batimore Sun, USA Today, Rocky Mountain News, and Des Moines Register, among others, all slammed the CDC for letting politics trump good science. Several editorial boards and pundits (including yours truly) called on CDC director Julie Gerberding to resign.

In any case, these developments are a fine example of why it isn't wise to take every health scare pushed by the government at face value. When a study comes out that was funded by Philip Morris, people tend to read it with a good deal of skepticism. Perhaps that's appropriate. But perhaps it's time we looked at government studies the same way. They're plagued by the same biases, motivations, and slants that plague any privately-funded health research.

The new study came out about a month before Spurlock's book was published. So perhaps we should cut him some slack. My guess is that the book was already in printing when the new study came out. I'll look for a correction in the paperback edition.

On the other hand, it wasn't hard to find critics of the 400,000 study. if Spurlock had been the slightest bit curious about opposing viewpoints, he would have found enough criticism of the 400,000 number to at least have acknowledged in his book that the number isn't without its detractors. In fact, the CDC itself lowered figure to 365,000 early last year in response to many of those critics. That correction took place long enough ago that Spurlock has no excuse for going with the higher, 400,000 figure.

ACORN, Spurlock, and the Minimum Wage

According to a post at Daily Kos, the first episode of Spurlock's 30 Days was cosponsored by ACORN, the grassroots group agitating for a "living wage" in cities across the country. In the cities where they've been succesful, minimum wage has been hiked to $10 or more per hour.

If you'll remember, the premise of the show was that Spurlock and his girlfriend attempted to live on minimum wage for, again, thirty days. The purpose I guess was to document the struggles all the people who live on minimum wage endure to make ends meet. I'll get to critiques of this particular episode in subsequent posts.

For the moment, I'd like to look at ACORN's cosponsorship of that episode.

Longtime readers of my blog likely know where I'm going with this: ACORN is a blatantly hypocritical activist group. For years, ACORN has tried like hell to avoid paying its own members the minimum wage required by law! This, as those same employees were working to raise minimum wages for everyone else.

In fact, ACORN actually went to court to fight for its right to pay wages below the legal minimum. What's more, ACORN made the exact same arguments its opponents make when arguing aginst higher minimum wages -- namely, that paying higher wages would mean the company would have to make do with fewer employees.

In a suit ACORN filed to exempt itself from California's minimum wage laws, the organization wrote in its brief:

"As acknowledged both by the trial court and California, the more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker--either because of minimum wage or overtime requirements--the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire."

Straight from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce talking points! ACORN also has a history of union-busting, ducking overtime requirements, cutting late paychecks, and general anti-labor practices. In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board made the following findings about the organization:

• ACORN pays its field members $18,000 per year.
• Field members typically work 54+ hours per week.
• Field members are rarely given weekends off.
• Field members are expected to canvas neighborhoods alone, sometimes at night.
• ACORN is frequently tardy with member paychecks.

Check here for more damning evidence against ACORN (Disclosure: I'll note that the source of the previous link is the Employment Policies Institute, an organization funded by the restuarant industry. But the document is merely a data culling exercise. It's all public record).

What's funny is that Spurlock dismissed the "a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs" argument out of hand on the show. Yet it's an argument his activist allies and co-sponsors actually embraced when someone tried to make them ingest a bit of their own medicine.

If he's really serious about forcing employers to pay better wages, Spurlock might start with the allegedly pro-labor activist group that helped pay for his show.

Back to Aspartame

Continuing his assault on artificial sweeteners, Spurlock writes:

"There were far more troubling studies possibly linking aspartame to birth defects and brain tumors, one conducted by the FDA itself as early as 1981, but they were overlooked in the rush to get NutraSweet approved and marketed." (p. 98)

Spurlock again seems to have fallen for an urban legend.

Let's go back to one of Spurlock's own sources: the FDA Consumer newsletter. The issue Spurlock himself cites for another claim says the following:

FDA calls aspartame, sold under trade names such as NutraSweet and Equal, one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved. The agency says the more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies it has reviewed confirm that aspartame is safe for the general population.

Of course, Spurlock writes that the FDA "rushed" the sweetener to market, implying that the agency bowed to political pressure, in which case -- I guess -- we shouldn't believe what it writes.

Okay. Then how 'bout the British medical journal The Lancet? The American Council on Science and Health? MIT? Time magazine?

All of have considered the claims Spurlock publishes as fact, and thoroughly rebuked them as hysterical Internet scaremongering.

The most cursory of Internet research turned these articles up. In fact, a visit to Snopes would have sufficed to find them all. Instead, Spurlock cites the very sorts of quackish, alarmist websites the FDA, respected medical journals, academics, and other journalists caution anyone with a lick of sense from taking seriously.

He's that eager to demonize Big Food.

So what of that study that perported to link aspartame to brain tumors? It was conducted by a couple of Washington University researchers who apparently saw a 10% rise in incidence in brain tumors shortly after the sweetener was put on the U.S. market in the early 1980s. They didn't even check to see if the people who got brain tumors after 1983 had actually consumed any aspartame. Pure, speculative correlation. Bizarrely, they overlooked the fact that that rise was merely the tail end of a decade-long rise in brain cancer that began in the early 1970s -- well before aspartame hit the market. Beginning in the mid-1980s incidents of brain cancer began a decade-long leveling off -- with aspartame use on the rise all the while.

Spurlock, again, bites on an urban legend and Internet hoax. And one that, again, could have been disproven with as little effort as a Google search.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Mad Damned Lies

While again attacking the cattle industry, specifically its use of Bovine Growth Hormone [BGH], Spurlock writes:

It's because of the BGH that countries in the European Union won't let us export beef to them anymore; BGH is linked to mad-cow disease. (p. 102)

Short passage. Two huge errors.

First, nearly all the BGH used in the United States is synthetic. It never came from an actual cow. Which means it can't carry the misshapen protein (called a prion) that carries mad cow disease. That's only found in the nervous system of ruminants -- actual cows and sheep.

The only link between BGH and mad cow I could find anywhere was this one, in which a a consumer advocate theorized that cows on BGH grow quickly, and therefore need feed that's denser in energy and protein. This, the author concluded, means BGH cattle are more likely to get food that's made up of other ruminants, which puts that cattle at increased risk of mad cow.

Of course, even before 1997, that risk was still damn-near zero. And the whole point was rendered moot after 1997, when the FDA banned feed with ruminant remains for other ruminants.

Second, Spurlock himself goes on to write the following:

Originally discovered in the UK in 1986, the first case of mad cow in the United States wasn't documented until 2004 (in a cow raised in Canada and slaughtered in Washington state).

[...]

By the end of 2003, 143 official cases [of the human form of mad cow] had been counted in the UK, six in France, one each in Canada, Ireland, and Italy, and two in the United States--most recently, a Florida woman died of it in 2004, apparently after having eaten bad beef in the UK. (p. 102)

So to sum, Spurlock...

A) Questions the business practices of the U.S. beef industry,

B) does so by drawing a false link between bovine growth hormone and mad cow disease,

C) backs up his point by noting that Europe refuses to import U.S. beef, even though....

D) 153 of the 154 (99.3%) documented cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the human form of mad cow) occured outside the United States, and 152 of the 154 occured in Europe.

A realist might also point out that these cases all occured over a period of time in which billions of pounds of beef were eaten the world over. Which means your risk of contracting the human form of mad cow from eating beef is virtually nil. And if you should contract it, there's a 99% chance didn't get the beef that gave it to you in the United States.

Somehow, Spurlock reaches into that bag of statistics and pulls out an indictment of U.S. beef.

Damn Close to Libel

While discussing how McDonalds' suppliers raise their cattle, Spurlock writes in Don't Eat This Book:

"Leftover bits and pieces [of dead cows] are scooped up, ground together and fed back to the cows. And then those cows are ground up and fed to you." (p. 102)

Actually, this process is called "ruminant feeding," and it has been banned by the FDA since 1997. Spurlock is accusing McDonalds of breaking federal law, and of continuing to break federal law for eight years.

This is a serious accusation, and one for which Spurlock provides no source. Either Spurlock or Putnam, his publisher, should provide an explanation as to how and why this accusation made it into the book.

Spurlock's Sweetener Source Abuse

One of my favorite passages from Don't Eat This Book concerns accusations Spurlock casts against artificial sweeteners. Nearly all of them are based on Internet rumors, urban legends, and one solitary study that has long been discredited.

Spurlock, for example, writes the following:

"The FDA has said aspartame may be linked to some uncommon but troubling side effects, including headaches, hallucinations, panic attacks, dizziness, and mood swings." (p. 98)

Spurlock's source for this is a 1999 edition of an FDA newsletter called the FDA Consumer. Here's what that the article actually says:

FDA calls aspartame, sold under trade names such as NutraSweet and Equal, one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved. The agency says the more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies it has reviewed confirm that aspartame is safe for the general population.

This message would not necessarily be apparent to consumers surfing the Internet, especially those who use Web-based search engines to find information about sugar substitutes or artificial sweeteners. Websites with screaming headlines and well-written text attempt to link aspartame consumption to systemic lupus, multiple sclerosis, vision problems, headaches, fatigue, and even Alzheimer's disease. One report distributed nationally over e-mail systems claims that aspartame-sweetened soft drinks delivered to military personnel during the Persian Gulf War may have prompted Gulf War syndrome.

No way, says FDA, along with many other health organizations such as the American Medical Association.

In other words, Spurlock's own source makes the exact opposite conclusion he attributes to it. The article goes on to debunk each of these hysterical claims, one by one.

Again, Spurlock and/or Putnam should probably explain how such a blatant misreading of a source made it into the book.

Spurlock also cites the Center for Science in the Public Interest as a second source for this claim. Regular readers of my blog by now know that CSPI is Nanny State central, and more than willing to hype up even the most dubious of food scares. Yet even here, Spurlock abuses his own source. Here's what CSPI says about aspartame:

Some people have reported dizziness, hallucinations, or headache after drinking diet soda, but such reports have never been confirmed in controlled studies . . . be wary of claims scattered around the Internet that aspartame is responsible for a wide range of diseases. Most such claims are not supported by studies.

CSPI is somewhat critical of aspartame, but only in the sense that CSPI feels some people falsely believe that switching to aspartame will help them lose weight.

CSPI only mentions the maladies Spurlock associates with aspartame for the purpose of refuting them. That is apparently enough for Spurlock to draw a connection.

At risk of repeating myself, how in the world did such poor sourcing make it to publication?