Busy Protesting

"It is very easy for a small group of people to show up at a town council meeting and the councillors aren't scientists, they don't know, they just know they've got a whole bunch of angry constituents."
Iain Martel, co-chairman, Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism

"Smaller communities have little if any scientific staff, beyond the local officer of health, and therefore cannot defer to the consensus on these issues. ...more easily swayed by the subtle yet specious arguments offered by organized groups of anti-science protesters."
Michael Kruse, Bad Science Watch

"Just because we are local government does not mean that we can't read scientific reports and make decisions based on science. [No] dollars or perks are surreptitiously slipped into our back pockets; we do not have former members of Monsanto's board on our committees."
Moralea Milne, councillor, Metchosis, B.C.

Hungary won't tolerate GMO seeds, burns 1,000 acres of corn -- Getty Images

The esteemed magazine Science had gathered a panel of food researchers to draft an editorial admonishing GE alarmists for creating a panic among people of potential hazards that are in the offing as a result of growing and eating genetically modified food crops, when "no evidence of actual hazards", is actually in existence. The World Health Organization and the American Association for the Advancement of Science all agree that GE foods have a clean bill of health.

But that doesn't stop people with an agenda, a passion that displays itself in renouncing the use of GE foods. Their claims that genetically engineered canola, soy, and corn, as laboratory-designed food, should be rejected out of hand are deeply held and projected. And last month all of British Columbia's municipalities voted to outlaw GE food from their jurisdictions, following the hysterical dictates of the population they serve who take the admonitions they hear seriously indeed.

No one, it seems, really stopped to think this through. But GE foods are verbotten in B.C. That being so, expect all supermarket shelves to look pretty sparse in future. Since up to 70% of all processed foods contain some elements of GE-grown agricultural crops. Towns, villages and cities across Canada have passed laws outlawing certain scientifically proven 'goods' because of misinformation, ignorance and mass psychosis; fear of the unknown.

That includes water fluoridation bans, anti-Wi-Fi resolutions, GE-free zones. If nothing else, people feel justified and satisfied, happy with the results their insistent demands have borne. Fears of fluoridated water have never left the public consciousness, despite that municipal water fluoridation has proven its safety and efficacy, the results pleasing the dentists who examine children's teeth.

Nick Brancaccio / Postmedia News -- Water operator tests level of fluoride in water sample in Windsor, Ontario

In Windsor, the city council decided to respond to the demands of their public. Choosing to ignore the almost unanimous condemnation from health and dental experts, including their own medical officer of health. The anti-fluoridation crowd rule. The city's director of water production shut off the city's fluoride and made this statement: "If you haven't been brushing, it's probably a good time to start."

Mike Graston’s Colour Cartoon - The Windsor Star

"It's so much easier to make the noisemakers go away by voting in favour of the moratorium. They put on the show in public, but behind closed doors, they know it's not their jurisdiction", said James Smith, a spokesman with StopSmartMeters.ca. A group that received wide support for a symbolic smart meter moratorium. The activist websites like the Coalition to Stop "Smart" Meters claim they are deleterious to human health.

Calgary too, chose the route of doing away with municipal water fluoridation. And dentists have started reporting, just as they forewarned, a sudden spike in the presentation of children with cavities, larger, painful tooth decay appearing in patients as young as 11 months. "I predicted we'd see a big increase 12 months from the time the city took it out", said pediatric dentist Dr. Leonard Smith. "We are busier."