Global warming, big oil and silicone breasts: the links

crikey.com.au ^ | Thursday, 12 July 2007 | Ben Oquist

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Whatever one thinks about Martin Durkin’s film “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the passion that it has stirred up is certainly amusing.

Perhaps the best moment in the post screening debate (ABC Australia) was the look on Tony Jones’ face when Michael Duffy compared Jones’ excellent working over of Durkin with his friendly and uncritical interview of Nicholas Stern, whose report is at least as faulty as Durkin’s film.

Ben Oquist (Crikey 11 July) does not appear to appreciate the irony of mounting an attack on the scientists featured in Martin Durkin’s film on the basis of their links to industry groups — as if a former Greens staffer could be considered a disinterested and reliable source of comment!

Ben also thinks that “perhaps the best guide is film maker Durkin’s previous efforts,” citing Durkin’s film “Storm in a D Cup,” which according to Ben argued that silicone implants were good for women. This feeble attempt at ad hominem can be found on a number of websites, some of which Ben has obviously seen.

I have not seen the film, and doubt that Ben has either, but the library synopsis of the film tells us that it investigates “the controversy surrounding silicone breast implants in America. A US study finds no link between implants and serious disease; another shows that they may reduce the growth of breast cancers; while a British study gives them a clean bill of health.” Not quite the same thing as Ben wants to imply.

While I am not sure that implants are good for you, there is plenty of evidence that the supposed harm they cause has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, one could make the case that the kerfuffle over the relationship between silicone implants and a slew of diseases was one of the great hysterical epidemics of the 20th century.

Wikipedia sums it up in the following terms, “Since the early 1990s, a number of independent systemic comprehensive reviews have examined studies concerning links between silicone gel breast implants and systemic diseases. The consensus of these reviews is that there is no clear evidence of a causal link between the implantation of silicone breast implants and systemic disease.”

If you don’t think Wikipedia is a reliable source, check out PubMed or even Google Scholar.

I understand that Storm in a D Cup was awarded Best Science Documentary of the Year by the British Medical Association, so maybe Ben’s comment about the best guide being Durkin’s previous work is not so far from the truth, after all.

At the time, the Evening Standard commented (about Storm in a D Cup) that “The documentary rather brilliantly exposes a particularly alarmist society, one that has access to an awful lot of information, but still reacts to it in the manner of 16th century witch hunts.”

Time will tell whether global warming is the first great hysterical epidemic of the 21st century.