The CDC Should Fall on its Sword
February 16, 2005
7:05 a.m., MT
Almost a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (warning: gov site) released a study titled Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000 that offered a new scary statistic for the food nanny-ninnies: "poor diet and physical activity" causes 400,000 deaths per year. That's the phrasing from the JAMA abstract, which is the only original source document I've been able to access. The "poor diet and physical activity" label -- two broad categories at the outset -- morphed into "obesity", and the scare-mongers were off and running. Obesity was going to take over the top-killer spot from tobacco; more legislation was needed to protect Americans from themselves; and on went the idiocies. The "research" got worldwide coverage, and those who dared question it had their sanity and caring questioned (if not their motives to boot).

One group that's been challenging much of the food-and-drink fear-mongering is the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). They've been hammering away at the CDC's sleight of hand that pushed around 30 million Americans into the "overweight" category overnight. They've also been poking at this "research", writing in November of last year on its various errors.

The CDC originally admitted to a "computational error" (see last link above). Now that it has admitted the study is a pile of steaming cow poo, CCF is leaning on 'em harder than ever to retract the study, which apparently cherry-picked studies for inclusion in addition to the computational error previously admitted. I've seen more news stories addressing the problems in the news over the past couple of days; and the CDC appears to have pulled the original study from its site -- I wasn't able to find it, despite over an hour of researching.
I did, however, find a very interesting memorandum on the study's methods (PDF and gov site warnings) that yielded these typically gov-crat gems:

• in doing this research, which apparently was a sort of follow-up to a 1993 study, the authors didn't update their research methods (with one exception);


• the CDC is considering having a symposium and/or workshop on research methodology to address concerns;

and the memo concludes thusly -

• "... all the participants in this process have been open and forthright and have been a credit to CDC, NIH, AHRQ, and HHS."

Well, that just about sums it up, then! If this sort of obfuscation and incompetence is a credit to the health-crats, they should all fall on their swords and leave us in peace.

[Note: In crawling through the CDC web site, I found a most interesting page, with the title "surveillance". The health-crats have surveillance systems and surveys (gov site) monitoring these items: behavioral risk factors; "national health" (whatever that is); personal transportation; pediatric nutrition; pregnancy nutrition; and youth risk behavior.]

Sunni