ONE of the claims to fame that retired GP Dick van Steenis has is delivering a talk in London in 2005 entitled Incinerators – Weapons of Mass Destruction? It may have been an arresting headline, but did it have any basis in fact?
Even a lay reader quickly realises that his paper is full of excitable claims but short on verifiable evidence supporting the contention that mass burn equals death on a large scale.
It was that bad science that Guernsey’s chief medical man, the director of public health, felt forced to decry when Dr van Steenis – whom we called Dr Scaremonger – was alarming islanders at a presentation opposed to the Public Services Department’s proposals for an integrated waste solution.
Whatever individual views may be on the proposals, they should not be attacked on health grounds. All the reputable authorities are agreed that risks from a properly run and monitored modern plant are negligible.
Yet Dr van Steenis’s message of increased cancers and deformed babies is as alarming as it is unjustified and it is perhaps surprising that a States member and former minister decided to select someone so far on the fringes to act as ‘expert’ in this regard.
Unless, of course, his aim was to have someone guaranteed to scare the pants off islanders knowing that there is an inbuilt reluctance to believe assurances from official sources.
If so, that is unfortunate, especially as Guernsey has a real health issue on its hands – dealing with swine flu – and has a pressing need to trust proper advice.
Stripped of clinical speak, the pandemic has arrived in this island and in the weeks and months ahead thousands of islanders are going to feel pretty wretched. How quickly it spreads is a moot point but in just two weeks, the number of people going to the doctor has jumped from 20 in a week to 100.
If UK projections are followed here, that will become 100 a day by the autumn.
However, there is much that islanders can do to stay healthy by reducing the spread of the virus by following the right doctor’s advice.
Article posted on 9th July, 2009 - 2.15pm
2 Article Comments
We’ve been here before with folks trying to discredit one of the leading UK industrial emissions experts on peer review; he has a peer reviewed article in the Lancet, 3 peer reviews in 3 US emminant environmental health journals, and has 375 references on the subject.
The only bad science is the non Science of Drs Brigman and Adam
Dr Brigman is a sceptic beleiving outdated HPA/COMEAP dross; ignoring USEPA/WHO and US (Pope and Dochery) legallly and proven mass science on industrial PM2.5 emissions.
Dr Adam should be concerned as he is way behind on industrial emissions and its the likes of such, who is signing and permitting folks death warant. He also forgets science does carry bias; its called “ethics”.
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Brilliant Rob! My knowledge about industrial emissions is limited but I was most impressed with Dr van Steenis and his lecture. When I checked with contacts I have in the medical field in the UK they spoke very highly of him and I was told that what he says is “spot on”. His opponents cannot argue with him as he knows it all so then they try and rubbish him.
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