Because it is just in mice, and mice are not little people, this is only EXPLORATORY, but so are claims about vaccines, GMOs, and corn syrup and because scientists didn't stand up to those when epidemiology papers claimed their correlation was really causation, it might be worth nipping this in the rodent before the Los Angeles Times prints it as human fact.
California is in a war on the modern world, rarely thinking about the economic effects until it is too late. State government and 70% of voters demonized conventional energy for decades and said solar would work and now the state has raised electricity rates 100% in the last 10 years(1) while Valero has had enough of the state demanding a special formulation and blaming them for everything and is closing their San Francisco area refinery. The state is going to have to buy it or buy it for a company willing to play ball with them to keep it open and prevent the nation's most expensive energy from getting even higher.(2)
It's a bad day to be a mouse.
Because the state turned over all of its health policy to a suspect epidemiology group, the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, there are already 80,000 'Proposition 65 warning labels on products that lead to higher cost, and now we may have to put warning labels on everything involved with agriculture.
Even the dust.
The say mice inhaling swine farm dust had altered gut microbiomes and “leaky gut” syndrome, which they intone has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, and celiac, all without any plausible biological mechanism. They created the effect by giving mice high levels of toxic dust for what would be, in human terms, 3.5 years of nonstop inhalation directly into our lungs.
Yes, you will feel terrible and the changes will be measurable if you are forced to inhale poison dust constantly for nearly four years. That is the only thing the paper gets right in its worrisome intonation about how evil agriculture is.
The credibility problem is that they created an epidemiological correlation and their supporting evidence for harm is other epidemiological correlation. They 'church it up' by invoking beneficial bacteria and say those were lowered but the microbiome is the fMRI of the biology community. Anything can mean anything to the person looking at it because nothing is defined.
Ignoring all of that they declared human relevance despite mice not being tiny people. This is how food coloring got banned and chocolate got declared health food. It just isn't science.
It is unsurprising that the Biden administration funded this study and won't be a surprise that Secretary Kennedy's control of NHS may mean the authors will get twice as much. It attacks farmers and that is good enough for wealthy plutocrats who've never done real work in their lives.
NOTES:
(1) Utilities are technically the private sector but you or I can't start one, and the ones the stand hand the right to exist cannot sign long-term contracts, buy transmission lines, or change rates without state approval. They are instead weirdly forced by the state to subsidize solar and wind installations and 'buy back' the energy from businesses and individuals for 100% of the cost they charge. The state tells them to pass that cost to conventional energy consumers so rich white homeowners in Malibu are being subsidized by poor renters in Compton, which tells you everything you need to know about the Newsom administration. Those costs will go up because the state refuses to create firebreaks or allow logging of dead trees in a state that is 70% desert and gets no rain nine months per year. When wildfires happen six times per year, the government blames utilities and tells them to settle, and those costs are also passed along to consumers.
(2) It's a state with an illegal $60 billion deficit being masked by accounting tricks and bonds, they will add billions more. Former VP Kamala Harris, Governor-in-waiting, can't be happy Gov. Newsom is saddling her with a monstrous deficit, a fleeing citizenry, and no hope in sight.
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