Comments on: When regulation bites

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:45:40 +0000

“It is stunning that the proven effectiveness of a cheap program of limited household spaying for controlling malaria…”

lol

By: William Nuesslein

William Nuesslein — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:15:23 +0000

One would want evidence based regulations as contrasted with politically based regulation. The teaching of evolution comes to mind, where Americans hold the bible to be more trustworthy than 150 years of scientific work.

But there is Science and there is Science. It is stunning that the proven effectiveness of a cheap program of limited household spaying for controlling malaria is fought tooth and nail by our intellectual class. They support the much more expensive and less effective use of bed nets, even though the bed nets are imbued with insecticide.

A second problem with our regulations is the use of a $7.5 million for the value of a life. This policy says that we should devote over 2 working lifetimes to save a partial lifetime. ($50,000 for 40 years = $2 million.)

A third problem is that null results are not news. The State of New York did a careful measure of cancer rates near love canal. The observed incidences were within a standard deviation of the expected in all cases. Nobody was harmed by the love canal pollution, nor by agent orange. And the Gulf War syndrome was the equivalent of cold fusion.

Is the EPA costing jobs? Yes, but the public believes that any reasonable constraint on EPA excesses id puttying profits above people.

By: GregS

GregS — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:55:25 +0000

One of the problems with granting regulatory agencies the power to make regulations (as opposed to merely enforcing ones written by legislators) is that it encourages politicians to be irresponsible. No politician likes to stick his neck out and make decisions that are politically risky. But as long as politicians can’t pass the buck to someone else, they eventually do have to deal with difficult issues. However, once regulatory agencies are handed the responsibility of crafting the regulations, it becomes easy to to pass vague well-intentioned laws and to leave the dirty work to unelected regulators. And when those regulators do something unpopular, the politicians can safely grandstand against it without actually having to take any action. So I strongly doubt Congress will do anything to rein in the EPA.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:49:12 +0000

It’s just really unfortunate that the EPA is in charge of everything and no other branch of government could pass a law making DDT legal. I mean, it’s not like there’s a Congress or anything, right?

By: spo

spo — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:49:33 +0000

Lisa Jackson is a real piece of work.

By: Mannie

Mannie — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 16:42:50 +0000

DDT is one of the safer insecticides for use around humans. It does have some troublesome environmental effects, but using it indoors obviates most of those.

By: William nuesslein

William nuesslein — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 15:46:41 +0000

Years ago my first father-in-law told me how DDT provided wonderful relief from bedbugs.

The delousing of populations during World War II was also well received.