When having the opportunity to talk by phone with Miles Lord, he left me feeling like an acolyte for the first time meeting the voice of Yoda, aided to see a glimpse of the dark side in a place I had not thought to look because my attention was directed to look for darkness forcefully at play in a familiar publicized place and way - led easily enough to look down the path others have for years looked - what is the threat to health from asbestos and how should we react to it?
Misdirected, perhaps. Perhaps by circumstance and the neutral force of collective thinking, perhaps by a skilled hand of the dark side of the force pointing me in the path of collective "wisdom" and questioning.
But I felt like the monkey, chumped to pick one cup to guess about, when the basis of the game was the issue.
The most fundamental question about use of taconite tailings, (outside of the occupational exposure questions of their mining and the host of threats it poses locally), is not, "Where on the Iron Range is asbestos-in-tailings a problem or not and is there evidence some tailings are asbestos free so that those tailings pose no asbestos threat?".
Instead the first and most basic question is: Does the hard rock itself, the substance of the tailings pose a health risk possibly greater than or at least more widespread than the secondary risk of whether some or all of it contains differing amounts of asbestos? Is the asbestos question, posed in the context of safety of using "Mesabi Hard Rock" as paving aggregate overlooking the much more fundamental question - independent of asbestos, is this stuff, itself, a major menace that sane people would not spread around?
In effect, the first level of questioning should not merely be, "Does it contain asbestos," but, "By itself and independent of possible asbestos content, what is its basic makeup and what threat might it pose, with small fibers in the 1 x 3, or 1 x 5 micron range, or smaller, fiber or cleavage fragment, when inhaled into human lungs?"
That, ultimately would get into the chemistry and crystallography of the material, the biochemistry at DNA and protein chemistry levels within the lungs, how are particles of that material and that size range lodged into tissue once reaching lung walls, and what following upset might be caused (after they become lodged) to the DNA and protein chemistry in regular cell functioning and in a cell that neighbors on embeds the micro-fine material when the cell is dividing.
Given that we do not know much of anything about any of that, i.e., we have not successfully done any of that basic science giving us capability to give any reliable answers that way, then once we admit we cannot give mechanistic expressions at the most basic level of insight, epidemiology and incidence statistics studies are what we are left with and those approaches always are where the forces wanting a particular action wish to steer us to indecision.
If you want an outcome - people smoking cigarettes with abandon or using "Mesabi Hard Rock" with abandon as the desired action generating for you some actual or potentially great profit - you, given human nature, would be the one always saying, "The proof against it is inconclusive," or "We need at least one more study," or as we hear from a politician who took money to promote something, "You have to prove Larry Zanko wrong."
Such voices with pecuniary interests may think quietly, "But while that's being strung out by us, forever hopefully, stay the #&$&%^&$! out of the way of any and all of our profitable mischief."
Of course the latter would not be said at all, and certainly not that directly.
But stripped of euphimism, is it not the message in saying I have a burden to prove Larry Zanko and NRRI wrong before I may be listened to?
Perhaps not. Perhaps there is no dark motive whatsoever in a message false in both its bias against the precautionary principle, and in its capacity to misdirect and mislead by saying Larry Zanko in the first instance siezed upon the right tack to take, and I should question or debate his results so that if I ask something different I am ignorant or a troublemaker.
Yoda said beware of how the dark side of the force operates.
If I will not be the monkey dutifully pointing at the wrong cup, or choosing one of three on the table, put there by "the authorities," then I am even less than a dumb monkey.
And my thinking is accordingly of no consequence in deciding which cup an intelligent monkey should be induced to choose.
***
I have a weakness for quotes because my writing falls short of the quality of things better writers have thought over and tightly written. There is this quote that I put into a comment thread from a different post, which an interesting website attributes to Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom,
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Almost all of us have a desire to think analytically or to believe we do, and to see if we find truth or fiction and credibility vs. weakness in evidence, especially if it is presented as "science" and gets into a journal, of which there are many of varying quality. In the process, misdirection is something often overlooked, via the forest and the individual trees analogy.
And I do not say there was deliberate misdirection by either Larry Zanko or Elwyn Tinklenberg. If deliberate misdirection was there it was by different people, the ones pulling the strings, funding Zanko, and giving the marching orders. People probably not in Minnesota or caring about its people and public health, and brighter by far than either Zanko or Tinklenberg. Philadelphia lawyers, whatever. People thinking if "we" keep "them" thinking only of asbestos, where it is or is not and thinking of mesithelioma only, where it occurs in abnormal incidence levels or where baseline data exists, then "we" keep "them" from asking if the pea is under a different cup or if the game is entirely different and the problem is not asbestos in or absent from "Mesabi Hard Rock" but the propensity of that material, itself, to form small fiber or cleavage fragments of a particular size which, by itself, because of something in the very nature of "Mesabi Hard Rock" itself and independent of asbestos presence or absence, poses a potentially major health threat.
Reversing "we" and "they" as used above, with "we" now being the public --- If the cause of a range of disease and death or disablement is in the tailings themselves, independent of asbestos, then "we" collectively are the monkey pointing to the wrong cup - or being led into the game of pointing to one cup or another that "they" put on the table.
"They" have wealth and ways and means of defining the game they present, and most of "us" are in no position to be ever vigilant against being misdirected.
"We" should be pointing at and questioning the hard rock itself, independent of any set of three misleading cups "they" offer.
So, the quest is not to watch the hand being quicker than the eye, and to then guess, but to say more fundamentally - what is the quality and threat of the pea, and of any or all of the three cups?
If the shell game has been set by the shill to take the mark by basic misdirection and by luring the mark into wishing to even play that game by the shill's rules, then the mark's been taken or is at risk of it. So, avoid being taken. Ask the bigger basic threshold question - and the natural follow-up:
[1] Independent of asbestos, what's the hazard of that Mesabi Hard Rock in commerce?
[2]And short of having an answer to the first question, WHY NOT be prudent and follow the precautionary principle?
***
Or do we simply follow their Golden Rule, that they have the gold so they make our rules?
