MNpublius.com

Normally. I wouldn’t report on the ongoing hearings in the State Senate as to the possible health risks of the herbicide atrazine. After all, Senator Marty seems to be running a pretty tight ship down there and hearing scientific experts weigh the question as to whether the most widely used agricultural herbicide might be causing nasty health risks seems like a worth while activity. But then State Senator David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) went and released this wacky press release…
It begins like this: “It has been said that there are over 20 million Americans who believe Elvis is alive and pumping gas somewhere in Tennessee.” He then continues on to talk about people who believe in UFOs. It’s a weird opening, but this all has a point: John Marty is crazy. Why, might you ask? Well, let’s go to the conclusion:

In short, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. Authoritatively telling people they will die, or have a certain future of cancer, deformity or pain can in itself be highly destructive to human health.

Hey, know what else might be destructive to human health? Cancer, deformity and pain; which occurred in a great deal of the population exposed to radiation after Chernobyl. But, hey, it was probably all that info that did it.

So, let’s summarize. In order to debunk the necessity of looking into the possibility that atrazine has health risks associated with it, Hann compares it to the worst nuclear disaster in history. And then notes that all the information about health risks posed a health risk in of itself. If we follow the analogy that means that atrazine is similar to a disaster of the scale that could cause mass human suffering, but we shouldn’t look into it or spread that information because, well, it would really stress everyone out.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s trying to say (read the whole release here to figure that out) but, man, he needs to think through his analogies a bit more before sending these things out.