The FDA agrees with the Drug Enforcement Agency that marijuana has no medical benefits. No surprise given the current government’s drug politics. What was a surprise was the news coverage. The New York Times actually described in some detail how the FDA arrived at their truth.

In 1999 the National Institute of Medicine, not generally known as a bunch of stoners, issued a report that said marijuana helped people. The FDA conspicuously ignored the report. An interview with a UC San Francisco researcher was even more interesting. This researcher has to scrounge for funds. He wondered out loud how he was supposed to provide the data the FDA demands without research funding?

Ecclesiastical science, the science that is the official truth, the science that dominates through institutional power operates in this way. The truth is pronounced. Contrary views are ignored. Contrary research doesn’t get funded—after all, ecclesiastical science decides what is and is not real science. If need be, although it didn’t happen in this case, those holding contrary views are portrayed as lunatics or fanatics and cast from the bosom official science. And when all else fails, people with contrary views can be arrested and prosecuted.

Once, in a time of personal trouble, a mentor said to me, “You have nothing to fear from the truth.” What he didn’t tell me is that the truth has a price. Ecclesiastical science has many weapons in its arsenal to make the price of contrary science very high.

That arsenal is not on display very often. A few weeks ago newspapers reported that research showed amalgam dental fillings containing mercury are perfectly safe. That news did not include any of the contrary research. Even further back the EPA reported that its mercury emissions standards were just fine, even a little on the conservative side. Yet a study the EPA itself had commissioned found quite the opposite: the researchers estimated that the standard should be at least half its current level. And this was a very conservative study.

Last year the National Academy of Science determined that there is no safe exposure to ionizing radiation. Yet nuclear power is now a green energy alternative. More recently, the National Academy determined that the maximum exposure to naturally occurring fluoride should be half its current standard. The maximum for fluoride added to drinking water is only a quarter of the National Academy’s recommendation. Yet the news didn’t talk about the health effects of fluoride added to water. In fact, the news took pains to steer readers away from that question. Anyone who challenges the benefits of fluoridated water is shouted down as unscientific, dangerous, and perhaps a little unhinged.

And then we have the topic of today’s show: the health effects of radio frequency radiation. We see the contrary science being ignored—as with San Francisco’s happy waltz toward its nuptials with citywide wireless Internet access. We’ve seen three of the four research labs in this country that were doing RFR health risk science shut down for lack of funding.

I’ve said before that science isn’t about the truth. It’s about learning what sort of world we live in. So we can live in it better. Ecclesiastical science, on the other hand, is about the truth. And the truth comes at a price—a price you and I and our children are going to pay.

The issues in this article are developed (with references) in issue #8 of the Progressive Health Observer in the article titled “Cancer by the Numbers” and in the article titled “The WiFi Blues.”

Related resources are available on the Environmental Health page. on the Cancer page.