According to a recent story, public health officials in New York City are willing to misrepresent the facts regarding sugary soft drinks in order to get people to stop drinking them. These self-important do-gooders produced advertisements that said drinking a soda a day for a year would result in a ten-pound weight gain even though research does not indicate that this to be the case, and over the objections of some department advisors.
As part of a campaign designed to scare people, and probably to support the movement to add a punitive tax on soft drinks, the New York City Health Department produced an advertisement that was released on YouTube that featured globs of fat being poured out of a soda can despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to link drinking soda with weight gain.
There was an internal debate about whether the message promoted by the health department was accurate. A document drafted by chief nutritionist Cathy Nonas prompted Maura Kennelly, a special assistant to the department, to write to her colleagues last summer with this warning, “CAUTION: As we get into this exacting science, the idea of a sugary drink becoming fat is absurd.”
Assistant Commissioner Lynn Silver consulted with three weight-gain experts and said all of them did not support linking drinking soda with weight gain. In a facts-be-damned approach that is all too typical among the self-appointed ruling class Dr. Thomas Hardy, the commissioner of the health department, decided to ignore his advisors and the evidence and go with the false and intellectually dishonest position that drinking soda makes you fat.
A spokesman for Dr. Hardy responded in a manner that should be expected from an elitist and issued the following statement according to an article printed in the New York Post, “A Farley spokeswoman said that the decision was made for simplicity. ‘The qualifications one would add in a technical journal are not expected in a YouTube video.'”
What this means is that us regular folk are too stupid to make our own choices about what we eat and drink and that we should accept at face value, and be happy, that someone with a “Dr.” before their name speaking on behalf of the New York City Health Department is telling us that drinking soda will make us fat.
Don’t you see? We don’t know any better.
Even though the science doesn’t support the position Dr. Thomas Hardy, and countless others just like him, are totally comfortable telling us what we should eat and drink. Even if it means they have to lie to us about the facts.
Seriously, doesn’t this guy look like the kind of person who should be giving advice on what is healthy? This is a guy who says he doesn’t feel safe riding his bike on the streets of New York City, so all of you bike riders, pedestrians and motor vehicle operators should be worried, because once a guy like this decides something isn’t safe he will do everything in his power to make a change.
And with the mindset displayed in this soda drinking issue, is it a stretch to think that Dr. Farley would play fast and loose with the facts to get his way? Would it be unreasonable to think a guy like this would move to ban bike riding in the city because he felt that it wasn’t safe?
After all, it would be for our own good, right? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. This story is just another illustration of how public health officials, and other elected and appointed public officials, will misrepresent the facts an distort science in order to fulfill their agenda and to take away individual liberties. Dr. Thomas Hardy should resign.
