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ALAR FACTS AND QUOTES • On February 26, 1992, former Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, stated that Alar-treated apples never posed a significant health risk to the public and the media should be more discerning when reporting findings of studies that have not been subject to peer review. • The consumer panic which followed the "60 Minutes" broadcast caused apple growers to lose over $100 million in the months that followed. • Elizabeth Whelan, President of the American Council on Science and Health, called the Alar scare a "sorry example of what can happen when politics and hysteria prevail over science in determining alleged human cancer risks." ("Alar Apple Scare Not Based on Scientific Evidence, Panel of Scientists Says", Daily Report for Executives, Bureau of National Affairs, February 27, 1992) • Bill Geen, President of the B. C. Fruit Growers Association, says that not using Alar costs apple growers in British Columbia, Canada as much as $1 million each year from apples dropping to the ground before they are harvested and because they do not develop the full red color that gets growers high prices when apples are graded at packing houses. (Holden, Hal, "Alar: false alarm: How watchdog groups hyped a cancer scare -- and almost destroyed the apple industry," Vancouver Sun, November 14, 1991) • "Virginia apple growers, none of whom used Alar, suffered from an average price drop of 35 percent." (Letter from Carl 0. Helstrom III, Development Officer, Capital Research Center, in The Washington Times, December 17, 1990) "Epidemiologic studies -- the kind that link a low incidence of a disease with a behavior or environmental exposure -- can also be unreliable and may not indicate a real cause and effect. So cautions Marcia Angell in the New England Journal of Medicine, of which she is executive editor. Useful control groups may be almost impossible to find for such studies, points out Angell. Many diseases have a combination of causes. Hard-to-measure variables such as socioeconomic factors may distort findings. Statistical techniques for neutralizing variables may be inadequate." yp,, 'L1 (Beck, Joan, "How to tell a real medical peril from bogeyman's hype," Chicago Tribune, September 27, 1990) CA