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A examine revealed by researchers from the College of North Carolina has left us shaking our heads as soon as once more. This one claims that the nearer you reside to a hog farm, the extra doubtless you might be to go to a hospital emergency division for a urinary tract an infection.
The one downside: There’s nothing that really proves hog farms trigger urinary tract infections.
Anybody who has ever taken a statistics class has heard the phrase “correlation doesn’t indicate causation.” The idea: simply because two issues are true doesn’t imply they’re associated.
Take, as an illustration, the correlation between (a) per capita cheese consumption and (b) the quantity of people that died by changing into tangled of their bedsheets. Because the chart exhibits, the quantity of cheese we eat straight correlates with the variety of folks die tangled of their bedsheets — regardless that everyone knows that one doesn’t trigger the opposite.
This isn’t the primary time we’ve encountered critical flaws with research about our business, together with deceptive claims that our farms are disproportionately positioned in minority communities or that hog farms are accountable for a wide range of well being considerations, together with larger charges of bronchial asthma and better mortality charges.
Dr. Keith Ramsey, the medical director of infectious illness management at Pitt County Memorial Hospital and former chairman of the Pitt County Board of Well being, has carried out quite a few scientific and analysis research involving residents throughout japanese North Carolina. He studied well being outcomes and particularly checked out doable affiliation with bacterial resistance related to swine operations.
His conclusion: “I’ve noticed no indication that dwelling close to a hog farm causes any elevated threat of an infection by antibiotic-resistant or every other micro organism… The true well being threats needing consideration in japanese North Carolina are food regimen and life-style… not hog farms.”
“… The true well being threats needing consideration in japanese North Carolina are food regimen and life-style… not hog farms.” Dr. Keith Ramsey, medical director of infectious illness management, Pitt County Memorial Hospital
The issue with this newest examine is that it doesn’t account for different components which may trigger urinary tract infections. It doesn’t clarify why its knowledge exhibits that American Indians are greater than 90% extra prone to have UTIs, why girls over 65 are 139% extra prone to have UTIs, or why these with out personal medical health insurance are 173% extra prone to have UTIs. Do hog farms indiscriminately goal these populations?
The examine additionally doesn’t look at why so many communities throughout the state with none hog farms have excessive charges of urinary tract infections. And it doesn’t clarify why communities with a excessive density of hog farms — and a low density of poultry farms — have a decrease focus of UTIs.
Certainly, this newest examine leaves many unanswered questions, together with why researchers proceed to assault our state’s hog farms.
Malcolm Kendrick, the creator of “Doctoring Information,” shares one potential reply: “There are various folks with an agenda on the market, and they’re going to ruthlessly torture statistics till they get the reply they need out of them.”
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