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Language issues aside, I have some other concerns as the campaign to push, pull or drag America away from salt cranks up.

The most pressing, I suppose, are those articulated by Times science columnist John Tierney not quite a year ago. Questions like: Are Americans really eating significantly more salt than people in other times or places have generally eaten? If not, is it realistic to believe that putting less salt in food will lead to less salt in our bodies, or will most people simply eat more food to compensate? And, would cutting back salt really have miraculous health benefits anyway?

I don’t follow this issue closely, so it may be that these questions have been answered in the past year. It may be, for that matter, that they were already answered, and Mr. Tierney was just spreading outdated misinformation at the behest of Big Food / Big Ag; I’ve not really followed Tierney regularly, either, so I suppose it’s possible.

Certainly it’s not unheard of for corporate America to engage in disinformation campaigns to undermine good science when their profits are at stake. And I guess it’s conceivable that food companies have secretly concluded that if they all cut back on salt, people will decide that low-salt food tastes like shit and start eating less overall, and therefore put a dent in corporate revenues and profits.

That’s a plausible scenario, to be honest. But, is it more convincing than an alternate explanation, i.e. that the campaign against salt is a massive, misguided, San Francisco style effort by do-gooders determined to do something, but informed as much by “truthiness” and instinctive beliefs about what’s “good for us” as by facts and statistical analysis?

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admittedly, it’s a pretty low bar. and this is a fairly empty statement prefaced with the usual anti-legalization disclaimer, more indicative of palin’s hypothalamic political instincts (in this case, suck up to the ron paul people) than of any coherent principled convictions. still, it’s refreshing to hear any politician make the following, thunderingly obvious, point in public:

“If somebody’s gonna to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society.”

Palin then urged law enforcement to “not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem we have in the country.”

come on, people. this is not a brain-buster of a policy riddle — even caribou barbie has figured it out.

[note: this started as a response to charlie's tour de france post, but got a little too long for the comments thread.]

if you think that’s bad, just wait ’til 2012, when gene doping will be in full flower just in time for london.

“It is possible to introduce genes into people and change the DNA of some of their cells, genes that affect the way muscles function or the way that they heal after injury,” he said.

Although gene doping is probably still in its infancy, as techniques become more sophisticated naturally occurring hormones could be boosted or altered to enhance performance.

“In mice and in monkeys and in other tests that have been done, the animals have shown increased amount of blood production,” Dr Friedmann said. “Those mice have in fact become much stronger and much more muscular.”

…and we’re still at least a decade away from developing a test that will be able to detect it. some think it’s already going on in beijing this summer:

Dr Peter Larkins is a former head doctor for Australia’s athletics team and past president of Sports Medicine Australia.

“I think it is happening now,” he says of gene doping.

“I can’t believe that 10 years after gene therapy has been proven and we have mice that grow muscles twice the size of normal mice and mice that are called marathon mice because they run all day, I can’t believe the scientists who have been unethical enough to help athletes cheat for the last 30 years aren’t giving that technology to some people.

” Associate Professor Bob Stewart, a drugs-in-sport expert from Victoria University, is also pessimistic.

“We just have to accept the fact that athletes and biochemists are a jump ahead of the WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) testers,” he says.

“accept facts”??! sounds like surrender talk to me!

seriously, though. the puritans and drug warriors and self-deluded nostalgia mongers who run professional sports (yes, the olympics are a pro outfit) have an extremely simple choice to make: either figure out a way to remove big money from the equation, or deal with the fact that athletes as a group are going to continue doing whatever is required of them to stay competitive. it’s unreasonable — hell, it’s unfair — to expect otherwise from people whose livelihood is competition.

and please, no lectures about sportsmanship and unfair advantages from the olympian sector, when the IOC already sanctions huge technological and economic advantages for certain competitors. why is it that the larger, developed nations always seem to do best in the medal count, anyway? is it because we’re naturally superior, or could it be that our teams enjoy superior training facilities and equipment, better coaches and staff, larger and more competitive recruiting pools, and more all-around institutional support?

drawing the line at drugs seems pitifully arbitrary, especially when the pace of development in the doping sciences is so fast that we can’t even agree on a stable universal definition of what “doping” is in the first place, or in some cases, as charlie notes, how to differentiate between doping and legitimate sports medicine. besides, as long as prohibition prevails and doping happens underground, the aforementioned institutional & economic disparities mean that only the most technologically disadvantaged dopers — the ones who can only afford treatments that the piss police have already figured out how to catch — will get caught.

it seems obvious that the hardline anti-doping stance is more ideological than anything else. but don’t take my word for it: ask WADA chair Dr. Gary Wadler why cannabis is also a no-no:

“Specifically, three criteria are used when considering whether or not a drug should be on the Prohibited List: (a) Does the drug or method have the potential of enhancing performance? (b) Does its abuse represent an actual or potential risk to an athlete’s health? And/or (c) does its use violate the spirit of sport? To be even considered for addition to the Prohibited List, the drug or method under consideration must fulfill at least two of the three aforementioned criteria.

The use of marijuana… is considered to represent a risk to the athlete’s health and its use violates the spirit of sport.”

that is to say, “drugs are bad, m’kay?”