The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#51

Post by maus42 » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #10

nextos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are wrong. This scandal is incredibly well-known in Spain. It's gotten massive press coverage throughout the years. In fact, most people that used to use cheap cooking oils switched to olive oil after the scandal. (For those who are not familiar with the matter, the scandal involved using chemicals on industrial-grade rapeseed oil to remove dyes and re-sell it to consumers.)

The article says it wasn't cooking oil, and that cooking oil was the scapegoat coverup. Politicians let people die by not tackling the root causes. And, scarily, it says that pesticide use in Spanish fruit is still high, and that a similar mass poisoning recently in Mexico was also covered up and another non-cause blamed.

recently when the article was written (which was in 2001)

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#52

Post by maus42 » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #49

I don't see any links whatsoever to hard evidence in the article. The only thing close are a book and an article published in Spanish and French, respectively, and seemingly no translation or availability in English bookstores. Yet everyone in the comments here are accepting it as fact, almost as readily as people accepted the tainted oil as fact. It's funny how human heuristics prevent critical thinking, even after…

Well, it's a newspaper article written by who would be a source, of sorts:

>The FIS - the government agency responsible for toxic oil syndrome - refused to release details of the fieldwork carried out or any background information. However, the families described in the reports were given code numbers and these could be matched against the official list of victims which then became part of the trial documentation. Eventually we identified the families supposedly interviewed for the key epidemiological reports and went to see them.

I'd be interested if they have any full detailed notes about interviews published anywhere, other than the documentary.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#53

Post by heliumcraft » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 4:57 PM UTC

divbyzer0 wrote: post #41

steve19 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A study published in The Lancet found a strong connection between Zika and microcephaly in fetuses in French Polynesia http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

The main point of the article is that scientific & regulatory community was led by profit and not in the "spirit of disinterested inquiry". From the article: The original study on which the oil theory is founded, by Dr Juan Tabuenca Oliver, was published in the Lancet Also from the article: they concluded that, without any doubt, the contaminated foodstuff was tomatoes, and it was the pesticides on them that were res…

That may be so, but I'll take The Lancet over thefreethoughtproject.com, natural news and random conspiracy internet websites any day.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#54

Post by pella » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

argonaut wrote: post #40

FWIW, it appears many of these concerns were known and brought up during the original scandal 30 years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/21/world/trial-in-spain-on-to... http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/02/world/a-long-trial-in-spai...

"The epidemic is officially deemed to have started on May 1 1981"

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#55

Post by kgwgk » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

pipio21 wrote: post #21

It was not a scandal, it was criminal negligence, with lots of victims. My hyphothesis after talking with chemists in the field is that someone reused a container tank for synthetic oil in order to carry rapeseed oil. The rapeseed oil dissolves synthetic oil easily. They probably thought nothing would happen because of ignorance on the part of the man that made it. He probably used water in order to clean the origina…

> My hyphothesis after talking with chemists in the field is that someone reused a container tank for synthetic oil in order to carry rapeseed oil.

Why not the "official" version?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_oil_syndrome

"The cause was traced to the consumption of colza oil that had been intended for industrial rather than food use. To discourage human consumption, the oil was denatured by the addition of aniline to make it smell and taste bad. It was then imported as cheap industrial oil by the company RAPSA at San Sebastián, handled by RAELCA and illegally refined by ITH in Seville to remove the aniline, resulting in a palatable product that could then be illegally sold."

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#56

Post by Mahn » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 6:14 PM UTC

Note the last paragraph that suggests that this isn't just the 80s scandal, but something that is on-going today as well:

> An internal German government memo was recently leaked to Der Spiegel. According to this, the monitoring of imported produce had revealed that there continued to be unsafe pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables from Spain. Some peppers were "highly contaminated" and the residues had "reached levels we can no longer tolerate". It was the last line of the memo that was most telling: "Under no circumstances should the general public be informed."

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#57

Post by lolc » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #49

I don't see any links whatsoever to hard evidence in the article. The only thing close are a book and an article published in Spanish and French, respectively, and seemingly no translation or availability in English bookstores. Yet everyone in the comments here are accepting it as fact, almost as readily as people accepted the tainted oil as fact. It's funny how human heuristics prevent critical thinking, even after…

The article is from 2001, the study you mention from 2002.

Also that part was covered in my opinion, as the article states "Nor was the oil theory underpinned by any laboratory science. In the years since the 1981 outbreak, the suspect oils have been analysed in leading laboratories throughout the world. No chemical, or contaminant, that would account for the symptoms observed in the afectados has ever been found."

Sure we could deplore the lack of citations. Of all the newspapers I read, only one lists sources at the end of the article. Unfortunately it's not common practice.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#58

Post by eximius » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

Mahn wrote: post #56

Note the last paragraph that suggests that this isn't just the 80s scandal, but something that is on-going today as well: > An internal German government memo was recently leaked to Der Spiegel. According to this, the monitoring of imported produce had revealed that there continued to be unsafe pesticide residues on fruit and vegetables from Spain. Some peppers were "highly contaminated" and the residues had "reached…

This absolutely blew my mind. I cannot imagine why government folk, presumably mostly decent folk, fall in line with this. They are not just harming others, they are harming themselves.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#59

Post by plafl » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 7:07 PM UTC

I started to read the article but after reading some paragraphs it still continues spreading mistrust about scientists. This is a very bad indicator in my experience. I think there was some article about it here some time ago, since we cannot attack the science we attack the scientists. I skimmed the rest. I can believe in a government cover up, but I don't see the motivation. The article says it was to cover that some pesticides were harmful, but if that was the case the epidemic should have been more widespread. I don't see also the Spanish government covering a foreign multi national by spreading fear about oil in Spain. A link to the Der Spiegel article would have been great. There are lots of vegetables produced in Spain, that some have too high levels of pesticides is obvious, the question is how many but there is no mention of it. To me the article smells like FUD.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#60

Post by pvaldes » Mon, Jul 11, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #5

Are particular politicians implicated? Why does no Spanish TV station do a documentary on this scandal? What is the situation and dynamics of the 'free press' in Spain today?

They did several of course:

http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/informe-semanal/informe-s...