GOP pseudoscience strikes again. Dr./Sen. Rand Paul has claimed that there is no link between asthma and air pollution. He bolstered this assertion with a chart showing that air quality in California improved as the number of new asthma diagnoses rose.



said the ophthalmologist.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/heal...

According to Dr./Sen. Rand Paul those warnings that your city issues to folks with lung disease to stay home on ozone alert days are just a huge practical joke. Go on! Send your seven year old asthmatic out to play beside the highway. Rand Paul says its ok, and he should know. He’s a doctor---

Paul's assertion highlights one of the weaknesses of traditional medical school education. Apparently no one at Duke University School of Medicine bothered to teach Dr. Paul that association is not causality---and its corollary, lack of association does not prove lack of causality. Oh my.

Why should a doctor understand biostatistics? Because pharmaceutical companies and medical goods manufacturers will bombard him (or her) with studies claiming that substance x cures (or at least ameliorates) disease y. A doctor who can not read a journal article critically will fall victim to every fly by night drug rep that tries to tell him that no one who has ever taken birth control pills has gotten prostate cancer---meaning that the Pill prevents prostate disease!

I think what Rand Paul meant to say is if the number of asthma exacerbations falls on days when ozone and other air pollutants are high, this suggests that asthma severity is either inversely proportional or not related to air pollution. But, of course, we all know that high air pollution levels are associated with asthma exacerbations. And pneumonia. And heart attacks. Here is the NIH telling us that pediatric asthma exacerbations rise as air pollution rises.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1679879...

Here’s the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory telling us that ozone and car pollutants are associated with a rise in asthma hospitalizations for children.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/...

More on the above study:



http://www.thoracic.org/media/press-releas...

Sorry if I gave the impression above that I am knocking Duke University. I promise I am not. Here is a Duke University researcher describing the link between air pollution and airway inflamation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1965491...

I cite the last as proof that Dr. Sen. Rand Paul was asleep during medical school. Good thing he switched careers.