Attack on Coal Will Not Save Lives, States the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 15, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Obama Administration's attack on coal-fired electricity, through draconian "carbon" rules imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), makes bogus claims about lives to be saved, states the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).

The Administration is lumping together carbon dioxide—the basic building block of all living things and also a weak greenhouse gas—and soot. So is the American Lung Association, which also lumps "carbon pollution" with arsenic, lead, and mercury.

The American Academy of Pediatrics joins the chorus, echoing the EPA's claim that the new rules will avert 2,700 to 6,600 "premature deaths" and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children by 2030. The EPA told Congress that it neither possesses nor can produce the data used in developing the rules.

Claims of such harm from small particulates (dust or soot) are extrapolated from small associations reported in poorly designed and non-replicated epidemiological studies, writes John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., in the spring 2014 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. 

"The adverse health effects of Obama's promised skyrocketing of the costs of electricity, not to mention unemployment, are simply being ignored," states AAPS executive director Jane M. Orient, M.D.

Hillary Clinton, in a September 4 speech, also claimed that the war on coal would address both "climate change" and children's respiratory illness. "This 'two-fer' also depends on conflating two entirely different forms of carbon," stated Orient. "And there is no actual evidence that shutting off all coal-fired electricity (40% of the total) would either make the climate more benign or help asthmatics."

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a national organization representing physicians in all specialties, founded in 1943 to preserve private medicine and the patient-physician relationship.

SOURCE Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)

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