The Human Experiment

So, Netflix tricked me into watching this. I saw it in the documentary-list, and thought: Netflix has a lot of good documentaries, this might be cool.. well.

It starts off with some questionable statistics and data. (Hey filmmakers: Correlation does not imply causation) Then some interviews with ignorant, stupid Americans that all keep saying 'chemicals' and 'toxic chemicals'. (Drinking game: drink every time someone says 'toxic chemicals'. Or better yet: every time someone says just 'chemicals'. Although then you'll probably die from chem, uhm, alcohol- poisoning.)

Then follows some comments from you know, scientists or doctors or whatever, then back to more bad statistics and back to the stupid Americans, aaand loop it! Like this one woman, she got cancer, and because she was living so healthy pre-cancer, she just assumes that a toxic chemical was the reason for her getting cancer. Because she was living so healthy, you guys! It's the chemicals, I'm telling you! Toxic chemicals.

A couple of times the interviewees seem so stupid and uninformed, that it got kind of funny, even tho the topic was pretty serious. It's also very disconcerting that everyone is talking about toxic chemicals, with few examples of what these chemicals are. As if toxic chemicals is this one dangerous substance. Newsflash: chemicals come in all shapes, sizes and uses. Most of them are pretty harmless in small doses. But dosage is not discussed here at all.

This is just a bad documentary. Questionable data, very little science, dumb interviewees, also just straight up boring. I'm sorry, but watching a 10 minute segment of some person having a meeting informing some other people of the dangers of 'toxic chemicals' is just not what I want to watch. Yawn.

If you're stupid and ignorant this documentary is for you! If you're a thinking, average or above intelligent person, stay clear. I wonder if Sean Penn regrets doing this, lol.

I wasn't planning on seeing "The Human Experiment" but needed something to bridge the two films I did want to see today. I'm sorry I saw it as the experience was detrimental to my blood pressure. I should preface the following by saying that I'm a card carrying ACLU liberal who thinks that practically all public pronouncements from "big business" is self-serving B.S. Yet movies like this do far more harm than good by making it easy for the pro-business, anti-regulation, right-wing in this country (aka, Republicans) to say "See, the left is just as biased as the right".

The cinematography is top notch. However, the movie relies exclusively on anecdotes and emotional appeals rather than data to make its case. The few factual assertions are almost all half-truths, misinformation, or outright falsehoods. An example of the latter is that your skin provides a direct path for "chemicals" into your blood (this was in the context of skin care products). That is not true.

Note that I deliberately used scare quotes around the word chemicals because that is how it is used throughout the film. The people who made and appear in the film don't seem to be aware that everything is made of chemicals and all chemicals are toxic at a high enough concentration or under certain conditions. Consider the chemical dihydrogen monoxide (http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html). Or ascetic acid (a common component of salad dressing). Yes, those examples are silly but that's the level of argument made in this film.

In my opinion, this documentary was spot on with exposing the chemical industry. Anyone that says otherwise is either in denial, is a good little sheep, or is working for the wrong team. Yes, Americans should already be fully aware that politicians and big industry can't be trusted, but most probably have no idea the amount of chemicals we are exposed to everyday. Just as someone said in the doc, you shouldn't need a degree in biochemistry to shop at the store. This documentary is not "biased". It tells the truth flat out. To be biased means to be unfairly prejudice and there is nothing fair about what this industry is doing to people by slowing poisoning them through products through everything from food to packaging to upholstery to cosmetics, you name it. There has definitely been an increase is diseases over the last 50 years and it's hard to deny that the common element is the chemicals. You don't really even need the hard science, it makes PERFECT sense when you consider the sheer amount of chemicals, low regulation, and the industry's efforts to keep it that way. Congrats on HR 2576!

This is the first of many documentaries with emerging UNDISPUTED DATA that the Gov/FDA and Monsanto company since 1901 OBVIOUSLY have an agenda to poison, kill, and leave the American public helpless, IGNORANT guinea pigs begging the pharmaceutical companies to finish us off with pain pills after multiple-level chemical exposures from birth.

If that wasn't enough as you can see or research when you go to the Guinea pig feeding troff commercial "grocery" store Genentically altered (GMO) foods are unnatural seeds that additionally have been grown and covered in chemicals and in many cases rinsed in chemicals(Tap Water).

For thousands of years the world was free of America's constant health problems. But since Amercia's food was tainted with chemicals and then exported it's now become the WORLD'S problem....HELLO!

If anything the world should be raging war against America NOT the other way around with 9/11 propaganda...this is one of the reasons the Middle East -now religious fanatics- won't ever stop gorilla tactics! They believe God's 100% and don't break that covenant for ANY reason and that includes...yep, you guessed it...The land of the FREE and under GOD?

This had the distinct feeling of the exact same sort of slick misuse of words that I would expect from any film put together by someone trying to obfuscate a topic in order to ram through an agenda. The largest point was the clear misframing of points by the narration, including the complete avoidance of nuances that some people that were interviewed clearly did show.

The film interchangeably talks about the dangers of chemicals, the dangers of cancer-causing chemicals, and the dangers of artificial chemicals, as though it has no understanding that all things are chemicals, that many chemicals it uses as examples of health risks are, in fact, naturally-occurring, and that amounts of exposure do matter. It becomes quite clear that some people interviewed are aware of this and only discuss toxic chemicals, but the narration in the film, especially early on when context is being established, fails to do so.

There's also some very suspicious handling of data, providing some data and then stating that there are exceptions that strengthen their case, again a tactic of the film, not those interviewed. There's also some concerning discussion, like discussions on autism that sound very suspiciously like the arguments that come from long-since discredited anti-vaccination proponents about chemicals and autism (discussions like not wanting children to 'develop' autism). As they are generally arguing against the scientific consensus in some cases, this also sounds concerningly like the same anti-science conspiracy arguments that come from anti-vaccine proponents, creationists, climate-change deniers, and tobacco companies (the last being particularly ironic).

For what could be a very interesting topic, it's clearly pushed blindly to further an agenda rather than actually examine the issues in question. Rather than trying to present facts and letting the audience process it all, they simply through every allegation they have, often allegations that are contradictory, and many of which run counter to available data when followed up on. It's a film that seems founded on lies and deceit conveyed in a slick presentation in an attempt to hide an agenda that utterly sabotages any attempt to take a real and serious look at what sorts of exposures we face to various chemicals, and it'a a shame that they so willingly undercut the significance of the topic like this.