Re: Efforts to seek facts applauded (Our View, Jan. 28).
You write that it’s “...harder and harder to separate the hard facts from data that looks like facts – especially when it’s about an issue that affects something as precious as our personal health.” I grant you are correct. Can you explain why anyone should believe that our elected officials, who are presumably neither scientists nor engineers nor intellectually superior to the folks who vote them into office, are any better at making such assessments than every other individual?
Furthermore, having made such an assessment, how does it follow that these same officials, all of whom lack both the knowledge and incentives each individual has concerning their own health, should be deciding what any other person should be allowed to do?
It isn’t the lack of sound science usage by politicians about which we should be concerned. It is the unsound notion that voters are children in need of elected parents to make personal decisions on their behalf.
David L. Killion
Saanich
