Seafood study agrees with Mom

Re “Fishy marketing, bad science,” Opinion, Oct. 31

Andrea Kavanagh’s quibble about industry funding of a recent seafood science review ignores the reality that the review itself was correct. The only study with which Kavanagh takes issue, published this year in the Lancet medical journal, is the most robust look at the impact on children born to pregnant women who eat fish. It found that avoiding fish during pregnancy could result in a child with diminished IQ and motor skills. I suspect that Kavanagh is attacking the study because it’s downright effective at countering the unjustified hysteria about harmless mercury levels.

When I was a kid, my mother (a nurse) insisted that fish was “brain food.” It was considered just about the healthiest thing people could eat, pregnant or not. It still is. It’s sad that the idea of eating fish -- lots of it -- needs a marketing campaign. I think we’ve all been listening too much to environmental activists and not enough to our moms.

David Martosko

Director of Research

Center for

Consumer Freedom

Washington