Sorry! Insomnia brain still whirring. One more thing that I want to note: the elision Oster makes of the distinction between individual-level and population level constructs of “risk.” Here, again, is what she says in the article:
“There is no good evidence of any health benefits associated with raw milk. But the overall picture here is of a slightly elevated risk, and one that is in the range of other risks people take, especially for healthy individuals.”
BZZZZZT! Wrong! The population-level incidence of illness linked to raw milk is not an index of the individual-level likelihood of becoming sick from drinking raw milk. If you drink 100 bottles of raw milk and 99 of them are uncontaminated (or uncontaminated with a sufficient number of pathogens to make you sick), you won’t get sick. You might conclude from this that raw milk is basically safe because 99/100 is pretty good. The risks are low, on par with others we take in normal life!!! (or whatever horseshit she’s serving, it’s always an argument like that). But if the 100th is contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, you will get very sick and you might get hemolytic uremic syndrome and/or kidney failure. It’s spinning a roulette wheel, but you have even less information than you do about a roulette wheel. A roulette wheel has 37 or 38 numbers. The combinatorial mathematics can get complicated, but you can work them out. You have no idea what is in a given batch of raw milk. There are very good reasons to suspect that it might be something really nasty. There are also very good reasons to suspect that with RFK Jr. in charge of the FDA, regulations on the productions and sale of raw milk are about to get much more lax. More spins of the wheel, more potential for bad bets.
Do not be fooled by the Freakonomics parenting lady scowling in the fugly MM Lafleur. She does not know what the fuck she’s talking about.