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How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer (2013)
- kwhitefoot 10y agoDid anyone ever believe such a thing?
- lstyls 10y agoRTFA: > The glowing element was hailed as a panacea for everything from blindness to hysteria. Literally the second paragraph.
- kwhitefoot 10y agoHailed by whom? That sentence is immediately followed by: > "No medicine, no drugs," raves one ad Note the word ad. So most of the hailing, possibly all, was in advertising copy. The article mentions advertising and marketing several times but makes no convincing case that those without a financial interest in selling the goods believed the claims. And quite likely most of those selling the products didn't believe them either; many were just the latest in a long line of quacks selling snake oil and neither knew nor cared if it worked or not, it was just a cool name to attach to product.
- lstyls 10y agoYour comment was, "Did anyone ever believe such a thing?" Again, from the article: > One particularly disturbing medical innovation was the "Radiendocrinator," a device the size of a thick stack of credit cards to be worn with an adaptor "like any 'athletic strap.'" Its inventor, who fervently claimed to use the product, later died of bladder cancer. The inventor used the product, and presumably so did the poor people consuming the quack products. Prevarication doesn't change the logic here.
- WillyOnWheels 10y agofrom 1924 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16179923 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16179923 "Radium treatment for blindness is limited in its usefulness principally to two types of eye disease, Dr. Francis H. Williams, of Boston, the discoverer, said on September 5"
- Qwertious 10y agoAbsolutely. Ever heard the saying "the past is a foreign country"?
- endymi0n 10y agoHow We Realized Putting Blockchain in Everything Was Not the Answer (2020)
- Znafon 10y agoWell, it doesn't kill you, just makes you look stupid.
- jes5199 10y agoI'm thinking in a hundred years it will be "How We Realized Putting Microprocessors in Everything Was Not the Answer"
- sand500 10y agoLet me guess, security vulnerabilities in literally every object.
- tbrake 10y agoCan't recall if I read it here or on twitter but there was a great quote along that line : "The 'S' in IoT stands for 'Security'"
- astrodust 10y agoInternet of Hackable, Completely Unpatchable Things Capable of Destroying the Internet.
- pdelbarba 10y agoPardon my curiosity, but what would be a case of blockchain making something worse?
- kpil 10y agoMost places where you already have a trusted 3rd party in place, or you do not need to trust anyone but yourself? Especially if you have a limited time to clear transactions.
- hinkley 10y agoI'm always curious what the voices of caution were at times like this. Was there anyone demanding more study before we put radium in everything?
- vandahm 10y agoYes, there was skepticism, but there wasn't much, legally, that skeptics could do to prevent these products from being sold. If you're interested in this stuff, you should check out a book called "The Poisoner's Handbook", written by a journalist named Deborah Blum. It covers the development of forensic toxicology, which eventually lead to a lot of consumer protection laws. There's even a chapter on radium, Radithor, and the women who worked with radium in the watch dial factory.
- FreezerburnV 10y agoMy wife actually wrote a (published) poem about the "Radium Girls" who worked in those factories: http://hawaiireview.org/poetry/2016/7/15/meg-eden-radium-girls http://hawaiireview.org/poetry/2016/7/15/meg-eden-radium-gir... Don't know if anyone here will find it interesting, but it felt topical. She actually did a good amount of research into the conditions surrounding their working environment and what would happen to them as they worked in those factories to get the gruesome details correct.
- DanielBMarkham 10y agoNeat! My teenage daughter put together a one-person show for the National History Day Competition a few years ago on the Radium Girls. (Shameless dad bragging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTmBhQCI0as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTmBhQCI0as)
- thaumasiotes 10y agoI "recently" (several years ago) read the original Conan stories and the Wizard of Oz books (there are many). One thing that leapt out at me was how they both talked about radium. The cultural view of it at the time was radically different. Radium was a source of health and magic, capable of solving any problem. There was a passage in which the protagonists encountered a mysterious phenomenon, and "logically" concluded "this must be done with radium". These are fantasy stories, but their similar ideas about what radium was ("magic") and what it was good for ("everything") had to come from somewhere, and had to be acceptable to their anticipated audience. To me in the 21st century, it was obviously insane, since radioactivity is best known for ruthlessly murdering anyone in proximity. There's culture shock for you. :/
- mattkevan 10y agoHow we realised putting machine learning in everything was not the answer (2117)
- Analemma_ 10y agoI found a scan of the famous Wall Street Journal article about the unfortunate fellow whose jaw fell off: https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-Radium-Water-Worked-Fine-Until-His-Jaw-Fell-Off https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-Radium-Water-W...
- bluehawk 10y agoThat was a great read, thanks for providing it! It's interesting that they mention studies in mice about using radiation to cure cancer. Sounds like the beginnings of the discovery of chemotherapy.
- bdamm 10y agoThat was worth the time, thank you! My favorite: "The Federal Trade Commission, for Instance, took action against makers of potions that lacked advertised levels of radioactivity."
- csours 10y agoThe jaw fell off? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM Goodbye Mr Clarke, you will be missed.
- bbitmaster 10y agoAny idea the year this was published? I don't see a date, and I googled the title and found several references (even on wikipedia) without a date mentioned.
- kahirsch 10y ago1 August 1990
- afdsadf 10y agoHow we realized putting WiFi in everything was not the answer (2018)
- FrozenVoid 10y agoMake one wonder if some things we use are the 'radium' of the future, and we don't think of it as harmful now. Recalled products and bans are just the tip of the icebergs: what if something harms us in non-"cancer in 4 years if you drink radium" way, but alters the genes or reduce our health in other ways(think xenoestrogens)? What if the harm isn't realized in everyone(e.g. only 4% of people)? Its not profitable for radiumCo to be preemptively pro-consumer, their only consumer-centric concern is PR/reputation after the fact, so until they get publicly shamed they won't stop selling their radium. If they have no competition eager to take them down, they have even less concern of what consumers think since radiumCo has stable market.
- InclinedPlane 10y agoNot really a mystery. The anti-dietary-fat trend resulted in lots of "low fat" high carb foods that were, and still are, much less healthy for people. We're still slowly crawling out of that hole.
- soperj 10y agoI think all of the nano stuff will be in this bubble. Just thinking about disposing of stuff that has graphene and carbon nano tubes in it. There's no regulation at the current time, and this is definitely something that we can ingest, how will our body(or any animal body) deal with it? Could be fine, but do we really know?
- jwdunne 10y agoIf you look up how asbestos damages the lungs, perhaps carbon nanotubes are something we wouldn't want to ingest. I can't say the effects would be remotely similar but: - asbestos was considered safe (or some type of it). Used in pretty much everything. - broken / agitated asbestos releases microscopic fibres into the air - those fibres pierce the lining of the lungs leading to asbestosis and eventually a mesothelioma, a cancer with 0% chance of survival. This takes some time to present. - took decades to realise what was going on and decades more to eliminate the problem, with many lives lost in the process. I wonder if carbon nanotubes could damage in a similar damage over such a long timespan such that it takes decades to fully realise, regulate and eventually fix. After all, my garage roof is asbestos. Coincidentally, my grandfather died before I was born due to long term asbestos exposure.
- npstr 10y agoWe all laugh at this nowadays, but 100 years later, Radium (or rather Radon, a radioactive gas) is still being used nowadays. I once stumbled on homoeopathic advice to visit a radon cave. While I don't have the original site or link at hand, googling will lead you to sites like this: http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy-austria http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy-austria I have no words for this.
- MartinCron 10y agoWell, if they give you radon in homeopathic doses, you should be fine.
- type0 10y ago> homeopathic doses there is no such thing
- danbruc 10y agoSome time ago I read that no radiation exposure might actually be worse for organisms than low radiation exposure like background radiation. We know the effects of high doses and everyone just assumed that the negative effects go to zero as the dose goes to zero and extrapolated it this way from high doses to zero while in reality there might be a very different relation at low doses. I will try to find some sources, I am no longer sure how convincing the argument was. This does not really change the fact that there seems to be no good evidence that walking around in a cave with elevated Radon levels does any good, but it would be less obviously a bad idea if what I mentioned above has any merits. EDIT: Found it, it is called radiation hormesis [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
- TheGRS 10y agoI think what you're getting at is the old adage of doing things in moderation. Little bit of alcohol seems to have more positive effects than none at all, severely negative effects when overdone. Same with many drugs, foods and types of exercises. The one that really comes to mind for me is bacteria. The idea of probiotics is still pretty new to the public. Probably not a great idea to ingest a ton of bacteria all the time, but a little bit can be super beneficial, and much more beneficial than none.
- mxfh 10y agoTruly worth watching: Radium City the story of the mentioned Radium Girls of Ottawa, Ill http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748_1_radium-city http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748... https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025 https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025
- gitpusher 10y agoFlash forward to 2100: How We Realized Filling Our Bodies with Millions of Nanobots Was Not The Answer
- phosphorhesper 10y agoYeah, I've run into a lot of performance bottlenecks using Radium in all of the React components in a large, complex web app.
- janci 10y agoI see a pattern here - something is discovered, then it's seen as a magic solution to many many problems until devastating health issues are discovered. Rontgen, radium, asbestos. PVC, carbon fiber, nanotubes are promising candidates for the list. Non-ionising radiation (phones, wifi, radio communication) is omnipresent and I really hope it will not follow the pattern.
- mercer 10y agoCan anyone 'in the know' explain to a layman why the parent comment is no reason for concern (especially when it comes to 'non-ionising radiation'?)
- King-Aaron 10y agoAnother interesting thing to look into is the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope). Basically a box you put your feet in, with an x-ray gun at the bottom and a hole to put your face over at the top. Spoiler alert, it didn't end well for anyone.
- du_bing 10y agoWow, this is interesting history!