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And what precisely gives you (or the bureaucrats running the FDA) the authority to decide for everybody in America what is the best use of our blood? I should

And what precisely gives you (or the bureaucrats running the FDA) the authority to decide for everybody in America what is the best use of our blood? I should be free to decide for myself what to do with my own body, and which authorities to trust on matters beyond my domain of expertise. If you have a good argument for why this is a waste of resources then make the argument, don’t legistlatively prohibit me from thinking for myself.

rscho 8y ago
There are things that are a public necessity and indeed collectively-enforced rules simply because they won't work if too few people agree to it. Another example of this process is vaccines. If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work, although it is a perfectly good solution if everyone is on board. A second point is that you probably are no expert on the topic of human plasma. This could motivate the enforcement of rules under certain circumstances, given that you are unable to personally judge if the use of such precious material is a waste or not. I personally, think that your opinion is the epitome of selfishness.
- krageon 8y ago
  It is true that not all vaccinations work 100% of the time and that herd immunity helps protect the people for who they have not worked. It is very, very wrong to say that this means that "If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work".
  - rscho 8y ago
    Oh yeah? Please expand on this, I'm curious. If that is your point of contention, you could replace "cannot work" by "may do more harm than good at a social level".
    - krageon 8y ago
      I don't know what to expand on, as I don't understand how it wasn't clear from what I have already told you - can you indicate roughly where I stopped being clear?
      - rscho 8y ago
        You mentioned I said something very very wrong, but it's not clear to me if this is a language or fundamental issue. For instance if I say, as I have tried to enunciate above, "if herd immunity is too low, vaccines may do more harm than good at a social/epidemiologic level", does that still seem very very wrong to you? To be clear, your above comment gave the impression that you thought that a low herd immunity could not increase deaths due to disease compared to no herd immunity at all, which is wrong and was probably the reason why you were downvoted.
fzeroracer 8y ago
Here's my response: People acting like absolute fucking idiots can and do frequently fuck things up for everyone else. Which means sometimes we need to put guardrails in place in order prevent them from doing things like say, selling organs to sketchy people or selling blood for quackery. There was another comment on a prior thread [1] that I'll link here but the gist of it is that if an adverse reaction happens because someone decided to sell their blood to some guy that decided being a vampire would add years to their life, it could seriously affect the amount of blood donors and the people that actually medically depend on said donations. I'm tired of seeing people on HN excuse snake oil salesman under the guise of 'well they should be allowed to sell or do whatever they want' because this kind of stuff can and does cause actual harm outside of your own limited scope. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483

rscho 8y ago

There are things that are a public necessity and indeed collectively-enforced rules simply because they won't work if too few people agree to it. Another example of this process is vaccines. If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work, although it is a perfectly good solution if everyone is on board. A second point is that you probably are no expert on the topic of human plasma. This could motivate the enforcement of rules under certain circumstances, given that you are unable to personally judge if the use of such precious material is a waste or not. I personally, think that your opinion is the epitome of selfishness.

krageon 8y ago
It is true that not all vaccinations work 100% of the time and that herd immunity helps protect the people for who they have not worked. It is very, very wrong to say that this means that "If herd immunity is too low, then vaccination cannot work".
- rscho 8y ago
  Oh yeah? Please expand on this, I'm curious. If that is your point of contention, you could replace "cannot work" by "may do more harm than good at a social level".
  - krageon 8y ago
    I don't know what to expand on, as I don't understand how it wasn't clear from what I have already told you - can you indicate roughly where I stopped being clear?
    - rscho 8y ago
      You mentioned I said something very very wrong, but it's not clear to me if this is a language or fundamental issue. For instance if I say, as I have tried to enunciate above, "if herd immunity is too low, vaccines may do more harm than good at a social/epidemiologic level", does that still seem very very wrong to you? To be clear, your above comment gave the impression that you thought that a low herd immunity could not increase deaths due to disease compared to no herd immunity at all, which is wrong and was probably the reason why you were downvoted.

fzeroracer 8y ago

Here's my response: People acting like absolute fucking idiots can and do frequently fuck things up for everyone else. Which means sometimes we need to put guardrails in place in order prevent them from doing things like say, selling organs to sketchy people or selling blood for quackery. There was another comment on a prior thread [1] that I'll link here but the gist of it is that if an adverse reaction happens because someone decided to sell their blood to some guy that decided being a vampire would add years to their life, it could seriously affect the amount of blood donors and the people that actually medically depend on said donations. I'm tired of seeing people on HN excuse snake oil salesman under the guise of 'well they should be allowed to sell or do whatever they want' because this kind of stuff can and does cause actual harm outside of your own limited scope. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19203483