4 ms·

It's not alarmist. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm an environmental studies major and I have a genetic disorder. I'm getting healthier when that is

It's not alarmist. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I'm an environmental studies major and I have a genetic disorder. I'm getting healthier when that is supposed to be impossible and it's in part because I'm an environmental studies major and I think of the body as a complex ecosystem. You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I am getting better by trading short term costs for long term gains, the exact opposite of what Western medicine typically does. We monetize disease by trading short term gains -- that doctors can claim credit for, justifying their fees -- for long term costs which we politely admit to with multi-page warning materials included with all drugs and then normalize largely ignoring that stuff and taking it anyway. Then when your condition gets worse, they blame it on your genes instead of on the side effects of the harsh drugs they have been poisoning your system with for years and years. It's possible to make targeted changes to an ecosystem, but it's not easy and even if you get it right, there are costs involved. Managing such change is hard and there tends to be hidden costs that the experts want to disavow responsibility for and they can generally get away with it because cause and effect can be hard or impossible to prove. I hope they cure Sickle Cell. I hope they eradicate malaria. Parasitic infections are pretty awful. I hope they do it in a way that doesn't involve millions of Africans being thrown under a bus so Westerners can feel like heroes while hand waving off the human costs for the locals which Westerners have a long history of running rough shod over on the excuse that we imagine we are superior to them or something.

Jedd 6y ago
> You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I stand by my earlier claim. While I acknowledge the potential of unintended consequences, and the often surprising interconnectedness of many elements within an ecosystem, I further dispute the claim that any change necessitates other, exclusively bad, 'hell to pay' changes. Here I am, in rural Australia, and within a kilometre of me these are the pests that I would be ecstatic to get rid of, and that would have close to zero negative, and myriad positive, knock-on effects: prickly pear, tiger pear, heliotrope, pattersons curse, foxes, rabbits, several species of med fruit fly & mosquitoes. Almost all of these are guaranteed to have no negative knock-on effects simply because they were introduced here in the past two centuries.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. Though the camel being introduced to Australia seems like something of a silver lining. From what I gather, Australia is now like a haven for the species.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    I'm interested in how you defend (if I'm reading that correctly) retaining those pests in Australia. Further afield from my humble abode, yes, Phytophthora, lantana, black rats, blackberry, feral goats / pigs / deer, cane toads, camels, etc. The reason we can export camels to the middle east is that when we imported them from there, we didn't import the various parasites that are now rampant in that part of the world. Perversely this gives us an export trade and a massively out of control population of highly destructive and resilient beasts. If we could remove all wild camels from Australia over the space of 10 years you'd be hard-pressed to identify any net negatives, and certainly it'd be impossible to identify any negatives that were detectable when mapped onto a graph of the positive effects.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      No, you are not reading that correctly. They are invasive species that exploded in Australia due to a lack of natural predators. How you can cite their existence as a refutation of anything I've said baffles me. I've been up excessively long. With any luck, I'll be asleep soon. Ciao.
      - Jedd 6y ago
        > They are invasive species that exploded in Australia due to a lack of natural predators. How you can cite their existence as a refutation of anything I've said baffles me. I wasn't 'citing their existence', so much as declaring an eagerness to remove them. The context was you started by saying: > You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I said that sounded alarmist, as there were plenty of contra examples - such as removing a dozen or so named non-indigenous pests from Australia. You said: > Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. I asked how that could sit alongside your claim that 'you kill one thing ... there is hell to pay'. And here we are. My point stands -- removing these introduced pests via a terminator gene or similar that targets precisely those organisms would be a fantastic result, and almost definitely have no negative effects, though of course I'd want that to be thoroughly evaluated. An easy fallback option exists (re-introduction).
danmaz74 6y ago
> Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. Just the first counter examples that comes to my mind: "Western medicine" eradicated smallpox and polio; what was the hell price for those? "Western medicine" really only means medicine based on the scientific method, and shouldn't be conflated with the profit maximisation mechanisms which are so prevalent in the US medical system.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Overpopulation is one of the consequences of actually solving problems. Birth rates fall after mortality rates fall. The result is a bump in population size. This is a known phenomenon. It's very well documented. It's not a reason to keep letting people die, but the transition comes with costs. That's just reality. Antibiotics were supposed to be the end of disease. Now we are brewing antibiotic resistant infections. It's common for diseases to jump species when adequately threatened. Organisms don't like being eradicated and will fight back. You see more genetic mutations in diseases, fomenting resistance, when they are under pressure. We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. I have no idea if that's directly related to the eradication of small pox or polio. I haven't specifically studied those cases. Change comes at a cost. That doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing. It does mean that cavalier attitudes about how, clearly, this is all upside have a tendency to be dangerous.
  - zo1 6y ago
    > We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. Which practices are you referring to here?
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      When I was growing up, medicine was more focused on social elements. It more explicitly recognized that people spread disease from person to person. At one time, the way we stopped STDs was we took the names of all your recent hookups, contacted them and let them know they had been with someone who had just tested positive for a particular STD and offered them testing and treatment. In my teens, the AIDS crisis hit. In the US, it was mostly associated with gay men and IV drug users. These populations had reasonable concerns about giving a list of contacts to authorities and pushed for drug research and stronger privacy policies. My understanding is we largely no longer use this proven method of stopping the spread of most STDs. I can also remember going to a doctor with a sibling and a couple of cousins and all of us getting treated so that the issue wouldn't just go round and round through the family. I feel like that was a fairly common practice at the time and we mostly don't do stuff like that anymore. Historically, doctors did house calls and were one of the smartest, best educated people in town and towns were relatively small. They could address issues that helped contribute to your medical problem beyond just prescribing drugs and surgeries. Now we act like human beings are specimens in a petri dish and like their physical health is unrelated to their lifestyle or the fabric of their life. I think this is a big problem. The phrase "We've thrown out the baby with the bathwater" comes to mind but doesn't quite fit. What we've done is tossed aside wisdom and context to worship at the alter of ooh shiny diagnostics. The high tech diagnostics are useful but the largely unnoticed loss of wisdom and context is a serious problem and we aren't even trying to solve it because we mostly haven't noticed that it matters.

Jedd 6y ago

> You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I stand by my earlier claim. While I acknowledge the potential of unintended consequences, and the often surprising interconnectedness of many elements within an ecosystem, I further dispute the claim that any change necessitates other, exclusively bad, 'hell to pay' changes. Here I am, in rural Australia, and within a kilometre of me these are the pests that I would be ecstatic to get rid of, and that would have close to zero negative, and myriad positive, knock-on effects: prickly pear, tiger pear, heliotrope, pattersons curse, foxes, rabbits, several species of med fruit fly & mosquitoes. Almost all of these are guaranteed to have no negative knock-on effects simply because they were introduced here in the past two centuries.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. Though the camel being introduced to Australia seems like something of a silver lining. From what I gather, Australia is now like a haven for the species.
- Jedd 6y ago
  I'm interested in how you defend (if I'm reading that correctly) retaining those pests in Australia. Further afield from my humble abode, yes, Phytophthora, lantana, black rats, blackberry, feral goats / pigs / deer, cane toads, camels, etc. The reason we can export camels to the middle east is that when we imported them from there, we didn't import the various parasites that are now rampant in that part of the world. Perversely this gives us an export trade and a massively out of control population of highly destructive and resilient beasts. If we could remove all wild camels from Australia over the space of 10 years you'd be hard-pressed to identify any net negatives, and certainly it'd be impossible to identify any negatives that were detectable when mapped onto a graph of the positive effects.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    No, you are not reading that correctly. They are invasive species that exploded in Australia due to a lack of natural predators. How you can cite their existence as a refutation of anything I've said baffles me. I've been up excessively long. With any luck, I'll be asleep soon. Ciao.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      > They are invasive species that exploded in Australia due to a lack of natural predators. How you can cite their existence as a refutation of anything I've said baffles me. I wasn't 'citing their existence', so much as declaring an eagerness to remove them. The context was you started by saying: > You kill one thing or change one thing and there are always myriad knock on effects. Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. I said that sounded alarmist, as there were plenty of contra examples - such as removing a dozen or so named non-indigenous pests from Australia. You said: > Australia is like the poster child for unintended ecological consequences. All those introduced species you cite to refute my opinion I would cite to support it. I asked how that could sit alongside your claim that 'you kill one thing ... there is hell to pay'. And here we are. My point stands -- removing these introduced pests via a terminator gene or similar that targets precisely those organisms would be a fantastic result, and almost definitely have no negative effects, though of course I'd want that to be thoroughly evaluated. An easy fallback option exists (re-introduction).

danmaz74 6y ago

> Always. Anytime you do anything that's actually at all effective, there is hell to pay. Just the first counter examples that comes to my mind: "Western medicine" eradicated smallpox and polio; what was the hell price for those? "Western medicine" really only means medicine based on the scientific method, and shouldn't be conflated with the profit maximisation mechanisms which are so prevalent in the US medical system.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Overpopulation is one of the consequences of actually solving problems. Birth rates fall after mortality rates fall. The result is a bump in population size. This is a known phenomenon. It's very well documented. It's not a reason to keep letting people die, but the transition comes with costs. That's just reality. Antibiotics were supposed to be the end of disease. Now we are brewing antibiotic resistant infections. It's common for diseases to jump species when adequately threatened. Organisms don't like being eradicated and will fight back. You see more genetic mutations in diseases, fomenting resistance, when they are under pressure. We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. I have no idea if that's directly related to the eradication of small pox or polio. I haven't specifically studied those cases. Change comes at a cost. That doesn't mean it isn't worth pursuing. It does mean that cavalier attitudes about how, clearly, this is all upside have a tendency to be dangerous.
- zo1 6y ago
  > We've lost some of the medical best practices I grew up with. Which practices are you referring to here?
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    When I was growing up, medicine was more focused on social elements. It more explicitly recognized that people spread disease from person to person. At one time, the way we stopped STDs was we took the names of all your recent hookups, contacted them and let them know they had been with someone who had just tested positive for a particular STD and offered them testing and treatment. In my teens, the AIDS crisis hit. In the US, it was mostly associated with gay men and IV drug users. These populations had reasonable concerns about giving a list of contacts to authorities and pushed for drug research and stronger privacy policies. My understanding is we largely no longer use this proven method of stopping the spread of most STDs. I can also remember going to a doctor with a sibling and a couple of cousins and all of us getting treated so that the issue wouldn't just go round and round through the family. I feel like that was a fairly common practice at the time and we mostly don't do stuff like that anymore. Historically, doctors did house calls and were one of the smartest, best educated people in town and towns were relatively small. They could address issues that helped contribute to your medical problem beyond just prescribing drugs and surgeries. Now we act like human beings are specimens in a petri dish and like their physical health is unrelated to their lifestyle or the fabric of their life. I think this is a big problem. The phrase "We've thrown out the baby with the bathwater" comes to mind but doesn't quite fit. What we've done is tossed aside wisdom and context to worship at the alter of ooh shiny diagnostics. The high tech diagnostics are useful but the largely unnoticed loss of wisdom and context is a serious problem and we aren't even trying to solve it because we mostly haven't noticed that it matters.